SAN DIEGO—Lindows Inc., best known for its Linux operating system in a legal tug-of-war with Microsoft Corp., is moving into the digital audio and photo arena with two new desktop applications, its CEO said during the Desktop Linux Summit 2004 here.
Lindows on Friday released its Lsong application for playing and managing digital audio. It combines functionality from a series of other Linux applications to provide the ability to import and digitally encode an unlimited number of audio tracks; organize and search audio files; listen to MP3s, CDs or streaming audio; and burn CDs.
It is available now for users of Linspire, the renamed Lindows OS, through Linspires software download technology, called CNR. Lindows changed its flagship products name earlier this month following a series of U.S. and international trademark infringement lawsuits from Microsoft.
Also released in beta this week is Lphoto, an application for importing and organizing photos; resizing and retouching them; and sharing them through e-mail or HTML-based photo albums, according to Lindows officials.
“This brings desktop Linux up to other OSes out there,” Lindows founder and CEO Michael Robertson said. “Its another example of how [Linux] applications are making incredible strides.”
While Robertson did not specify other OSes, the two applications are reminiscent of a series of desktop applications for the Mac OS X, called iLife, which includes iTunes for digital music and iPhoto for digital photos.
Robertson, while demonstrating Lphoto, said it was close to a final release but did not provide a launch date.
Both new applications cost $19.95 but are free to members of the Linspire Warehouse, an online software store.
Lindows new applications come as the company plans to go public. Earlier this week , the San Diego-based company filed an initial public offering registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission but has not set a date for offering shares.
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