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Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Freespire 8.2 Released




Today, the Freespire development team is pleased to announce the release of Freespire 8.2, the latest incremental release for our FOSS product line. 

With a broad application lineup ready for our users, Freespire 8.2 is the logical continuation of a great desktop product. Aside from updates, we have listened to our users and made several changes. Most noticeably, we have switched from the GNOME desktop environment to the latest LTS of Plasma KDE, 5.18.8. Additionally, many of our users have requested them, so we have included the full range of multimedia codecs for our users to consume / create content in whatever format they like. 

Another request was to switch from Google Chrome; we have honored that, switching Freespire’s default browser to Falkon, widely available, fully open source. 

For security reasons we have disabled the installation of SNAP and SNAP packages.  If you try to install a SNAP package it will fail.

Freespire 8.2 comes with no support options available except for its community. Forums are available to let us know of any problems that may arise as well as interact with members of the Freespire community


If you do need a fully supported operating system environment you can get Linspire here. 

The distribution includes : 

KDE Plasma 5.18.8 - fast and lean Linux desktop, fully functional and performance enhanced; peerless in terms of speed and user friendliness. 
Kernel 5.13.0 LTS - Long Term Support kernel designed to stand the test of time. 
Flatpak - Alternative package manager to SNAP, the current Ubuntu standard. 
Falkon - Open Source Web browser based on QTWebKit 
Kpat - Solitaire game 
Calligra Office - Office suite. Part of the KDE Application suite 
DragonPlayer - Multimedia player 
Juk - Music Player 
Balena Etcher - Utility for writing ISO’s to a USB stick 

This release also contains many functionality / security updates. 

You can download Freespire 8.2 below.


If you have data caps or metered internet connections you may want to consider purchasing a physical copy.  It gives you physical media and helps us out.

Freespire OSS Edition
Install Media
Order Notes









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Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Freespire 8.0.1 Released



Today, the PC/OpenSystems LLC FOSS development team is pleased to release Freespire 8.0.1, This update delivers needed security fixes and adds some functionality that some users have requested. This update ships with most of the requested Google services. But we have also listened to users who said they wanted a local Office suite so that they could continue their work uninterrupted in case of travel or internet outage and we have included the full LibreOffice suite. Freespire core again has not changed at all. Even though we do include LibreOffice as the default office suite it’s still a full featured desktop OS and an excellent platform to deploy any and all of your cloud applications. The way we deliver cloud applications has also changed. Zswap is also enabled to help with performance with Chromebooks and other hardware systems that have less that 4 gb of physical memory.  Dark mode is now enabled by default.  Freespire does not incorporate any proprietary media codecs; aside from the use of Google Chrome there are no other vendor-specific software applications pre-installed at all. 

Freespire 8.0.1 features a new stable kernel which fixes bugs / broadens hardware support. Google Chrome version 97 includes security patches and other general browser improvements. 

The distribution includes : 

  • XFCE Desktop 4.16 - A very lightweight and easy to use Linux desktop environment 
  • Kernel 5.4.0-94 LTS - A long term supported kernel that has been enhanced for functionality and security 
  • Synaptic - Linux package manager and alternative to the Software application. We also put Synaptic back in the whisker menu per user request. 
  • Google Chrome 97 - A web browser from Google uniquely engineered for privacy, security and performance. 
  • Ice SSB - An application that takes any web property and makes it a desktop application 
  • Kpatience - Suite of solitaire games 
  • Dreamchess - A fun and entertaining game for the chess enthusiasts out there 
  • Gmail - E-mail client from Google 
  • Google Drive - Access your online Google drive with this application. You can download and upload files and more. Google Drive integration is not present in Thunar 
  • Google Calendar - Online calendar application. 
  • Google Translate - A utility to translate text to any language you wish 
  • Google News - Online world wide news 
  • Video Player - Video and multimedia player 
  • Rhythmbox - Music player 
  • LibreOffice - Dedicated office suite for word processing, spreadsheet, presentations and vector drawing 

All security and application updates until January 10, 2022. 

You can download the ISO from here.






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