Lindows Linux O/S

Lindows was notable as one of the most proprietary offerings to be based on the Linux kernel. It shipped with many proprietary drivers, codecs, and softwares. It was also encumbered by many trademarks, patents and other intellectual properties. Many said it was "switching slavemasters" to use Lindows instead of Windows. Lindows received notable criticism in legal circles for daring to claim they were "open". In turn, Linspire supporters criticized the opensoure community for not accomplishing usable systems and claimed Linspire offered the "freedom of choice" to their users. The settlement over the Lindows name resulted in the name change to Linspire, partial ownership by Microsoft, an agreement that Microsoft would not sue Lindows users because of patents, and licensing of more proprietary content to be included in Linspire. After bankruptcy, Linspire was acquired by Xandros who discontinued Linspire. Freespire is an opensource variant of Linspire that animatedly offers users the choice and tools to add proprietary elements. It has variously switched from being based on Linspire, Debian, and Ubuntu. As of 2009, it is based on Debian. At one point, Linspire claimed to be based on Freespire. Lindows is also notable as being offered pre-installed on computers by several retailers, during it's short period of no legal entanglements.

Lindows became a Microsoft trademark as part of a case settlement.