Lindows (or maybe it was Linspire by then) was one of the first distros I used that I remember working with my wireless card on my laptop in 2004 or 2005. There was a famous issue back then with Atheros (I think it was Atheros) chipsets that were in some D-Link or Linksys PCMCIA cards that just wouldn't work on Linux and trying to get wireless to work on another distro (Mandrake) is where I got to learn about the concept of binary blobs and how serious people were about anything proprietary touching their precious desktops. I was just a girl who wanted to have her 16" Sony VAIO work in the living room of her apartment without having to drag a long-ass Ethernet cable. Anyway, my search for a working solution led me to discover Lindows, which was in the news over the CEO's intentional fuckery with Microsoft, and it didn't have a good reputation in the OSS community and it cost $50 or $60 that I was absolutely not going to pay, but then a free version of I think it was version 4.5 became available via OSNews or ArsTechnica.

In any event, I ended up trying it out and although I didn't like all the decisions, it was the first Linux distro that not only worked with WiFi out of the box (or with very little effort) and it had proprietary media codecs installed too so I could play my music and videos. I also remember the promise of the Click-N-Run technology, though I was happy enough with Apt.

I don't remember the reason now, but I got frustrated with something about Linspire and then went to Fedora Core -- or I tried to, but it didn't work with my WiFi card -- before stumbling upon this brand new distro with this weird African name called Ubuntu. Ubuntu had everything Linspire had in terms of out of the box flourishes (or was close enough to get that stuff working) but didn't have the negative reputation amongst the Linux nerds or a CEO who seemed hellbent on doing everything he could to antagonize everyone. Even better, it had spins for both a KDE and a Gnome version and the founder was some rich guy who would even send people a ton of CDs if they wanted them, for free. (I think I still have some of those CDs in my parents house somewhere from 2004 or 2005). As a 19 year old, that was pretty clutch for me and it became my secondary OS after Windows XP.

As a college student, I'll always remember Lindows/Linspire for the amount of drama it kicked up in the OSS spaces (and with Microsoft over the name) but more importantly, being the distro that for whatever reason led me to discover Ubuntu in its first few months of existence.

It's funny to think back now on just how hated it was amongst the Linux community -- which is sort of a shame. Like yes, Michael Robertson was always incredibly sketchy seeming and he absolutely had no time for the OSS nerds (it was clearly about profit for him, not ideology), but at the same time, Lindows/Linspire was one of the first Linux distros that out of the box could be something a normal computer user would actually be comfortable setting up and that was trying very hard at user-first decisions.

I've never shied away from doing things the "harder" or "more technical" way, but there were decisions made in Linux distros at that time that really made you really have to go out of your way to get things done and that then tried to shame you for wanting something like a working WiFi driver for your 802.11g card (because going back down to 802.11b was not great), regardless of the binary blob nature, or jump through way too many hoops to get codecs installed that would play your movies and videos. Lindows/Linspire had an elegance about it that I hadn't seen in a Linux distro before. And although Ubuntu briefly won my heart (before I gave it over to my truest of true loves, Mac OS X), I'll always fondly remember Linspire, if only for being audacious enough to actually make a Linux distro that wasn't designed for enthusiasts.