After reading a few favorable reviews of Linspire 5.0, and assuming I'd setup a non-root user account, is there any reason I shouldn't switch to Linspire (debian based) from my current distro (Suse).

I am mostly into ease of use and ease of use for my family. Just curious. Oh, I'm not looking into making this a flame war, I'm just thinking that it might be an easier desktop distro for me and my family to use on a day to day basis.

Ideas?

If you don't mind paying $20/year to install software, go for it.

$20 a year isn't that bad because from what I remember they provided a lot of software and it was really easy to install (and of course Linspire software installer thing is optional). If you like Linspire more than suse I say go for it. If its easier for you to use I don't see why you wouldn't switch

I am currently giving Linspire a spin, partly because I enjoy seeing what distros are made of and partly because someone I know decided to try Linux VIA Linspire. I used one of the "coupons" in the Linspire forum and got a free install CD.
My first impressions are mixed.
But to make a long story short...
Would I personally recommend Linspire? No.
Would I suggest someone NOT use it? No.
Would I suggest their decision to use it was wrong if they prefer it? No.
I always suggest trying a distro before replacing a distro. That only makes sense.
The install presented me with a running Linux system but I found it pretty limited in the software it installed. Anything that needed to be added would possibly be through a CNR subscription. It was apparently missing things as basic as man pages. The night I installed it I was allowed access to CNR for some reason. I installed Acrobat reader. I do not see that this is easier than installing a Suse program from YAST.

Thanks for the inputs. I was thinking of it in terms of the $50/year. I see they offer some form of support. I currently use SuSE and have stuck with it. I've got DVDs (from Linux Magazine) of Xandros, FC4 and Mandrake sitting here on my desk. Though I've been mostly happy with SuSE there are a few things that keep annoying me. In terms of the $50/year for the CnR, that's not a big deal. I'm thinking that it might be worth it - if just for the discounts on such things as MainActor and other commercial products.

Remember, too, I'm just thinking for my Laptop (a Dell 600m running SuSE 9.3), desktop and my mother's systems at her house (all running SuSE 9.2). Here at work we've pretty much standardized on SLES for our servers and I'm thinking of introducing either SuSE or RH for desktops as soon as I start convincing peopel to upgrade from WinXP.

Thanks for the good replys so far!

I've just given ARKLinux a spin and it seems to be very nice, worth a try. Those looking purely for ease of use without paying I would point at ArkLinux, Ubuntu and Mandrake. For those slightly more ambitious I would point at SuSe and Fedora. Just my personal experience so far.

I use Linspire as my home desktop of choice. Linspire was very easy to install and start using right from the start. All of my PC Components were recognized and installed, even my PCI wireless adapter. I had the system installed and on the network inside of 9 minutes on my all of my systems. In every case, Linspire has worked on my systems out of the box without any tinkering.

I do have a CNR account and install 90% of my software that way (I like not having to worry about dependencies etc, and the small fee for CNR is well worth the headaches I don't have when trying to install software). Linspire is, however, Debian based so you can use good 'ol apt-get to install software, or download .deb packages and install them. There is also Klikit for installing software as well. However, CNR is the only OFFICIALLY SUPPORTED way to install software, but as I said, there are other ways to do it.

The systems Linspire has installed on "out of the box" for me..

Dell 8300 P4 2.8ghz/800FSB
Windows XP PRO SP2/Linspire 5.0 Dual
3GB DDR400
BFG 6800GTOC 256MB AGP 8X
HD1 250GB WD 7200 8MB
HD2 250GB Maxtor 7200 8MB
16x Dual Layer DVD+/-RW
24X DVD-ROM
Officejet v40
On-Board AC'97 Sound

Homebuilt Sempron 2600+
Linspire 5.0
768MB DDR266
nVidia GF2 Pro AGP4x
Seagate 80GB 7200 8MB
52X CDRW
Belkin 54G F5D7000 PCI Wireless (Ver 2000)
On-Board AC'97 Sound

Dell Latitude C840 P4 2.0ghz
XP PRO/Linspire 5.0 Dual
1GB DDR333
GF4 440go 64mb on-board
30GB 5400RPM
24X DVD-ROM
Belkin PCMCIA 54G Wireless adapter
On-Board AC'97 Sound

