Catching our breath...a
quick update from Linspire
by Larry Kettler
April 11th,
2008
I
just got back from the 2nd Annual Linux
Foundation Collaboration Summit in Austin, Texas where I was able to connect
with many
old friends in the industry, as well as meet a number of new
acquaintances that share the same passion around helping Linux grow in
the desktop marketplace. It was a great event! At one of the break out
sessions on desktop Linux, I was asked to provide an
update on
what we have been up to here at Linspire. I touched on a number of
recent
announcements around Linspire, the Freespire $199 Linux PC
at Sears.com
and the
growth of our free one-click desktop Linux software delivery service
CNR.com. For this
Linspire Letter I wanted to share with you some of
our recent
announcements and accomplishments over the past few months.
CNR
Client Gold Master
|
CNR Client Goes
Gold
As many of you know, our CNR.com service is finalizing its beta stage
now and will move into its production stage soon.
During this beta period we
released our gold master (GM) CNR Client, which provides support for 32
bit versions of Freespire 2.0, Kubuntu
(7.04, 7.10), Linspire 6.0 and Ubuntu,
7.04 & 7.10 (32 bit). The CNR Client
provides a number of very cool
features like a Manage Software tab, History tab, and filters to
quickly review available updates and "My CNR Software" so users can
easily manage all their software programs keeping things up to date. (See below for the Premium CNR
Special).
CNR Adds More Commercial Software
One of the great things our users tell us about our free CNR service is
how nice it is to have an easy-to-use
online marketplace where they can
find, download and install all the latest commercial and free software
programs available to desktop Linux users. Over the past
number of weeks we
have released a number of commercial products available at CNR.com like
Parallels,
CrossOver
Linux
Pro, Win4Lin
Pro, Fluendo,
Eschalon Book I as
well as some excellent free commercial
software like Lotus
Symphony and Google
Earth. Commercial software vendors
and ISVs are recognizing how easy it
is
to get their Linux software
titles published on CNR.com by submitting them through the free
Publishing page, so expect the number of commercial software
applications available to grow and the announcements to keep coming. If you're an ISV or commercial
software vendor, please email us for more
information at publishers@cnr.com
CNR Adds Web Software On top of all the
great desktop Linux software available
through CNR.com,
we've announced this week that we've populated CNR.com with
over 4,000 web-based
software
applications. We decided to offer this
additional value to CNR users as web software is clearly growing in
usage and has become a growing part of the everyday connected users
life. With these additional "cloud-based" applications, CNR
users
get an even larger selection of software to choose from when looking
for that solution. Users
can also use the CNR.com filters and generate advanced search results
including both Linux and
Web software combined, or Linux or Web software exclusively. Look for
CNR.com to expand in this area further and provide some cool
web-based services to users in the near future.
Custom OS
Build Service
This past quarter,
we reached a milestone with our system
builder program as we now have over 1,000 Authorized System
Builders pre-installing Linspire and Freespire on desktop and laptop
computers around the world. In addition, we announced our
first Custom
OS Build Service initiative for system builders and companies
that want
to offer their own custom Linux operating system. The Custom OS Build
Service will help partners cut time to market and
greatly reduce the overall expense required when building a desktop
Linux operating system. The response from this initiative
has
been excellent and there are a number of interesting projects that are
in the works. Interested
in a custom OS? Email us at customOS@linspire.com.CNR Community
I would like to thank some of
our top 10 CNR Community members:
JDoyle, subslug, chatan, Lichig0, Chris H., LioNiNoiL, MEakes,
trevortubbs and a special thank you
to kframp who has contributed documentation
for a number of Garage Games. Thanks to all of you, the
CNR Community is growing! Your
contributions, suggestions and help to other members makes the CNR
Service even better.
We have now opened blogging
in CNR.com and we invite the community to write a blog on what
is your
favorite feature of the CNR Service, how it's made your computing
life easier or anything else you'd like to share. To become a CNR
Blogger, please contact support@cnr.com.
We
continue to work hard on a number of initiatives here at Linspire and
hope you try these latest products and services first hand. In the
coming weeks, we are set to make some exciting announcements...so stay
tuned!
- Larry
PS: Community Members -
Help prioritize these
legacy CNR Warehouse software programs that you would like to
see added in CNR.com next.
To
discuss this topic with others, click
here!
