Freespire... (LOL)

[Chanchao]

I was one of the people who recently advocated Freespire and their
policy of making MP3 and suchlike work 'out of the box'.

I just downloaded and actually tried Freespire.

LOL.  

Short version: It blows (a bowling ball through a garden hose.)  Don't
try this distro during a flight or oxygen masks will be released
automatically. Put on your own mask first before helping children and
throwing your laptop out the window. It honestly sucks that bad. 

I know Ubuntu / even this Sounder list isn't about slagging off other
distros, so I'll save you many more colourful descriptions, merely a
brief listing of what I found, along with the implied reconfirmation /
realisation on what a blessing Ubuntu is for Linux based operating
systems.

* In Freespire, I didn't really get to testing MP3 because sound didn't
work at all, period.  
* Resolution was something like 800x600..  The 1280x768 of my laptop not
even available. 
* Network / Internet did not work
* Wireless not recognised
* Battery not recognised
* Modem not recognised (okay Ubuntu doesn't do this either)

Screen layout and look & feel is the usual KDE... (= a mess).

Gave it somewhat of an attempt to get sound working, went into the
control panel.. Only to have it crash after playing with the options.

Then shut it down, with loads of error messages scrolling on screen.

I'm not sure if this was a really sad or a really funny experience, but
an operating system it was not.

Cheers,
Chanchao