Slashdot Mirror
Installing Linux On A Wal-Mart OS-less machine
Azar writes "An article at Newsforge details the experience of installing Linux on Wal-Mart's OS-less PC. It states: 'A few months ago, super-sized discount store Wal-Mart made the headlines in the Linux world by becoming the first major U.S. retailer to offer PCs without Windows preloaded...While this was widely hailed in the Open Source community as a victory over the "Microsoft tax," which usually afflicts buyers of Linux PCs, one major question remained unanswered: How well do these machines support Linux?' Here is your answer." Newsforge is owned by OSDN, which also owns Slashdot, is all part of the sinister Andover keiretsu.
As long as you have experience putting linux on a PC, this should be no problem, as long as you don't need a modem; it's a winmodem.
------
Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
did walmart use a modem designed for windows on a machine that did not have windows pre-installed?
Sure, that particular modem can be supported under linux (and other operating systems?), but the clear point of these machines was that they did not have windows pre-loaded
so why use components that are designed for windows and often wont work with other operating systems?
Kudos to the author of this article, as it was genuinely interesting and informative.
These machines are obviously an affordable, functional, and useful personal computing package for the 'alternative' (or perhaps just plain thrifty) user. Perhaps Red Hat or another distribution vendor should strike up a deal with Wal-Mart to bundle copies of Linux with the machines? It's been done before with not a huge amount of success, but Wal-Mart is a pretty powerful distribution mechanism, and the product already exists minus one inexpensive and 'easy-to-include' component.
How long do you think it will take for other hardware vendors to follow a similiar path? Is there enough demand for it? Does Microsoft offer too great an incentive (target market, for example) for vendors to switch away from their platform?
How many people, who buy computers at Walmart, are willing to installing Linux/read these instructions.
If you are so worried about the MSFT tax don't buy prebuilt computers, duh.
That's like worrying about paying a "ford" tax and going to your ford dealer.
Not at all - this is a "Microsoft Tax" - the computer is not made by Microsoft. If when you bought your Ford you had to take out insurance from a particular insurance company (whether or not you already had insurance), then that would be a better comparison, and people would complain.
You ought to be able to buy a computer without a software vendor insisting you buy their product as well.
At Wal-Marts website at the bottom of the page that features the Windows-less machines is the following note with respective links:
See all computers without operating systems. Also, check out our selection of Linux books.
Yes folks, they are PROMOTING Linux for these machines. So it might be possible that they could bundle a distro with the pc in the future.
Some of the followups to that article mention that a working version of the modem driver can be obtained from http://www.heby.de/ltmodem.
Given this, it would be nice if someone could put together a complete linux distro (complete with the OpenOffice suite, etc.) ready-to-run on this box. Heck, maybe we could even convince Wal-Mart to give it away with every box!
Ah, the power of reading the article...
That's like worrying about paying a "ford" tax and going to your ford dealer.
Oh, ok. So all prebuilt PC vendors are Msft dealers/franchise - roger, gotcha.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I've got an Intel Celery 1100 board with everything integrated. The only thing I did was to disable the onboard video controller and add an Nvidia MX 400 card. It's hardly a crappy board. A better word for it would be inexpensive, and reliable. Probably the same applies to the Microstar board. Not everyone is interested in overclocking and tinkering with chip voltages.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I think it's horrible they sell a naked PC that has hardware that requires Windows to be used.
Check the other comments - the modem in this machine can be used by Linux and other operating systems.
Also, as for it being a naked PC, it's not like they're not warning you - find the link in the article to Walmart's site and you'll see that they trumpet it underneath every ad - "THIS PC DOES NOT INCLUDE A COPY OF WINDOWS" in bold. At the top, it recommends users read their PC guide or something before buying, and states that the computers do not include a required operating system.
I think things like this are a VICTORY for consumers. Sure, this product isn't the right thing for some people, but for others, it is the perfect thing. Sure, there are people out there who could mistakenly buy this but I'm glad the option is available for people like me who want a cheap addition to the home LAN.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
I was very glad to hear that most distros installed on the machine with no trouble I was thinking about getting one these things myself.
