---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kevin Carmony <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2007 23:04:22 UT Subject: LL: Why Sharing CNR is Good News for Linspire Users To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
If this message is not displaying properly, visit www.linspire.com/linspireletter to launch it in your browser. Why Sharing CNR is Good News for Linspire Users by Kevin Carmony* * February 1st, 2007 Last week Linspire made a very significant announcement<http://www.linspire.com/linspire_letter_archives.php?id=38>. For the first time ever, we will be making CNR available for other desktop Linux distributions, not just Linspire and Freespire. The response has been extremely positive, which I'll share more about at the end of this Linspire Letter. However, I did hear from a few of you who were concerned that making CNR available for other distributions would be a bad thing for Linspire and Freespire users. Even though this was a small group, I wanted to address this concern in this week's Linspire Letter, and then share some survey results from a poll taken at CNR.com <http://www.cnr.com>. It's important that Linspire and Freespire users understand that sharing CNR with other distributions will be a VERY good thing for them. Here are five reasons why I say this: *1. More users means a better CNR experience and an always-updated CNR Warehouse* As you know, the basic CNR Service is free, but it still provides a main source of revenue for Linspire via the revenue we share with vendors of commercial products and services that are sold and delivered with CNR. The more CNR users we have, the more sales we'll have for these commercial offerings and this will help Linspire continue its growth as a viable Linux company. With this growth, we can invest more resources into improving the CNR technology, bringing more products to the CNR Warehouse, and keeping existing products up to date in a timely manner. Simply put, more users means more resources for CNR.com. Because the new CNR.com <http://www.cnr.com> system was designed from the beginning with the intention of supporting multiple distributions (both Debian and RPM), most of the work for supporting a new distribution will already be done. The vast majority of the work is in building the overall system and has nothing to do with a specific distribution. This means that with just the small additional effort specific to a new distribution, we can leverage 100% of the CNR system. In the near future, we will be publishing documentation about the open source CNR plugin and the accompanying CNR web services. Once these are available, other distributions may start to build a plugin and test against their own distribution. At that point, Linspire can work with them at fully importing their distribution into the CNR.comsystem. (If you manage a distribution and have interest in this, let us know by emailing us at [EMAIL PROTECTED]) *2. More users means better content and information in the CNR Warehouse* The new warehouse on the CNR.com <http://www.cnr.com> site will be very different from the current CNR Warehouse in many ways, but one key difference is that much of the content is "wiki-ized," allowing anyone to help contribute to the content of product pages. The new CNR.com is designed to be very open and allow for contributions in most areas, including screenshots, user reviews, support information, descriptions, developer info, release notes, and so on. Each product page has a mini forum/wiki where invaluable information can be learned and shared about each product. The more CNR users, the more valuable content will flow to CNR.com, not unlike Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia> where the more people who contribute, the more useful and accurate it becomes. Think how many Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, and Ubuntu users there are out there. We want them utilizing and contributing to CNR.com. (By the way, if you're curious how CNR.com integrates with other distributions, take a look at this chart<http://media.linspire.com/cnr/images/CNR-system2.jpg>which shows the example of how CNR works with Ubuntu.) *3. More users means more applications in the CNR Warehouse* Many developers and commercial software vendors don't want to bother developing for Linux because it is so fragmented. They think to themselves, "If I program for Microsoft Windows, I get 95% of the users. If I program for Mac, I pick up another 3%. But, for Linux, I have to come out with 10 or 20 versions to just pick up maybe another 1%." Is it any wonder the big software vendors overlook Linux? By bringing a much larger base of users into one place, desktop Linux will have a lot more appeal to developers. Linspire plans to roll out developer tools to help programmers and publishers get their software to virtually the entire Linux audience with minimal effort on their part. This same dynamic will hopefully impact hardware manufacturers to supply more drivers for Linux as well. *4. Solving problems for everyone helps the Linux ecosystem* * * We want Linux to succeed on the desktop. We want Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu, and all other Linux distributions to get as many users as possible. The real challenge for Linspire isn't from the other Linux distributions, but from the legacy hold Microsoft has on the desktop. The other Linux distributions are our brothers in arms, helping fight the monopoly of the mind Microsoft has over so many PC users. CNR.com will solve many problems for all desktop Linux distributions, such as providing hardware drivers and multimedia codecs, which will help them grow and succeed. The very foundation of open source software is one of sharing. Linspire and Freespire could only exist with the millions of hours of work done by others. Anything we can do to share our work and successes with the open source community is a very good thing, just as it helps us when others provide software and services which