[NTLUG:Discuss] Fry's and Linux

[Andrew Brown]

Is there anyone in computer store sales that knows anything about Linux. The 
jaw drop is a given. Love the Mac story though! HA! Feel sorry for those 
guys...

On Thursday 17 June 2004 12:57 am, Zac Brown wrote:
> Thomas,
> 	Hah, I've had similar experiences. Their jaws dropped when I asked them
> if they had anyone familiar with BSD/Linux. They brought some guy over
> that had played with Redhat and I asked him about sound cards for linux
> and he said "get one that works". I just left... lol
>
> Zac
>
> On Thu, 2004-06-17 at 00:16, Thomas Cameron wrote:
> > ----- 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
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > https://ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss