Linspire 5 review

If you're after an operating system to play with, as well as use seriously (and let's face it, most of us are), Linspire can keep you entertained out of the box for days. With what seems like a million-and-one add-on widgets, settings and configuration screens, just getting the Desktop looking the way you want it can easily take half a day. There are literally dozens of screensavers, and the configuration for onscreen fonts and general look and feel is nothing if not comprehensive, down to being able to choose the offset in both x and y directions for the drop shadows under windows.

Things that used to be a nightmare in Linux - and put off even relatively determined new users - are solved by Linspire and its underlying components. Pop a flash drive into a free USB port and it appears on the Desktop la Mac OS; the audio just works with no drivers required; and the story is the same with video. Although the drivers for the ATi chipset in our test VAIO were clearly fairly generic, they worked fine with the exception of flickering when using some of the screensavers on offer (although most of the swish OpenGL offerings work fine).

So, it really is an easy-to-use, good-looking operating system that will have you productive right from the start. So where's the catch? It's simply that you probably already have an operating system that you're used to, is better integrated and, despite Linspire's efforts, essentially easier to use. It's called Windows XP and there's nothing it can't do that Linspire can. In other words, there can be only two reasons for choosing Linspire over XP: the first is financial and the second political. If you're strapped for cash or fed up with Microsoft, you'll do fine with Linspire. If not, there's no reason to switch.

Author: David Fearon