they share with us. When the Linux tide rises, so does the Linspire boat. (An excellent commentary on CNR's value to the Linux ecosystem from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols can be found here<http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7625722309.html> .) *5. Closer partnerships means better Linspire and Freespire distributions* As Linspire has started working more closely with some of the other leading Linux distributions, we have seen the added benefit of better communication flow with these companies and projects, which has already lead to improvements in our distributions. These other companies are all doing great work, and it's been very rewarding to be working closer with them. We're not only sharing ideas about CNR.com, but in many other areas as well, such as how to get better hardware compatibility, more applications, and so on. We've found many more ways to work together than just CNR.com. Look for the fruits of these relationships to start to ripen in the very near future. Linspire and Freespire are unique in their special markets (OEMs, ease of use, integrated codecs and drivers, etc.). There will always be a place for these two distributions, and the new, shared CNR.com will only improve these operating systems. *Survey Results* So, just how positive has the reaction been from non-Linspire users, who exactly are they, and just how interested are they? To answer these questions, I want to share the results from a survey we've conducted over the last week. As you may have noticed on the home page of CNR.com, visitors can sign up for a mailing list to be notified when CNR.comis fully live. After someone shares their email address with us, we invite them to participate in a simple, 3-question survey. Thousands participated in this survey over the last week. Here are the quite interesting results. The first question asked which Linux distributions people were using. As you can see, Ubuntu was the clear leader here with around 64% of respondents saying they use this distribution, which was nearly double the next choice of openSUSE at around 33%. As you can see, Linspire and Freespire were lower in the rankings, each with around 14%, which is a good thing, as it clearly indicates there is certainly interest from non-Linspire users for CNR. The next question measured how much experience respondents had with CNR. An amazing 83% said they had either never tried CNR before (68%) or only tried it briefly (15%). Again, a very good sign that CNR's reputation proceeds itself to the non-Linspire/Freespire Linux users. I was thrilled to see thousands of people who had only heard of CNR but have not actually tried it, but were interested in taking at look at this technology on their preferred distribution. The third question asked which CNR features people were most interested in. Keep in mind that 83% of respondents had little to no experience with CNR before, yet even this group clearly favored the ability to install software with just one click. And finally, at the end of the survey users were given an opportunity to leave a brief comment if they wished. As of my writing this letter, 405 comments had been left. They're quite telling as to the sentiment for CNR.com, again, keeping in mind most have never even used it yet. You can read the comments here <http://info.linspire.com/comments.html>. I think you'll find it interesting to skim through them. Making CNR.com available to other Linux distributions isn't only the smart thing for Linspire as a company, but it's a very good thing for our loyal users. I hope you share in my excitement for this new chapter in the Linspire story. - Kevin <http://www.linspire.com/linspire_letter_archives.php?id=39> <http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale5x/> <http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_details.php?product_id=25190> The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Linspire, Inc. *Want to become a Featured Partner? Learn more<http://www.linspire.com/fp> * Please visit support.linspire.com for answers to questions you may have about Linspire.* * *About Linspire* Linspire, Inc. (www.linspire.com) was founded in 2001 to bring choice into the operating system market. The company's flagship product, the Linspire operating system, is an affordable, easy-to-use Linux-based operating system for home, school, and business users. Linspire pioneered CNR Technology, which allows Linspire users to download and install thousands of software programs with just one mouse click. The more than 20,000 software titles available in the CNR Warehouse (www.linspire.com/cnrservice) include full office and productivity suites, games, multimedia players, photo management software, accounting tools, and more. We are located at 5960 Cornerstone Court West, Suite 200. San Diego, CA 92121 Linspire, CNR and the CNR Warehouse are trademarks of Linspire, Inc. All other company and product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners. (c)2006. All rights reserved. Please do not reply to this email. To contact Linspire, please visit support.linspire.com. If you do not wish to receive further communications you may change your mailing list options by going to www.linspire.com/update. This email was sent to <>. Please be sure to use this email address when updating your mailing list options. If you've experienced any difficulty in being removed from a Linspire email list, click here <http://www.linspire.com/ask> for personalized help. Privacy Policy <http://www.linspire.com/lindows_privacypolicy.php> <> -- Regards, C.C.Chakkaradeep, Novatium Solutions Limited,Chennai. http://chakkaradeep.livejournal.com http://www.yoper.com http://wiki.freespire.org/index.php/Freespire_Community_Board_Home -- "Sometimes it's better not to ask - or to listen - when people tell you something can't be done. I didnt ask for permission or approval. I just went ahead and did it." - from "Direct from Dell"
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