_ __
I hear some people painting the winmodem experience as typical but I have used the ltmodem packages on four different machines with great results. Below in some of the comments it is explaining that this particular one is a chipset that is not really supported. Still, the ltmodem modules work great for the winmodem in my Dell 4000 right now.
What I like is that he did not just install one distro and let it go at that. He installed multiple distros which gives a reviewer a much nicer base of experience to speak from.
Read carefully his experiences with the install. It just goes to show linux installs are getting much easier and autodetection is very good.
There are still gotchas (his was the modem) but anyone not using Windows pre-loaded from the manufacturer to work with that machine will come up with at least one install gotcha. My gotcha was the free Umax scanner that came with my laptop. Xsane still has no driver for it because of Umax's bull-headedness. The funny thing is that Dell started selling the Epson 1250 after that and I hear they work great with Linux. Argh!
_______________________________________________
ACK
I see Wal-Marts everywhere
That is probably because Walmart, number one on the fortune 500 with $220 Billion (with a B) in annual revenue (compared to Microsoft which is 72nd with $25 Billion), has sucessfully used predatory pricing to drive out of business all of the small mom-n-pop businesses and most of their larger competitors.
Before we all jump on the WalMart bandwagon just because we think they are taking a swipe at Microsoft, we must remember that this is the company that used its power to force record labels to produce two copies of every album (one nice for Walmart and one naughty for everyone else).
not everyone has the time or the inclination to go out and find, buy, and assemble all of the parts into one machine. Some people might just not be into the hardware scene enough to want to do that. I'd buy I clone because I'd just have more fun fixing it when it sucks and breaks. The problem here is that for a long time you could only buy a computer *with* an operating system, and the only OS the store would give you to choose was Windows. It sounds like something called coercive tied selling to me (salesperson implying that you must buy one product in order to buy the other). Maybe before building your own was the best way to avoid that problem. Maybe people are just saying that they're glad it's not like that now, and they can just go out and buy a computer like anyone else would.
I would suggest you all consider NOT shopping at Walmart -- for anything at all -- read this please
/. headline states) Labour Day everywhere else in the world but Canada, USA and SouthAfrica. Did you know May Day became Labour Day because of the American Labour Movement? Read a little history here
It is very sad that this story is also posted on May Day, which is (as another
So over the next 2 weeks I spent a good amount of cash in getting additional cooling equipment: additional rear case fans, a slot fan, etc. I was able to shave a few degrees off the max temp under the warmest days. Of course, these weren't installed at one shot, and each time I changed the internal configuration, I worried that something might fail.
But finally I got it to the point of being a good little box, and hasn't had a problem since. However, I am still worried on it's temperature situation and monitor it often enough to make sure nothing weird is going on.
But after that experience with newer CPUs, I'd much rather avoid all the hassle of building the system from scratch, and next time I'm looking, purchase a system that has been prebuilt to handle the cooling effectively and such that I don't have to worry about that at all. Obviously, the above boxes wouldn't be for gamers, but as the reviewer indicates, would work well for a linux install as well as average-joe users if they wanted to install WinXP/2K on it. I'd consider getting one of these particularly since I would not expect custom shops to be able to beat that price easily without cutting more corners.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
or what if Walmart hosted install days?
Advertise for customers to order the PCs up to a week or two in advance to allow for delivery. Then have them return to the store on the selected Saturday & Sunday to pick up their new PC and have Linux installed on site for free by local geeks. They could sell books and distros near the install area. I'd do it at the local Walmart, no problem.
And I bet RH would supply tons of free CD kits. Hell, use one of the machines to burn CDs for the customers! That'll freak 'em out for sure.
Intelligent Life on Earth
How much would it cost W'mart to sell these machines with a pre-loaded Linux image? Surely if they cut a gold image it would only cost a few cents to ghost them onto the hard drives before they went into the machines? Or they could produce a "recovery CD", which restores a Linux image which works on that hardware?
How much better for the customer to go home with a system which they can plug in and start playing nethack straight away without having to obtain and install a Linux distro.
And it would annoy the crap out of M$.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
Look, you are viewing this backward I think. Maybe I'm the one viewing it backward. The point is this, however.
Wal-Mart does not care about the people who are usually shopping at Wal-Mart when they are selling them these computers. This, in my humble opinion, was never about the typical Wal-Mart shopper.
