Another piece* of great Linux news to round up the week : Freespire (or Linspire's) CNR store is going to open up its doors to other distributions. Ok, I'll lay of the geekspeak and try to explain. Linspire ( and its spinoff Freespire) is a Linux distribution made for Windows users. It was meant to LOOK like Windows, and kinda BEHAVE like Windows (except for the blue screens) in order to make it as easy as possible to use for Windows users.
One of the cool things about this distro was the " CNR "store. ( Click and Run) where you could find additional software (some free, some not) click on it and it would be installed on your system. Now if you where anywhere close to Linux in the last couple of years you know how hard it was to install a program. Download the source code, Unzip it , or “untar”r it , type make install.. watch it fail, feel bad. Go on IRC , ask help, get laughed at by nerds etc.. But with the coming of the CNR store that was a thing of the past. The downside was : You needed to have Linspire.Well : No more ! Now the CNR store is going to open up its portals to other distributions. Now wether you run Ubuntu, Suse or Fedore, head on over to the CNR and Click – and – Run !The CNR.com Charts give an overview of the CNR Warehouse which provides users access to over 20,000 desktop Linux products, packages and libraries, all with one click of their mouse. CNR.com users will use their web browser to search for applications by title, popularity, user rating, category, function, or author. CNR.com will bring more choices for desktop Linux users to purchase premium products and services, such as legally licensed DVD Players, Sun's StarOffice, Win4Lin Pro, CodeWeavers' CrossoverOffice, TransGaming's Cedega, and support free open source software applications as well.
Installing applications has been more and more of a breeze lately. On Ubuntu, Just download the .deb packages and double-click them to install, or use the Synaptic package manager to look for software, but the whole CNR deal is just icing on te cake.
* Piece not 'peace' 🙂 .. Thank Phil from NY for the heads up 🙂