Windows News and info 15th Anniversary 2009-2024
Other Operating Systems => Linux, gOS, Harmony OS, Moblin, Ubuntu, OpenSuse => Topic started by: javajolt on May 25, 2026, 07:51:30 PM
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Back in 2001, a tiny startup launched an operating system called Lindows. It was a genuinely ambitious idea: take Linux, add on a compatibility layer for Windows apps, and then sell the resulting OS for cheaper than Windows itself. The name was both a pitch and perhaps the seed of its eventual downfall. Microsoft noticed immediately, and started a two-and-a-half-year legal battle that threatened to unravel one of Microsoft's most valuable trademarks altogether.
What Lindows actually was
A Linux distro designed to poach Windows users
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Founder Michael Robertson (who already sold MP3.com to Vivendi Universal for $372 million) started Lindows in San Diego in August of 2001. His main goal was to create a Linux distribution that could run major Windows apps without forcing users to leave Linux entirely to do so. Lindows used Wine for this task, a compatibility layer that's still in use today that translates Windows API calls into Linux compatible equivalents on the fly. Wine was around since 1993, but Linux users had to configure it themselves, the idea here was more of a turnkey solution: install Lindows and your Windows apps just work
The OS was built on Debian Linux, ran the KDE desktop environment (styled to look familiar to Windows users), and featured a paid software storefront called Click 'N' Run (CNR) — an early precursor to the app store model — that let users browse and install both free and commercial Linux software without touching the command line.
As soon as June 2002, Walmart was selling budget PCs with LindowsOS preinstalled, starting at $299, making it the first major retailer to ship Linux-based computers to consumers. Microsoft had 90 percent of the world's PCs at the time, and was fairly hostile to the upstart Linux. That would, of course, change eventually, but not before it tried to litigate this little startup out of existence.
The lawsuit Microsoft probably shouldn't have filed
How "Windows" nearly became a generic word
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Microsoft sued Lindows in December 2001, saying that the name infringed on its Windows trademark. The idea was that consumers might confuse the two products. Lindows fired back with a perhaps more damaging argument: "windows" was already a generic term in computing before Microsoft ever trademarked it. Windowing interfaces existed at Xerox PARC and Apple years before Windows shipped in 1985.
US District Judge John Coughenour didn't take to Microsoft's trademark defense right away. He denied the company's request for a preliminary injunction in 2002, which raised questions about whether "Windows" could even be protected as a trademark. In February 2004, he ruled that any jury deciding the case would have to consider whether "windows" was a generic term before 1985, and not as a computing term as we understand it today.
If the case went to trial and a jury decided "Windows" was generic, Microsoft could lose trademark protection for its flagship product's name.
Microsoft went global to squeeze Lindows
The European pressure campaign that worked
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OK, so the US case wasn't looking good for Microsoft, so the company took the fight to fronts in Finland, Sweden, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Canada, and Spain. European trademark laws were more favorable at the time, and Microsoft won preliminary injunctions in Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The Dutch ruling was the most aggressive: it prohibited Lindows from selling its OS or even operating its website in Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
Lindows tried to keep going. It launched ChoicePC.com and started selling lifetime Lindows memberships for $100 to raise some cash. It renamed the product "Lin---s" in countries that had blocked the Lindows name, though Microsoft's lawyers argued that it wasn't enough. The renamed product eventually became Linspire in April 2004, after Lindows lost its bid to have a US court block Microsoft's European litigation.
The settlement that ended it
Microsoft paid $20 million to buy a name it tried to kill
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With a US trial looming and a real risk that "Windows" could be ruled a generic term, Microsoft settled in July 2004. It paid Lindows a total of $20 million, with $15 million up front and $5 million contingent on Lindows handing over its Lindows-related domain names. As part of the deal, Lindows Inc. transferred the trademark to Microsoft and rebranded globally as Linspire.
Tom Burt, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, said the settlement would let Lindows "compete in the marketplace with a name distinctly its own." Lindows CEO Michael Robertson said the terms "make business sense for all parties."
Microsoft spent years and millions of dollars trying to destroy the name and ended up having to buy it.
Linspire continued operating after the settlement, pushing more and more into consumer Linux. It launched a free version called Freespire and even signed deals with Canonical and Mint to offer software through its app storefront CNR. But the brand recognition was gone and the company struggled to find a foothold.
In July 2008, Linspire stockholders voted to sell all company assets to Xandros, a Canadian Linux distributor, and went dormant. Xandros discontinued Linspire in August 2008, and the rights eventually landed with PC/OpenSystems LLC, which relaunched the Linspire name in 2018 as a paid Ubuntu-based distribution.
The legal legacy matters more than the product
The Lindows case is less remembered for the OS and more for what it nearly did to MIcrosoft's most important trademark. Lindows may have lost the name (and eventually, its entire business), but it forced one of the most powerful software companies in the world to pay $20 million as a hedge against possibly having "Windows" declared a generic term in open court. That's a pretty reasonable outcome for a company that was set up on Wine and $100 memberships. Ironically, Microsoft ships its own Linux layer these days, WSL, doing roughly what Lindows was trying to do from the start.
source (http://www.makeuseof.com/a-linux-distro-once-got-too-close-to-windows-and-microsoft-came-for-it/?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4)