Linspire Flop!

[bigtomrodney]

I don't think you'll find many fans of Linspire here anyway. Most people I have discussed it with frown upon it charging for services that others offer for free. I have never seen any innovation from them aside from a willingness to include and charge for some software. Even Click and run is really just another implementation of apt/synaptic. If you would like to atry a distro with excellent hardware support, an abundance of software available and a huge community (and all at no charge) maybe consider trying Ubuntu. It is free to download or they will ship it to you in a couple of weeks for free.

[Chris H]

I bought a cheap as chips computer with which to try out a Linux distro out on "Linspire". I have contacted Linspire Inc who informed me that the version of Linspire Five-0 i purchased does not support installation on a SATA hard drive. My only argument is, why wasn't this made clear prior to purchase?

It wasn't made clear because in many cases it does install on a SATA setup. The problem is not down to the drives but the chipsets which control them. Not just a Linspire problem either.

If you purchased a CNR Gold subscription then you can access Linspire 6.1 which should be released in a few weeks and will work with SATA setups.

Why not contact Linspire and explain your predicament. I'm sure they'll sort you out.

[Oheck!]

To be honest i only decided to use and purchase Linspire Five-0 because it looked the easiest to operate and the fact that i am a complete and utter Linux newbie.

I did contact Linspire Inc and they informed me that the version of Linspire Five-0 that i had purchased did not support installation on a SATA hard drive. They did go as far as to say that they would give me a link to download the latest version of Linspire but the link they provided never worked and when i reported this i got a reply back saying that they had passed it on to another department.

I do have a copy of Ubuntu but i don't have a clue of how to install or run it.

[bigtomrodney]

It runs the exact same way. You pop the disk into your drive, reboot your PC and when it starts up it will be running Ubuntu. It is just running in memory though and is not changing anything on your PC. It can be installed via an icon on the desktop.

[tomeriker]

I recently switched from SuSE 10.2 to try Ubuntu, going from KDE to Gnome to some getting used to, but I am happier with ubuntu. I did try freespire but was unimpressed. Now to the point of this post...

Ubuntu needs a couple of extras installed so it will do all the things you normally will do on a pc. If you go to this website and install automatix2 ( make sure you install the one for your distro) you can then open up the program and install everything you will need, VERY EASILY...

Installation - Automatix Wiki

I hope you have as good an experience as I am having..

[ryptyde]

You'll probably find that once you do get a Linux distro to install your next PITA will be your graphics card. Should really try some "Live" distros to see if they work well with your hardware.