[NTLUG:Discuss] Fry's and Linux

[Zac Brown]

Lance,
	I'm gonna say that its both good and bad. I suspect most people won't
bother much with Linspire... from what I hear its not a *real* linux
distro. It's dumbed down too much like Lindows. I think they should get
a co-op going with Xandros, since its still got many linux features but
is new user friendly. Then again, there may be those of them who are
curious and will play with it. All I can say is... for those of them who
become Linux converts, more power to them.

Zac

On Wed, 2004-06-16 at 15:02, Lance Simmons wrote:
> 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?
-- 
Zac Brown - Student
Registered Linux User 356244.
Proud *NIX user since Aug. 2000.