Also, Xandros had inherited their OS from Corel back around 2002, so maybe they were trying to keep some deal with Corel concerning the marketing of Corel Linux until only recently. I was wondering what was keeping Xandros so long to switch to an Ubuntu base after Linspire, MEPIS and other former Debian-based desktop vendors had switched to an Ubuntu base, or at least make known their own position in comparison to Canonical’s Ubuntu.

I surmise that they’re going to use Freespire in the same way that Novell uses openSUSE or Red Hat uses Fedora, and were probably waiting to obtain a desktop-oriented community distribution to do the heavy lifting, compared to having to rely on Debian (which is seen as more of a general-purpose distribution than a specifically-desktop-oriented distribution) for the same. To move to a plain Ubuntu base, also, may not have been as good a move as simply buying out a veteran that used a custom Ubuntu community base with commercial trimmings.

So it could go like this: Xandros OS (with Xandros commercial stuff) -> Linspire subsidiary OS (with Linspire commercial stuff) -> Freespire community OS (Linspire sans the more proprietary bits) -> Ubuntu community OS.

Compared to the alternative: Xandros OS (Xandros commercial stuff) -> Ubuntu community desktop OS.

Or the previous situation: Xandros OS (Xandros commercial stuff) -> Debian community general OS.

It’s all about negotiation and inheritance, and Xandros (like most public companies) wants to inherit as much as possible from whatever’s been siphoned into the hierarchy from outside sources, leaving negotiation with the outside community distros to the subsidiaries, which then leave the heavy lifting of development to those community distros which primarily consist of employees from the company, which then gain from the heavier lifting done by another community distro, and so on. In other words, Xandros wants to gain from Linspire what Linspire gains from Freespire what Freespire gains from Ubuntu (what Ubuntu gains from Debian, save with a desktop-oriented savvy).

And sure, the current Xandros OS may do better with KDE (+ Xandros-specific customizations) than Kubuntu has (I haven’t tried it), but Linspire OS also used a customized and branded KDE; with that switch to an Ubuntu base, Linspire might as well have been a company-branded Kubuntu version. So since Linspire has been bought out by Xandros, I think an Ubuntu-based Xandros OS won’t look that much different from the previous KDE-based Xandros OS versions.

However, keep in mind that Xandros didn’t need to acquire Linspire in order to move to Ubuntu base. If they wanted to do that, they could already have done it. So, I don’t think this acquisition is about merging Xandros + Ubuntu. Besides, IMO Xandros is a far better KDE distro than Kubuntu.

On the other hand, one never knows…….

So Xandros, which would inherit Linspire’s deal with Canonical, could switch their OS (which is currently Debian-based) to a Freespire base, thus making Xandros OS Ubuntu-based (they’ll still keep Linspire as a distinct brand). Sorta like how Dell bought out Alienware and integrated Alienware’s IP into their XPS line.

Thus, Ubuntu would practically be in on the eeePC action, which couldn’t have come at a more opportune time, since Canonical’s releasing the MID and Netbook Remix versions that are being pushed by Intel, which is also helping out with the eeePC.

So I disagree that this buyout will have a negligible or nonexistent effect on desktop Linux distros. It should definitely further entrench the Ubuntu platform (which, as seen in the last two years, is an increasingly attractive platform for distro vendors and app developers to build upon) into the subnotebook arena.