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However, quite a few people will probably keep the default OS out of laziness, if nothing else, so Windows will loose market share.

If they installed a working, full featured Linux distro this would be true. Past experience shows that whenever Linux gets preinstalled in the U.S. it's some stripped-down useless distro like Thizlinux, Linspire or FreeDos.

I'm not sure who the marketing geniuses are that pick ThizLinux over Fedora, Debian, Mandrake, Mepis, Ubuntu, etc.....but it seems fairly consistent.

The Latest Adventures of Ha-li-bo-te

It's not a bad idea for a title: "Harry Potter and the Pirates." The Chinese-language publisher of the latest book about the boy wizard known in China as Ha-li-bo-te has decided to rush it into stores this weekend, 10 days ahead of schedule in a bid to thwart the copyright pirates who are already selling badly translated copies. "We found some Chinese versions translated on the Internet and some illegal versions of the book," a spokesman for the People's Literature Publishing House told the Associated Press. "We have read some of the books and found there are many mistakes and mistranslations." Chinese-language editions of J.K. Rowling's first four books have already sold millions of copies since their debut in October 2001, while world-wide sales of the books, in 50 languages, have topped 200 million. And this is far from the first time young Ha-li-bo-te has fallen victim to China's rampant copyright piracy. Last year, an unknown author produced an entirely new adventure, "Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-To-Dragon."

Want to see what Chinese Linux is like? Have a look at Thiz. Then run back to Red Hat/Slackware/Debian/SuSE... You won't be sorry.

No list of Chinese Linux distributions would be complete without a link to Thiz Linux, the wonderful Chinese distro being sold on machines at Fry's ;)

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CB

The server seems to be on the way out...

For those of you who may not be aware, Fry's Electronics has been selling a Linux desktop PC loaded with ThizLinux for quite a while now. The question is, are they really selling it? The answer is a definitive no.

First of all, their sales staff has no idea how to run Windows, let alone Linux. In reality, I didn't expect anything less from that caliber of employee. What are you going to do? Let's put it this way... I live in Las Vegas and have been to that Fry's location on more than one occasion and stood by while a salesman, approached with questions from a customer, stuttered and spit trying to come up with answers. They usually just end up blurting to the customer that the machine is "just NOT Windows". Nice sales pitch.

To top that award winning sales pitch off, the customer is staring at a KDM login screen which has it's default language set to Chinese. Don't get me wrong, Chinese is a fine language, but hardly appropriate sitting on display in the Las Vegas branch of Fry's Electronics. Not only did the whole Chinese thing confuse me, but the fact that it was running an obscure Linux distribution that nobody has ever heard of really did the trick. Check out their web site and tell me what you think. Where is the support? Even if you visit their 'English' site, it is a bit confusing to the average computer user.

To make things even worse, the distribution is old. It is running kernel 2.4.18 with KDE 2.2.2 as its default desktop, and their Xfree86 version is 4.2.0. It isn't even the latest release of ThizLinux. This is software more apt (no pun intended) to be used on a server system... not on a consumer desktop. Why not use one of the better desktop distros such as Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, Libranet, or even (please forgive me for saying this but I have to) LindowsOS? They have better support and usability, are more appealing to the eye, and are far more likely to be accepted by end users than ThizLinux.

What really set me off was my visit to the Las Vegas store this evening. I was simply going to purchase a few peripherals and wandered by the lonely Linux PC in the corner. Sometimes the normally $299 unit goes on sale for around $100. Sure, it's a pretty cheaply built box, but would make a nice toy for such a low price. What caught my eye this time was the addition of a new placard placed squarely on top of the PC chassis. It read something like this:

This computer is running the Linux operating system. It is easily removed and can be replaced by Windows 98 or higher by formatting the hard drive and loading Windows. We will perform this service for you for a fee.

I found that completely unacceptable for two reasons:

• They are immediately telling you that the machine is no good. Insinuating that it's in the best interest of the customer to remove the current operating system and install Windows is ridiculous. Even though the sign does not come right out and say "This OS is a piece of garbage", the sign conveys the message loud and clear.
• They are offering to charge the customer more money to fix a product which they are selling as 'broken' to begin with. Nothing like wearing your soul on your sleeve. Actually, this way of thinking is pure Microsoft. Since they are selling a product they know is garbage, why sell it at all? To be quite honest, as a Linux user I frown upon the insinuation that my chosen OS is somehow inferior to Windows 98.

