Let’s start with some history for those unfamiliar with what Freespire is. Freespire started under Lindows twenty years ago as an easy-to-use Linux-based operating system with great Wine integration and easy application support but then changed to Linspire following a Microsoft lawsuit.
Nowadays, Freespire is a desktop-oriented Ubuntu-based Linux distro powered by Xfce. It’s the open-source equivalent of Linspire but contains mainly FOSS components.
The project is sponsored by Linspire, a commercial, desktop-oriented Linux distro based on Debian and Ubuntu and owned by PC/OpenSystems LLC.
A couple of days ago, the Freespire development team announced the release of Freespire 8.0, so let’s take a brief look at it.
What’s News in Freespire 8.0
Freespire 8.0 features a stable Linux kernel 5.4, which fixes bugs and broadens hardware support. However, it is interesting to note that Google Chrome version 96 is also included by default in this release with all security patches and other general browser improvements.
The most important thing that needs to be mentioned is that the distro focuses strongly on Google’s services with this release. Freespire 8.0 comes preinstalled with the following:
- Gmail
- Google Docs
- Google Drive
- Google Calendar
- Google Translate
- Google News
On the desktop environments front, you get the latest and greatest Xfce 4.16. On top of that, X11, Samba, and other system fundamentals, including non-UEFI and secure boot systems, were also upgraded.
In step with keeping the distribution as close as possible to the definition of free software, Freespire 8.0 does not include proprietary multimedia codecs or drivers. However, they are available via repositories.
You can look at Freespire 8.0 official announcements to learn more about it.
Download
Freespire 8.0 is available as a Live-installable ISO for 64-bit machines, which you can burn to a USB key or DVD media. You can grab an ISO here now.
