Linspire has scrapped the charge for its Click ‘N’ Run service, making it entirely free of charge. The service allows users to install a whole raft of Linux software (both proprietary and open source) by simply browsing a catalog and clicking a link. There’s no rpm/apt-get console commands and no compiling from source.

The move is undoubtedly because of competition from Ubuntu, which aims at a similar desktop market and provides a similar one-click solution for software installation. Yet Ubuntu is entirely free of charge.

Linspire and Ubuntu have a surprising number of similarities. Both are based on Debian and both hope to conqueror the desktop. Both are headed by enigmatic dot.com millionaires prepared to pump cash into their projects (Michael Robertson in the case of Linspire and Mark Shuttleworth in the case of Ubuntu).

Yet Linspire started years before Ubuntu and has seen only a fraction of the success. Why?