Maybe I shouldn't care... and in reality it isn't going to make a difference in my day whether they sell those boxes or not. It just bothers me that Linux is being portrayed this way to the general public. My message to the people who run Fry's Electronics (and any other outlet who may sell Linux

The server seems to be on the way out...

For those of you who may not be aware, Fry's Electronics has been selling a Linux desktop PC loaded with ThizLinux for quite a while now. The question is, are they really selling it? The answer is a definitive no.

First of all, their sales staff has no idea how to run Windows, let alone Linux. In reality, I didn't expect anything less from that caliber of employee. What are you going to do? Let's put it this way... I live in Las Vegas and have been to that Fry's location on more than one occasion and stood by while a salesman, approached with questions from a customer, stuttered and spit trying to come up with answers. They usually just end up blurting to the customer that the machine is "just NOT Windows". Nice sales pitch.

To top that award winning sales pitch off, the customer is staring at a KDM login screen which has it's default language set to Chinese. Don't get me wrong, Chinese is a fine language, but hardly appropriate sitting on display in the Las Vegas branch of Fry's Electronics. Not only did the whole Chinese thing confuse me, but the fact that it was running an obscure Linux distribution that nobody has ever heard of really did the trick. Check out their web site and tell me what you think. Where is the support? Even if you visit their 'English' site, it is a bit confusing to the average computer user.

To make things even worse, the distribution is old. It is running kernel 2.4.18 with KDE 2.2.2 as its default desktop, and their Xfree86 version is 4.2.0. It isn't even the latest release of ThizLinux. This is software more apt (no pun intended) to be used on a server system... not on a consumer desktop. Why not use one of the better desktop distros such as Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, Libranet, or even (please forgive me for saying this but I have to) LindowsOS? They have better support and usability, are more appealing to the eye, and are far more likely to be accepted by end users than ThizLinux.

What really set me off was my visit to the Las Vegas store this evening. I was simply going to purchase a few peripherals and wandered by the lonely Linux PC in the corner. Sometimes the normally $299 unit goes on sale for around $100. Sure, it's a pretty cheaply built box, but would make a nice toy for such a low price. What caught my eye this time was the addition of a new placard placed squarely on top of the PC chassis. It read something like this:

This computer is running the Linux operating system. It is easily removed and can be replaced by Windows 98 or higher by formatting the hard drive and loading Windows. We will perform this service for you for a fee.

I found that completely unacceptable for two reasons:

• They are immediately telling you that the machine is no good. Insinuating that it's in the best interest of the customer to remove the current operating system and install Windows is ridiculous. Even though the sign does not come right out and say "This OS is a piece of garbage", the sign conveys the message loud and clear.
• They are offering to charge the customer more money to fix a product which they are selling as 'broken' to begin with. Nothing like wearing your soul on your sleeve. Actually, this way of thinking is pure Microsoft. Since they are selling a product they know is garbage, why sell it at all? To be quite honest, as a Linux user I frown upon the insinuation that my chosen OS is somehow inferior to Windows 98.

Maybe I shouldn't care... and in reality it isn't going to make a difference in my day whether they sell those boxes or not. It just bothers me that Linux is being portrayed this way to the general public. My message to the people who run Fry's Electronics (and any other outlet who may sell Linux

The server seems to be on the way out...

For those of you who may not be aware, Fry's Electronics has been selling a Linux desktop PC loaded with ThizLinux for quite a while now. The question is, are they really selling it? The answer is a definitive no.

First of all, their sales staff has no idea how to run Windows, let alone Linux. In reality, I didn't expect anything less from that caliber of employee. What are you going to do? Let's put it this way... I live in Las Vegas and have been to that Fry's location on more than one occasion and stood by while a salesman, approached with questions from a customer, stuttered and spit trying to come up with answers. They usually just end up blurting to the customer that the machine is "just NOT Windows". Nice sales pitch.

