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Linspire adds paid support option to Freespire
Sep. 26, 2007

Linspire, the company behind the Linspire commercial and Freespire community desktop Linux operating systems and CNR.com, a free Linux software delivery service, has announced the immediate availability of its first commercial paid support offerings for Freespire 2.0 users.

Freespire 2.0 was released in early August. This Ubuntu 7.04-based distribution differs from other Linux distributions in that it makes no bones about using proprietary software, drivers and codecs. It includes, as options, essentially all proprietary software that's currently and legally available for Linux.

Linspire has now made competitively priced paid support options available at its Freespire support site.

Freespire has also recently been upgraded to Version 2.03. The most important change is an updated CNR (Click 'N' Run) Version 0.1.2600 plug-in. The new CNR is meant to make it simple for users to find, download and install Linux application from a centralized combination wiki and file repository.

The new CNR site was originally meant for use by multiple Linuxes. Today, CNR only works with Freespire and Linspire. At this time, CNR is still also a self-declared "alpha" site. Eventually, the plan is for CNR to also support Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat and SUSE Linux.

Other important changes for this latest version of Freespire include updates to the Flash 9 plug-in, KNetworkConf, KNetworkManager, KPlayer, KUser and Sun Java 6 Java Runtime Environment.

"Since its launch last month, the sheer volume and interest in Freespire 2.0 [have] exceeded our expectations," Larry Kettler, San Diego-based Linspire's newly appointed president and CEO, said in a statement. "As Freespire becomes a viable alternative in the desktop operating system world, support services are available to provide users an additional peace of mind."

Kettler continued, "Historically, in the desktop Linux space, when you lower the total cost of ownership, adoption happens. Offering competitively priced support options to our free desktop Linux users was a natural next step in helping them with their adoption process."

Pricing for Freespire support starts for as low as $24.95 for a single support incident. Paid support services assist users with operating system installation support, networking, e-mail set-up, browser configuration, peripheral set-up, and other important support issues.

Also available are a three-pack of support incidents for $49.95, a five-pack of support incidents for $89.95 and an annual support incident subscription option for $149.95. For additional information on commercial paid support options, please visit the Linspire paid support page. As always with Linux, there are also free support options via the community, FAQ files and a knowledgebase.


Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols



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