How did you pick the Linspire distro as the one to include?
I went through a scientific procedure of evaluating more than 20 distros on aspects like: • Desktop-centric (is the desktop the main focus of efforts) • Ease of use (does it play flash, mp3s, wmv’s etc, out of the box) • Actively maintained • Professional support • Up to date with bundled content • Active and helpful customer forum Many distros were good on these measures, and some were excellent. But the Linspire distro was head and shoulders above all the rest on just about all the desired characteristics. And that’s the distro I selected for the live CD included with “PvdL’s Guide to Linux.” Linspire is a Debian-based distro with a KDE GUI, so it’s right in the Linux mainstream. It was founded in San Diego three years ago by Michael Robertson, who founded the wildly-successful site MP3.com. He has a knack for popularizing technology, and he founded Linspire with the goal of making it “the world’s easiest to use desktop Linux.” My objective assessment is that the Linspire distro is c
