So for the last few years, the Linux Company I bought into early on, Lindows/Linspire/Freespire, sold out again. Seems to be a pattern here. First, they fight the good fight against the evil corporation Microsoft, getting users to invest in the companies lawsuit by selling lifetime memberships. Then, shortly aftwards, selling out to MS for 20million dollars.. I sort of understand, that is lots of money.. Good business.. but after promoting yourself as fighting the good fight, it felt like selling out..
Then later, they made a deal with MS that was basically blackmail money. MS agreed to not sue them for supposed patent violations in the Linux Kernel, and Linspire agreed to pay for that protection.. Nice scam, huh? We rattle our saber, and everyone must give us money not to draw it.. Pay the money, or we will come around to your place and have our thugs break things.. Pay us the money, or we will sick our lawyers on you for something that has not been proven.. All sounds like the same scam to me.. but again, Linspire sold out… (Hrm.. Reading over at Kevin Carmony’s blog, it looks like MS actually paid them… Odd.. Makes more sense that Linspire agreed to it now.)
Now, in their last act, Linspire sold out to who they touted as their competition, and spent so much time making sound inferior, Xandros. Sad, annoying and frustrating. I decided I had enough, and resigned from the forums that I have helped moderate for years. I have been an Insider there, and was told at one point I had one of the earliest join dates they were aware of. I even won the “contest” they had to come out there, see how Lindows worked, and come up with ideas how to improve communication with the Insiders. Had a great time, and met a lot of nice people.. Who have all lost their jobs (and their investments by the looks of it) in the last several years. 🙁 Although, they were all talented, so I suspect that they have all moved on to bigger and better things. Regardless, it is kind of an ending of an era for me.
After watching these last few years how MR (former CEO and main investor of the company) does things, I feel like he is earning money through lawsuits.. He seems to like taking things to court.. and it seems to have worked out for him over the years.. but I kinda lose some respect for people who use our legal system as a club. It also started to give me the feeling he is a professional sell out. 🙁 So I will be staying away from his future endeavors, and would recommend the same to others. They are just going to be there long enough to cause a stir with someone and then they will lose momentum and be sold off after the settlement. 🙁
Personally, I have moved on to using Windows Vista 64 for Gaming, and Ubuntu Linux for most everything else. Linspire has been so far behind for years, that it is just annoying. CNR seems like a really, really cool idea, but they did not go big enough fast enough with the idea. They also started out charging way to much for it on the frontend which made a lot of people have a bad attitude about it. They have just in the last few years started adding other distros to CNR, and I think it took way to long. As a result of all of these things, which are easy to see in 20/20 hindsight, my thoughts have basically proven correct.. Although, they even sold off CNR, which I did not expect.
I still highly recommend Simpy Mepis, but now, I recommend Ubuntu as well. Both very good distros, with a different feel to both. Mepis uses KDE for a front end, Ubuntu uses Gnome. Gives them a different feel from each other, but they are still, both, solid distros!