Someone in Wal-Mart management was only just savvy enough to recognize that there was a computer community in full force that did not want to have Windows on their computer. It goes back to the basics of supply and demand.
There is a community of people demanding that computers be available without Microsoft anything.
There is now a supplier of computers without Microsoft anything.
Now, with news sites like Slashdot running stories on it. More people are going to be saying to themselves. "I could hit walmart.com, pick up a new clone and drop linux on it." Some of them might even be saying "I could drop my existing copy of Windows on it."
Even if the machine isn't a major name brand, Wal-Mart has more people than ever looking their way now because of this. With the whole Microsoft trial, and the all the anti-Microsoft sentiment right now, this is probably just the thing for Wal-Mart to do.
Even if they can't pull in the "build it yourself" crowd. Joe Sixpack has heard from all his buddies who are in the crowd how bad the "Microsoft Tax" really is. Even if they end up installing Windows anyway, these machines still get a quick look.
The only thing I can say is that it appears to be a win/win situation for Wal-Mart.
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
That is perhaps true. However, there are also people whose cheap computers have just died, and they need a new one, and they already have a "legal" copy of Windows that was installed on the dead computer (assuming that it's not an OEM version tied to the original hardware). That's a completely legitimate use that not even MS can really argue with.
And then you have people who are buying a second computer (for the kids perhaps) and are going to install one copy of Windows on both of them. Microsoft might call that piracy, but most reasonable people wouldn't.
With that in mind, the number of people who are actually pirating Windows --- in the sense of actually going and downloading XP from Morpheus or some such just to avoid paying for it --- to put on a new computer is probably not quite so large as you theorize. It's probably still mostly going to get Microsoft POed, though, because they're going to perceive it as encouraging piracy.
Microsoft might be the 2,000 pound gorilla ... but Wal-Mart is a pretty big ape itself. They could stand up to MS if they really want to.
Please write to them in friendly, non-condesending words how helpful it is to offer non-winmodem PC's, of make modem an option. Being a jerk is unlikely to have your letter read past the "Dear Bloated Sack of Protoplasm" salutation. It's a big step for Wal-Mart, love 'em or hate 'em, and if it's a success than others will likely follow suit. If Wal-Mart sees it as a failure and the type of customer they've attracted as obnoxious jerks, the decision to drop it and declare it a bad business decision will be that much easier.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The source code compiles fine and a script complete the installation. There is even pre-packaged drivers for many distros including: RedHat and Debian. So, yes it is not straight forward, but is not as painful as recompiling the kernel.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Wal Mart's can be hard to find in cities, so many people may not know what a godsend they are to rural america. WalMart stores are typically located on cheap land--which is mostly rural America and out suburbs of the some large towns they can be found in. It's very similar to how Southwest on flies into and out of cities/airports with cheap airport fees and terminal space.
:)
And I encourage you to look at WalMart's prices and compare with others. They _are_ pretty damn low. Even in the small rural towns where Wal Mart has already put small mom & pop stores out of business and cornered the market. This is about the only downside of WalMart's--the little guys can't compete with them.
They provide many items which may not be sold in the immediate area also (shopping selection in rural America tends to be very limited). They have a good distrobution system where the ship the things that aren't selling real well in one location to another where they are during the night via truck. For instance, during the Missouri floods they would bring in sand, shovles, flashlights from other stores and ship things like riding lawnmowers and plastic play pools out.
This sounds more like a hit piece against corporations/Fortune 10 than truth. The article is seething with angst and loathing from the denotations of the adjecives and adverbs used.
Also remember, Sams is also connected to the Waltons and contributes heftily to the profits also. Anyone who has bought one bag of chicken wings for $10 to feed themselves for a month knows the joy of Sams
- Sig
I'd rather live in a world dominated by Bill Gates than one dominated by Sam Walton.
I'm the author of the piece at NewsForge.
Let's get this straight: the modem does not work.
The people who say they have a working Lucent modem do not have this Lucent modem. This Lucent modem (type 048c) is not supported by any driver I can find. One of the people who insisted that the modem works had a type 0440, which is supported by the Lucent driver.
If someone has a patch that makes the 048c modem work, I'll be glad to try it. But the ltmodem driver does not have it, according to the documentation.