[NTLUG:Discuss] Fry's and Linux

[Thomas Cameron]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lance Simmons" <lance at lsimmons.net>
To: <discuss at ntlug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:02 PM
Subject: [NTLUG:Discuss] Fry's and Linux


> 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


This isn't really related, but a couple of weeks ago I went to Fry's to buy
a video card for a Dell Precision 620 (old dual Xeon 1GHz box).  I was
looking at the NVidia Geforce 4 MX and I asked the sales guy (the little
voice was screaming not to, but what does it know, right) what he
recommended for Linux.  Blank stare, then he lit up and said "oh, we need to
ask that guy, he knows about Linux!"  So we went over and I asked "that guy"
if he had a recommendation for a video card for Linux.  He told me that I
should get on the web and go to a Mac site to find out what was compatible.

I asked what he meant, I didn't need a Mac video card, I needed a video card
for a PC running Linux - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, to be exact.  He said,
"well, you need to go to any of the Mac web sites and see what card people
recommend."  I said again this was Linux, not Mac.  He replied "Yeah, well
Mac has taken over Linux now."

After a few moments of stunned silence, I asked if he was talking about Mac
OSX with the Mach microkernel and BSD Unix under the hood.  Blank stare.  I
laughed out loud and walked away.

Scary.

Thomas Cameron