Mommabear, How are you liking Freespire?

Ray2047 · Joined: Nov 01, 2003 Posts: 766

Just wondering if you are still using it and your likes and dislikes.

Got to say I'm close to switching from Debian to Freespire. Still a few minor things but am very satisfied. Now that Seamonkey is in CNR that removed a lot of my minor objections/problems.

I've got Win4Lin running the 3or 4 Windows programs I still want so I really don't even need my Windows box.

mommabear · Joined: Feb 20, 2003 Posts: 6319

I'm still hanging in there. If you've seen my posts at Freespire, you know there are some things that have disappointed me. Especially about Firefox, and playing music and videos on the net, but that seems to be universal with Linux distros. I am trying out SeaMonkey with a practice user before I decide if I'll give up on FF completely.

I haven't even gotten around to trying email, how my cd/dvd burner will work and a lot of other stuff yet. lol! As I think I've seen you remark on the forum, figuring out how to install something is still a mystery to me. I also downloaded some new desktop icons that are more recognizable to me (as to what kind of file something is), but I'll be darned if I can figure out how to use them yet. lol! I finally found out where they went but that's it.

Getting over the Windows click and it's there mindset takes a big learning curve, for me anyway. I'll be using Windows for my lifeline for quite a bit longer than I thought, probably. But of the distros I've tried, I do like Freespire the best so far.

Gary66 · Joined: Sep 01, 2005 Posts: 8353

Ray2047 · Joined: Nov 01, 2003 Posts: 766

Mommabear could you when you have a chance post some of the sites you have trouble with. My reason for using Freespire has been because it supposedly works out of the box with licensed media types. I don't though go to them often so I'd like to see if I'm fooling my self about the advantage of using Freespire.

Heck, I'll take sites from anyone just as a test to see what Freespire can handle, at least for me, without tweaking. Very Happy

Actually my thoughts about installing have changed a bit at least if I can find it in Synaptic (apt-get) or CnR. Either case it's usually as easy or easier then Windows.

mommabear · Joined: Feb 20, 2003 Posts: 6319

I am able to stream Air America Radio by adding the url (which I find in Page Info in FF) and playing it in RealPlayer separately. But when I click the "Listen Live" buttons at AAR, in general an AAR dialog box comes up like it's buffering, connecting, or whatever and it just sits there.

On sites that have videos in wmv or QT, the QT link works more often than not. wmv always wants to download it first before playing. I'm not in Freespire right now, but I think the default is mplayer. (Although it's also mplayer that will play the QT video without caching...once I found the right-click on the separate window I have to open to send me to that option to choose. Once I did that, playing without caching has pretty much stayed as default. But I don't get that choice in wmv because of the window that opens at AAR for playing and not the window for mplayer)

Most of my testing has been done here. They usually post wmv and QT links.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/

I was hoping the plugins would work as they do in Windows and Firefox. Although even in Windows I've had to work around the downloading before playing problem with the extension called Launchy. If I just click a wmv or qt video, I get the dialog box to open or save it. I click "open" to play in mplayerc (the classic alternative), which is my default setup, and check do this everytime; but it still wants to download it first. With Launchy I can right click and choose to open and play it with mplayerc and it'll start right up.

Well, Launchy won't work by default in Freespire's altered Firefox, and setting up the program defaults manually is not user friendly in Windows, let along Linux. Launchy can't find the players automatically. I've had some success (still figuring it out) with the Media Player Connectivity extension, which oddly I could never get to work to my liking in Windows FF. lol!

I've also tried changing to other players in Freespire and they are equally as complicated or don't work at all. I've had the same kinds of problems in other distros. It's not just Freespire.

I've tried the couple of media files in my documents in Freespire and they seem to play normally. The player comes up in it's own box, like RealPlayer when I put in the url for AAR. I haven't tried a music cd yet, but I hope I'm not going to be met with an unpleasant surprise about that too.

And that brings me to another gripe about online media with Linux. I have yet to figure out how I can get the media player to open up a media link by itself...not in a window or tab in the browser. If I do remember to click a separate window, I can minimize that, but I still want the player to come up by itself automatically. And maybe even someday find a way to minimize the player to the systray to get it out of the way, but that might be asking too much. lol! But I don't think that's too much to ask, along with the obvious...just play the darned thing! One shouldn't have to be going through all these hoops for normal, basic computer functions.

I know you said Spellbound works in SeaMonkey. That's another FF disappointment in Linux.

I installed SeaMonkey via CNR and used a practice user identity and was happy to see the icons put on the desktop and in the Program Files list. But when I tried some icon packages from CNR, I had to search high and low for them. Once I found them, I still couldn't figure out how to use them though.

I've installed Synaptic but I had to do it through apt-get. It failed with CNR and CNR said try apt-get. I've looked at Synaptic and the files they have, but have not used it yet.

It took me a couple of years to finally leave Windows Me for XP permanently. Linux may work out the same. For me anyway, it seems to be a one step forward, two steps back proposition.

seaeagle

I find the forums for each distribution invaluable for advice when having problems or looking for a piece of software. They will often point you to repositories, or of course suggest fixes. The Freespire forum is located here: Freespire Forums - Powered by vBulletin. The Linspire forum is at: Linspire.com Community Forums :: Index.

With my Mandriva getting all types of media to work was as simple as getting the win32 & other codecs from the plf repository (though I think it's Mandriva only). I can even play Flash 8 videos with my Mplayer now.

I had the same problem with videos automatically playing in my browser (which I don't like - being on dial-up I prefer to download them first). I just removed the browser plugins.

Gary66 · Joined: Sep 01, 2005 Posts: 8353

For web browsing I feel that any Linux Distro is far superior to Windows.

mommabear · Joined: Feb 20, 2003 Posts: 6319

Oh yeah. I'm a regular on the forums. And I realize that Linux is "all about choice". But if they want to keep Windows users hanging around long enough to get out of the click it and it works Windows mindset, some basic things should not be so hard to figure out.

I know a lot of it is because Linux is a search for a distro that will work with various hardware capabilities, old computers vs new ones, etc. Where Windows shines (and keeps it's followers) is that they've been able to make it work on almost any computer without digging for dependencies and other libraries.

They all say it's easy once you figure it out. That may be true, but until then....