[NTLUG:Discuss] Fry's and Linux

[Lance Simmons]

I sent this note on May 29th, which was while the NTLUG site had died,
and I still welcome comments:

> I think this has been talked about before, but here goes again.  As a
> lot of you know, Fry's sells computers with Linspire pre-installed.  I
> wasn't previously aware of the scale on which they're doing this.
> Yesterday they sold over 1,000 units in the DFW area.  There were 300
> boxes at the Irving store, the guy there said there were 1,000 at the
> Plano store, and there were probably a couple hundred at the Arlington
> store.  At $99, they were going fast.
> 
> The machine came with Linspire installed, together with a Linspire
> recovery disk.  After fooling around with the Linspire desktop for a
> couple of minutes, just to see what it looked like, I wiped the hard
> drive and did a network install of Debian.  Probably lots of people
> installed Windows, but I wonder how many new Linux users there are in
> the Metroplex this weekend?
> 
> I don't know whether these people will think of themselves as Linux
> users, because the Linspire desktop is so Linspire-centric.  I guess
> they'll end up going to the Linspire website for support.  But even if
> they don't really understand what Linux is, the fact is that they're
> using Linux.
> 
> Is it a good thing for the development of Linux that Fry's is flooding
> the market with cheap Linspire boxes?  (I can't get over the fact that
> Linspire boots into a desktop running as root!)  Does anyone actually
> use Linux on these machines who wouldn't otherwise be using Linux?
> Will these new users, if there are any, be able to find NTLUG?

-- 
Lance Simmons