To top that award winning sales pitch off, the customer is staring at a KDM login screen which has it's default language set to Chinese. Don't get me wrong, Chinese is a fine language, but hardly appropriate sitting on display in the Las Vegas branch of Fry's Electronics. Not only did the whole Chinese thing confuse me, but the fact that it was running an obscure Linux distribution that nobody has ever heard of really did the trick. Check out their web site and tell me what you think. Where is the support? Even if you visit their 'English' site, it is a bit confusing to the average computer user.

To make things even worse, the distribution is old. It is running kernel 2.4.18 with KDE 2.2.2 as its default desktop, and their Xfree86 version is 4.2.0. It isn't even the latest release of ThizLinux. This is software more apt (no pun intended) to be used on a server system... not on a consumer desktop. Why not use one of the better desktop distros such as Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, Libranet, or even (please forgive me for saying this but I have to) LindowsOS? They have better support and usability, are more appealing to the eye, and are far more likely to be accepted by end users than ThizLinux.

What really set me off was my visit to the Las Vegas store this evening. I was simply going to purchase a few peripherals and wandered by the lonely Linux PC in the corner. Sometimes the normally $299 unit goes on sale for around $100. Sure, it's a pretty cheaply built box, but would make a nice toy for such a low price. What caught my eye this time was the addition of a new placard placed squarely on top of the PC chassis. It read something like this:

This computer is running the Linux operating system. It is easily removed and can be replaced by Windows 98 or higher by formatting the hard drive and loading Windows. We will perform this service for you for a fee.

I found that completely unacceptable for two reasons:

• They are immediately telling you that the machine is no good. Insinuating that it's in the best interest of the customer to remove the current operating system and install Windows is ridiculous. Even though the sign does not come right out and say "This OS is a piece of garbage", the sign conveys the message loud and clear.
• They are offering to charge the customer more money to fix a product which they are selling as 'broken' to begin with. Nothing like wearing your soul on your sleeve. Actually, this way of thinking is pure Microsoft. Since they are selling a product they know is garbage, why sell it at all? To be quite honest, as a Linux user I frown upon the insinuation that my chosen OS is somehow inferior to Windows 98.

Maybe I shouldn't care... and in reality it isn't going to make a difference in my day whether they sell those boxes or not. It just bothers me that Linux is being portrayed this way to the general public. My message to the people who run Fry's Electronics (and any other outlet who may sell Linux

What's with "Thiz Linux?" I visited their site, and even clicked-through to the English version. However, the only place I could find downloads was here:

http://www.thizlinux.com/eng/download/thizlinux_de sktop70/download_reg_desktop70_finished.php

This page allows you to download a "90-day trial" of Thiz Linux. I'm not going to bother downloading two ISOs from a server in China, but the idea of a "90-day trial" of a Linux system seems rather suspicious to me. Does it "expire" after 90 days, and if so, does the GPL allow that sort of thing?

The whole Thiz distro seems dodgy. Anyone have any experience with it?

The computer itself is kind of cute. It's a little vertical slab, about 8" high and 2" wide. But the system is painful.

As displayed, it was showing a root login prompt. X woudn't start. Running the X configurator brought up a desktop with a working mouse, but X wasn't seeing the keyboard for some reason. A reboot produced some boot error messages about not finding a serial driver.

Mouse input brought up "ThizOffice", which seems to be a version of OpenOffice with more Chinese support. It came up with English as the default language, but some displays were in Chinese.

There's also Mozilla.

The machine is rather slow, even though it has 128MB, a 1GHz+ processor, and isn't doing much. From the standpoint of the typical desktop user, this is a piece of junk.

I have come up a few other players in this arena, competition is good. of course ;-)

• Thizlinux
• Chinese 2000, based on Chinese Language Extension, packaged with Hancom Office Suite
• Chinee Language Extension they patches Red Hat and Slackware! for a Chinese desktop, may be regarded as the "mother" of Chinese localization
• Turbo linux, don't know what they're doing in Chinese Linux desktop recently

btw, the one reviewed in the newsforge.com is 2.4 desktop. version 3.0 is coming (sorry, no more English and Traditional Chinese installation screens, only Simplified Chinese is available) and I've tried the beta CD, quite OK for normal use but some installation gliches.

Also... a Chinese-enabled desktop is possible (just click "Chinese" during install..) by the normal Debian/Mandrake/RedHat CDs.