Friday, 9 February 2007

Canonical and Linspire Announce Technology Partnership

Canonical, the sponsor of the Ubuntu operating system, and Linspire, the developer of the commercial desktop Linux operating system of the same name, have plans for a technology partnership that integrates core competencies from each company into the other's open source Linux offerings, the company said in a statement.

Linspire will transition from Debian to Ubuntu as the base for their Linspire and Freespire desktop operating systems. This will mean that Linspire users will benefit from Ubuntu's fast moving development cycles and focus on usability. The Freespire community will start seeing early releases of Freespire 2.0 based on Ubuntu in the first quarter of 2007, with the final release expected in the 2nd quarter of 2007, following the official release of Ubuntu 7.04 in April, the companies said in a joint statement.

"Ubuntu is the most successful community-based Linux project to date," said Kevin Carmony, CEO of Linspire. "They have done a job with the development community and creating tools for utilising their technology. It makes sense to partner with Canonical and begin basing our desktop Linux offerings on Ubuntu."

"This technology partnership goes a long way in advancing and unifying the Linux desktop," said Carmony. "Linux faces many challenges as it competes in a world historically dominated by Microsoft Windows, so there is plenty of work to go around and we’re pleased to be able to offer differentiation and choice, while reducing fragmentation.”

In addition, Ubuntu users will gain access to the Linspire CNR e-commerce and software delivery technology. Linspire recently announced plans to make their CNR technology available for other Linux distributions in addition to their own Linspire and Freespire offerings, the companies said.

Beginning with Ubuntu’s 7.04 release in April of this year, Ubuntu users will be able to use the CNR client to download and install commercial programs and proprietary media drivers with one click of the mouse. In the future, Canonical plans to integrate aspects of the CNR technology so the purchase of commercial software is straightforward for desktop users.

"This partnership will enable us to provide commercial software products and services such as legally licensed DVD and media players to users who want them", noted Steve George, Director of Support and Services for Canonical.