Matt Hartley, who has been involved with the Linspire community for a while, wrote a nice piece that advises Linspire to fold its distribution and concentrate on its 'bread and butter' -- CNR. CNR already has its own Web site.

You have an opportunity here to keep to Linspire's original goal here, Larry. Make CNR the pivot factor that brings restricted codecs and software to Linux in an elective format through CNR. Purists will be appeased, since the distro itself is left alone by default and casual users will have the choice to expand on their Linux installation the way they see fit with CNR at the controls.

Linspire has, sadly enough, signed a pact with the same company that attacked it viciously over the years (also see this).

It has been a while since I last saw a Linspire headline, but amid internal issues, the chairman gets a lot of attention only when it comes to his new pet project. As Slashdot put it, Roberton is (to paraphrase) "of Linspire fame (of infamy, depending on your point of view)".

Be aware that BoycottLinspire.com is still a registered domain. The company is just as guilty as Novell and should therefore be treated similarly. CNR should also be shunned because it keeps Linspire alive. Other people around the Web agree with this point of view, so it's not a personal vendetta. I used to advocate the use of Linspire, just as any other Linux distribution. In retrospect, having left a large number of promotional Linspire posts and Web pages, there's room for regret. A questionable friend turned into a foe.