Home built Celeron D325 2.66ghz
Linspire 5.0
512MB DDR266
GF FX5200 128MB AGP8x
80GB Seagate 7200 2MB
60GB IBM Deskstar 60GB 5400
32X CD-RW
48X CD-Rom
Belkin 54G F5D7000 PCI Wireless (Ver 2000)
On-Board AC'97 Sound

Home built AMD Athlon XP 1900+
SuSE 9.3 PRO (but have had Linspire 5.0 installed on it in the past)
512MB DDR266
GF4 440MX-SE 64MB
80GB Maxtor 7200 8mb
32X CD-RW
Belkin 54G F5D7000 PCI Wireless (Ver 2000)
On-Board AC'97 Sound

Dell 4100 PIII 800mhz/133FSB
Linspire 5.0
256MB PC100 SDRAM
TNT2 16MB AGP
10GB WD 5400
320GB WD 7200 8MB
Belkin 54G F5D7000 PCI Wireless (Ver 2000)
On-Board sound
can you tell this is my file server?

As you can see, I got a great deal on Belkin Wireless product...FREE AR limit 10 per household at Staples about 6 months ago, so I cleaned up on them.

Anyway, give Linspire a try, I've been happy with it. I've tried plenty of other Distros....Ubuntu, PCLOS, Fedora Core 3, SuSE (obviously), Madriva, DSL, CPU Builders Linux (Fedora), Xandros 2 Standard Edition, and other small distros, but I just prefer Linspire. To each his own.

Did you decide to give it a try with one of the free coupons? Also, try the Klikit! app if you don't want to use CNR. Personally I don't mind paying the $20/yr fee to not have to worry about dependencies.

Thanks for the cool input!

Free coupons? I'll look up what those are.

I'm curious, since you have experience with both SuSE 9.3 (which have on my lappie right now) and Linspire. I'm thinking in terms of KDE, since I like it best, but how do they compare for configuration and ease of use. Is there anything in the 3.4 desktop under SuSE that you miss running 3.3 on Linspire?

Also, how easy is it to configure and run printers. That's probably my mother's most common complaint. Her printer (Epson R300) or CUPS occasionally will just stop and it is challenging to open the print manager then remember the admin password plus the printer admin password then go into CUPS (http://localhost:630) to remove jobs that may have stacked up.

Thanks!!

For the free coupons.... Reference this thread here

As far as KDE goes, I don't do much configuring to my desktops at all. I use what configuration that is installed out of the box, make my background something out of my personal collection that I enjoy (usually my children) and go from there. Both dekstops are very easy to use and navigate, but I'm sorry I can't help you more with configuration questions......maybe I should play around with that some to become more informed next time I'm asked. In Linspire there are configurable settings in the control center, pretty straight forward and easy, I've just never messed with them.

As far as my printer goes, I have a HP OfficeJet v40 that is attached to the Dell 8300 and shared across the network. It was a breeze setting it up in Linspire (locally and across the network) and printing to it. The Print System is CUPS, but I've never had a problem with it stopping. Everytime I've hit the printer from any of the Linspire machines it has printed.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help to you.

Hmm....

...okay, I used the coupon and downloaded it last night. (On my W2K machine.) I now need to burn the CD and try it out.

I just browsed the CNR isles again and will have to see if the "downgrade" in KDE is worth it. I supposed I could "upgrade" again using apt, right? I'd definately want to do that for OOo as well, since I see they're only on 1.x and I'm already very used to the 2.0 beta.

Also, what do you find the difference is between CNR gold and regular? I'm not sure what is ment by "only one aisle available." I see the discounts on commercial software aren't available, but I don't really see myself using those much. (I already bought CX Office to run Visio and MS Project unless there's a compelling reason to move to Win4Lin.)

Thanks again.

Okay, with CNR they let you create personal Aisles of software so that if you are reinstalling, etc, you don't have to search all through the warehouse or sift through your "My Products" to find all of a specific genre of programs. HERE is an example of an Aisle I have for my Childrens programs

As far as OO 2.0 Beta, I believe you can just download and install it from their website. I don't know, I use SO7. I have SO6 on CD that I installed prior to getting 7, and it didn't break anything. Also, I purchase Cedega directly from Transgaming and not through CNR. Installed the .deb with KPackage and it worked just fine. Same with NERO Linux. So, everything doesn't always have to come from CNR, especially if they don't have the package in there. So, I don't forsee any problems with you installing your previously purchased CX Office.