Freespire trial by Linux newbie.

[dionisiog]

Hi...
I ordered th CD of Freespire for about US$5.00 which included the shipping and received it in a few days. Decided to use one of my P2's with 128mg of memory for a trial. In spite of the fact that I had some rather troublesome proprietary software on the machine it installed flawlessly although, no surprise, my generic discount radio card (discountinued before XP existed) was passed by. Nevertheless: Passed by is a good thing at times. Other systems would have hung endlessly during an installation process if encountering this hardware.
Freespire has thus far installed and operated without a hitch, but being a non-experienced linux user I am still bugged as I am at a loss for the method to install other softwares not supplied with Freespire. Is it impossible for Linux based software to come up with an equivalent to an *.exe install device... or am I just ignorant regarding this area? Freespire apparently offers a direct connection to a click & install website for software ready to work with this operating system. I am supposing that in general that means anything 'Linux'. But another person has told me that this may mean Windows software as well. (On to the Freespire forum, in time to learn more.)
One negative comment about something which has driven me crazy on my old P2 in regards to the mp3-cd player included with Freespire. It appears to find it necessary to import any file you might want to listen to before it can be played. Why? Time-consuming and annoying is the word. I found myself longing for Winamp in a Linux world. I mean... This is a rather basic device to want to have available for everyday use. And worse... It seems to consume endless amounts of system memory to use. In fact, worse than the import procedure was the fact that my 128mg P2 the system was eventually overwhelmed by the simple task of attempting to import and play multiple mp3s. I thought that XP was bad compared to Win98 in this area, but on my other P2 I have surfed the web, listened to music, processed music or watched tv and sometimes more... at the same time, without a burp, slowdown or blue screen. Admittedly, WIn98 is better for that on a P2 than on XP. In fact I have even recorded in CD quality 2 different live audio programs at the same time flawlessly) one being downloaded from the web in real time via dial-up and the other entering my PC from line-in) in Win98. Yet simply playing an Mp3 file on the Freespire player seems to be the equivalent have decyphering thread theory mathematics using the same P2 PC. What gives?
Anyway, I come to muse and pass on my very slight and short-lived experiences with Freespire. I have admittedly learned a great deal which has not been mentioned here regarding the utilization of Linux-based systems in 24 hours with Freespire. That is an extremely significant phenomenom. Also please note: All of my previous passes at Linux have left me fleeing and formatting my drives within a short time for WIndows based systems in disgust. The only (not so recent) previous system with which I could have lived with such happiness besides WIndows (simply because I have better things to do than become a tech-head to computer junk) was OS/2.
I would say... very promising is this experience. Beyond that, I found myself feeling like I was flying when I plugged in my previous hard drive with a twin boot of XP Pro and Win98 on the same machine. But then again, I am very apt with the configuration of those systems by now.
Anyone else out there with Freespire today?
Any Advise or feedback?
Enjoy the weekend.
Dan
PS... As much as I am stuck with Windows I am one that would happily convert if offered a reasonable alternative (fitting my interests.) It continues to be all too obvious how Microsoft constantly manipulatives their software to ensure that the use of any alternative devices within their system will provide a poor computer experience. Example: Some recent changes within the hotmail websites have left Mozilla users fighting to continue to access a hotmail account.

[iceni60]

hi, i don't think freespire is trial software, i thought it was free, what you might be trialing is CNR (click and run) which is the proprietary software installer they made. here's a video showing how to set it up
http://osvids.com/vids/0007/vid_0007.html

i think you have three options regarding software installation with Freespire - use the CNR trial and install everything you might ever need, lol provided stuff doesn't stop working when the trial stops. buy CNR and use that use apt instead, which CNR is build on
if you use apt you might need to add repositories for it, but then it might just use the CNR stuff, i'm not sure how it works.

instead of winamp you can use xmms which is very similar to winamp

you could try this in the Konsole to get xmms, but don't blame me if Freespire stops working afterward - it shouldn't ;D

sudo apt-get install xmms

i just found this link, it mentions CNR and apt. once you have shorted out how you will install programs you'll be fine.
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/interview_kevin_carmody_freespire

there's an interview on this page with Kevin Carmony the Freespire CEO. i'm not show how helpful it will be to you though, still you might like it
http://www.tllts.org/dl.php?episode=133

[dionisiog]

Thanks "iceni60" very much for your information.

It has to be extraordinarily obvious that I am new to actually having managed to get a working version of anything related to Linux on my computer... If that doesn't say a lot for Freespire I don't know what does.

As an aside: Through some strange quirk I was given a copy pf Ibuntu the day after I had my first working install of Freespire in place. I tried installing it on 2 different computers and in each case, when it got to installing my DVD writer it got stuck. Tell me if I'm crazy, but don't you find it a bit bizarre that a software can actually be using your DVD writer to install itself yet it still can't manage to come up with a driver or identify the writer to install it in it's own environment? Could this have something to do with Bill Gates holding the patent on the driver that most CD-DVD units operate from in most of the computers in the world? Hmmmm.

I would like to clarify something with this reply. In many ways, I am actually quite impressed with Freespire. I'm not certain if this came through my diatribe of frustration over my experience with attempting to use the pre-installed audio player. Let's face it. I am a Microsoft user. I am rather accustomed to not having to think about anything to profound in terms of my operating system... Thank god, although in fact I can probably dig around XP or Win98 better than just about anyone I know. I am good with it.

The thing that is all to easy to forget is that there was a time when everything WIndows was a mystery as well, and it took a lot of unravelling to get to the level of comprehension that I have of it's insides and outsides that I have today.

Fresspire is rather amazing in this aspect. It surely is impressively designed and I highly recommend that anyone out there with half a cents worth of curiosity sends for or downloads a copy of this first release. The installation was completely flawless (as far as I can see) and actually... it might have been easier than installing anything Microsoft that I have ever had. The interface is truly beautiful, and for someone with some computer experience and perhaps a bit witty, it can actually be learned, understood, and conquered even in some of the unknown areas that Linux users need to learn
to deal with. Example... ask a Micrsoft user (I.E. Me!) what the heck it means to mount a hard drive. 24 hours later I can answer you with another question: How long has it been since you've had a date? OK, faint of heart, that's not a geek insult, I am simply referring you to the reason that many people date, which is sex. If you're a guy, by now, you probably have your answer. And 24 hours prior I could not have told you this. Congratulations... Freespire! (Still blind? Mounting is neccesary at times to access an addtional hard drive in Linux.)

I would assume that this area is not intended to be used for reviews of Freespire or other softwares, although in a way we are getting that anyway. I will simply tell you that amazingly, I actually kind of like it, as lazy as I have come to be in terms of caring to exert the needed effort to cross to a different operating system platform. So perhaps there is hope for me in that area and perhaps, indeed, there is much hope for this newest release in the realm related to Linux in terms of a lasting user base for Freespire. There is simply not enough space here to list my good comments, and I don't think it's appropriate... Kind of unfair to Freespire, don't you thinK? This is indeed an important release.

Thanks for your help!

Dan

[iceni60]

if you want to try Ubuntu you can try using the alternate cd. i think afew people have had problems with the standard cd.

Linux is head of windows in alot of ways, must of the new things coming out with Vista have been out for awhile now on Linux. it shouldn't take very long getting use to Freespire, or most other distros.