I have tried freespire a short time ago as expirimental distro for me,but now i use Ubuntu very well for a long time because that´s my faforite distro.
Freespire has a very nice polished desktop that statisfies me.
But if you want to install freespire on your hd,then your choice of how to partitioning your hd is not so good.
That´s my opinion.
By Ubuntu you have all the freedom to partition your hd very simple,the same way if you had whith installing windowsXP.
Also you have a easyer choice in formatting your partition whith your chosen filesystem.