Freespire is a desktop oriented Ubuntu-based Linux distro powered by Xfce. For those not in the know it is the open source equivalent of Linspire, but containing mostly libre / FOSS components.ย It contains many of the same software packages as Linspire, but it strictly follows the Free and Open Source Software philosophy of providing only license-free software.
So any Linspire packages that require the community-based Freespire developer team to purchase a license to redistribute the distro are left out.
Freespire is a Linux distribution with an interesting history. It started off as Lindows OS twenty years ago, as an easy-to-use Linux OS with Wine integration. Lindows quickly became popular with users looking to move away from Windows, but not its appearance.
But Microsoft objected to the name, tried to sue and failed, then reached a license agreement and earned the nickname for itself.
Nearly 20 years later, Linspire is still alive. And now the development team behind it has announced that it is moving in “a whole new direction” with the release of Freespire 7.7.
Today, the PC/OpenSystems LLC open source development team will release Freespire 7.7. This update opens up a new direction for our distribution products Freespire, Linspire and Xandros, through the integration of cloud applications.
Let’s take a quick look what is new in Freespire 7.7.
What’s New in Freespire 7.7
The distribution includes :
- XFCE Desktop 4.16
- Kernel 5.4.0-80
- Synaptic
- Google Chrome 92
- DuckDuckGo set as the default search engine and homepage
- Ice SSB
- Kpatience
- Dreamchess
- Geary Mail Client
- Kolourpaint
- Parole
- Rhythmbox
- Caja is now the default file manager and Thunar is still in the base install
Freespire 7.7 is available as a Live-installable ISO for 64-bit machines and features tools and software released under the GPL. GPLv3. BSD and a slew of other open source licenses.
