You've probably heard of Lindows, one of the most controversial Linux distributions. Through aggressive marketing and the use of open-source and home-made software they were trying to provide an alternative to Microsoft Windows. After being repeatedly sued by the Redmond firm, they came to arrangement and were paid $20m to change their name. They became Linspire.

Linspire has never been popular among Linux users. Their releases are not available for free (the digital download costs $50) and they use a lot of proprietary software. In fact, I never tried Linspire. Not only wasn't I willing to pay for something which didn't look as good as other distributions, but I was quite certain I wouldn't like it.

Recently, a community driven project, sponsored by Linspire, announced their first release: Freespire 1.0. Not only does the project make its releases available for free, it is driven by the community and it even offers an OSS version of the distribution which does not contain proprietary or restricted technology.