Walmart Ships PCs with Lindows OS

Tonetheman writes "Walmart is now shipping low cost PC's with Lindows pre-installed. And yes I know there was a review earlier on Slashdot about installing Linux on one of these bad boys. This is different and much more exciting. To think of the legions of rednecks who could now possibly be running Lindows instead of Windows..." There's a Newsforge story too. Hopefully Lindows makes a good impression.

Comments

*omg* is it even out of beta already?

[Idaho]

Maybe I missed something...but last time I checked Lindows was still in beta stage, and with good reason too!

From my experience, they might be combining MS-like stability and security (running everything as root etc.) with Linux-like usability*, resulting in a horribly unusable OS - for which Linux will most probably get the blame by mainstream reporters. Ah well, we'll see.

Walmarts idea is probably something like this: they can save money on the computers this way, and they probably don't really care about what their customers use it for (do they have a reason to? Do they have to offer support etc.?), so that would explain things....

* usability for Joe Avg. User, e.g. consistent GUI's and stuff, you know what I mean...combining Wine and KDE and X will not get you a very consistent UI experience probably....

Impression?

[Mr_Silver]

Hopefully Lindows makes a good impression.

Of course it will. They'll think it's fantastic, right up to the point when they try to install their favourite Windows applications and it all goes horribly wrong.

Then they'll mutter "crock of shit" and take it back to Walmart to complain.

Not that I blame them, Walmart is advertising it as having the ability to run most Microsoft software, which (unless it's changed drastically) isn't quite the case.

I'm all for getting Linux to the masses, but if they oversell what it can do, then they'll end up putting off people rather than attracting them.

Re:Could Put Lindows/Wal-Mart in a Sitcky Spot

[the_rev_matt]

The site quite clearly at the top in the first paragraph says it does *not* come with Windows.

Microtel PCs with Lindows OS These computers do not ship with Microsoft Windows. They ship with an exciting new UNIX based Operating System (OS) named Lindows. This exciting new OS delivers the stability of UNIX with the ease of Windows and the ability to run most Microsoft programs. These computer systems are a perfect low cost alternative to computers preloaded with Microsoft Windows.

Re:OS X

[pmz]

The difference: Wal-mart is selling their computers for $299 and up. $299! In this way, Wal-mart is not competing with Apple at all, since a person considering a really inexpensive PC will most likely not be considering a $3000 Apple workstation.