As I mentioned earlier My moan is not about paying as I baught the Linspire opperating system, but no were on the packaging etc dd it say I would have to pay additional cash to use the bloody thing basically I have an opperating system ( bare bones ) with no oppourtunity for downloading and installing things like Openoffice.org as you need an RPM converter which is available via the Linspire warehouse without paying more money then on top off that other so called freeware may then require subscription to this or that. Now I know some people will say this is the same for M$ but as a new user to Linux Distros I don't know what programes are essential and which are not and so am not prepared to chuck cash around for the fun of it as I may decide I don't like the Linux OS at least with M$ I know what is usefull and what is not and with Zip & RaR which is freeware (in trial form) I can then download other Demos in order to try before I decide if I want to buy. but with Linspire if you don't subscribe to CNR you can't use the package you have baught so in that case Linspire should make it clear that if you buy their OS you will also have to pay to use it ???????????? would you buy a product if you knew you had to pay more for using it? Thats my gripe with the OS!!!!!!

And please can someone tell me how to get my mouse working? it works ok in XP but not in Linspire. So I am now becoming a little disheartend.

Sigh

Here we go again...

And I'm not going there either

Here we go again what? I don't understand it must be because i'm one of the longterm M$ users and the supperior Linux user has spoken! why is it that intellegent conversation get lost on this forum? I like others are new to linux Distros and am checking each one that suites me and the points mentioned are valid points with respect to my experience, So instead of sarcasim why don't you provide some usefull feed back ( here we go again ) Quote "I aint going there" then why post in such a manner? Please provide some feedback which is constructive.

Have a look at the posts 3 and 5 back from your last one, mate. Then go read what was written on that other thread, and I believe you will understand what was meant.

Sorry if it came across as an arrogant linux user versus a poor MS user, it wasn't (honestly) intended that way.

However I'm not an expert Linux user by any stretch of the imagination, but am a competant Microsoft Windows one who is attempting to use both OSs for different purposes.

The points you raise are frequently raised by people who seem not to read sufficiently about what they decided they would buy.

That means they are disappointed that the product won't do what they want it to do because it wasn't designed to do it, or because it does it in a different way.

Quite naturally they then become "miffed" (if lucky) or downright angry, or somewhere in between.

I believe that is where you are coming from.

Please read and understand the licence associated with Linux. Products can be sold singly, or if packaged together. And services can be sold.

What is free is the code which has to be available, so that you can modify it to suit your use. And then provide it back to the community so that others can use it.

It is not free as in a pint of beer.

And free beer is never free anyway, someone pays for it. Like making downloads of a software application available. You pay for those through your ISP account.

CNR is a service. You do not have to use CNR, you can use the Debian apt-get.

Or I believe there are others.

Me - I like it simple, one click, get what software I want - downloaded and installed, with dependencies fixed at the same time. I am prepared to pay for that service. So are many others. You don't happen to be one. Fine.

You do not have to think the same way as me. That is choice.

Make sense?

Understood and hope to get help with any probs I may have! I understand about the licence code but was a little miffed that after buying what I thought was a full package is far from it but lessons learnt will shut up now

Yeah, know what you mean. Every "distro" seems different in how much comes with what you buy. If you have tried damnsmalllinux aka dsl you will see the whole distro is under 64Mb.

To do that there are lots of things missing... yet it is surprising how much is there!

Knoppix seems to use a magnificent compression algorithm... what they can provide on a 700Mb CD is brilliant!

In the case of SuSE I think it's on five CDs...

and Sun Java Desktop it is eight CDs, of which three are the distribution, two comprise the source and one the documentation. Tools occupy the last two.

Both of those are commercial distros like Linspire, but they do it differently.

Linspire's approach is KISS

You know that stands for Keep it simple, stupid

First of all they make it possible to do it all by downloads, to avoid the costs of not just the box and the media but the shipping. That is a significant portion of buying any boxed set of software, whether over a retailer's counter, or by mail.

Then their way is this... fit all the main apps and the OS on one CD (which is what SJDS does). If you need the source, they give you a url you can download it from. Most of us don't need it, so why feed the bandwidth monster?

Then if you want other apps, you can choose the free way using apt-get, or the subscription way (CNR)

There is no hidden agenda, and there is no aim or intention to milk the public.

If it were possible to offer a reliable Click-and-Run service to users of other distros, or even just Debian-based distros, I'm sure that they would have done that. I believe there was an attempt early on which was never reliable.



Something I forgot to mention is that they also provide free "try the CNR" opportunities... indeed there is currently one going right now.

And we should remember that once you have downloaded any product through CNR you can keep downloading it for ever even if you cancel your CNR subscription later on. Nothing could be much fairer than that, could it?

apt-get ( get application I understand not being a compitant Linux distro user where do I enter that command? and how do I install if my OS does not open RPM files without using a de-encripter which needs downloading from the Linspire warehouse via subscription to CNR am I wrong can I do this another way without having to subscribe to things?

apt-get is a command in debian linux. Linspire (and many others) are derived from Debian Linux.

You use that command in a console like a DOS window in windows

If you can't find the menu item, click on "Run" from the L menu... and type konsole <enter>

konsole is the name of the KDE (desktop) console application.

You don't use .rpm's. They are for RedHat/Fedora and Mandrake and perhaps distros derived from them.

You use .deb's

I have never used them because I haven't needed to. However I believe that after you locate the .deb package you want, you download it to your desktop, and then it can be done like this (I copy and paste from a search on the linspire.com forums)...

To install (from the console): dpkg -i filename.deb

or if you have kpackage installed, just double click on the icon of the downloaded program.

what are the other ones?

yeah you use dpkg -i filename.deb.

You can also download alien, and you can convert any package to .deb by typing

alien -d filename

and you can edit /etc/apt/sources.list to add more software that you can download in apt(and synaptic, apt's gui frontend)

is there a coupon for free cnr?

cool!!! downloading now. always willing to try something new, especially for free

Dude, you are such a cheap, freeloading, ignorant 'tard, it's funny.

Google "free beer" sometime.

shhyyyt i dont pay either its either free or nothing ... seriously why pay for somthing thats free unless you love the project so much you feel like "donating" then go ahead but why should software thats free be charged? its dumb to me

well...totally missing the point of my post is a thing i can understand.
just another person that cannot read or think ( or both... )

however throwing names to people you don't know,
makes me think you're just another Tourette disabled.

i hope you'll find some help soon....

egag