Linspire, developer of the commercial Linspire and Freespire flavours of community desktop operating systems, is to offer a custom desktop Linux OS build service to partners.

The company reckons that its Custom OS Build Service will help partners cut time to market and reduce the overall expense of building a desktop Linux operating system.
"With desktop Linux, more and more partners are asking for customisation so they can take control of the OS," said Larry Kettler, president and chief executive at Linspire.

"This service will not only provide the feature sets they want, but cut the time it takes to get to market with their products, as well as greatly reduce the overall cost to deliver a custom desktop Linux operating system."

Custom OS Build Service was initially developed to make the release management process for Linspire's partners more resource efficient and less prone to defects.

But the tool set will also provide the ability to quickly produce clean Debian or Ubuntu-based desktop Linux operating systems with customisable software stacks and other features.

As a desktop Linux operating system is deployed into the channel, a partner also has the task of maintaining the OS builds with patches and fixes to the 3,000-plus files that make up the installed file base of the operating system.

With the Custom OS Build Service, partners are provided with the necessary packaging tools and services to eliminate this problem through the use of the free and bundled CNR Service that provides access to a one-click software repository delivery system.