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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.
Walmart is about the only US company I can think of that can actually take on MS. Walmart isn't really rooted in the technology industry so they don't stand to lose as much as say, Dell, from taking a stab at selling Lindows computers. I think most of us who know anything about MS know that the reason that Dell, HP, etc. etc... don't sell machines without Windows or even dual-boot machines with something other than two versions of Windows is because MS would revoke their license to sell Windows.
Screw the "legions of rednecks" idea, I believe there are many people who are curious enough about other OSes to get an extra computer, especially since they are supposed to be cheap, from Walmart just to poke around. Who knows once the average Joe realized that their are other options maybe he'll download some Debian images and never use Windows again.
Cheers to Walmart, good job guys.
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I can just imagine millions of these things selling widely. Then every single one being hacked by one group with the same root exploit. Think of the headlines "Wal-Mart facilitates domestic terrorism" "Internet Weakened by Linux manchines" etc. In some ways it's kind of what the ADTI people want.
The sum of all Lindows fears.
The hardware may be crud, but if it is, drag it down the block to WalMart and get a replacement box. And now that it has an OS included, you can prove that the hardware is broke.
This is not to say "Behold WalMart, our savior", but rather to say "Now that Microsoft has some serious threat to worry about, we may be able to catch our breath before heading back into the arena..."
And at $300 bucks, assembled, with warranty, it practically meets my definition for "buy it for the parts".
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
alright damnit, enough is enough.
> Walmart isn't really rooted in the technology industry
utter bullshit.
Guess who has the largest *private* database in the world. (and is the SOLE reason that NCR Teradata is still alive) Wal-Mart (with somewhere around 130TB in thier Topend system)
Guess who has the largest single IMAP install in the world? Wal-Mart Guess who is (or was) Dell's Largest customer...Wal-Mart
Guess who employees over 1400 in house (not contractors) programmers (in a single location (ok, you can split hairs with SMWDC/DMGTC being seperate)...Wal-Mart
Guess which retail chain bet the bank on EDI before the next 6 largest guys even thought of it...Wal-Mart
With over 2500 stores and a sub 2 second transaction time to *all of them* , how the heck did you think they were *NOT* a technology based company!?
That crap about Wally world not being a technology company is baloney. Sam Walton bet the bank on computer technology when his rivals were still using paper invoices.
I would note that the decision to sell Lindows prob has nothing to do with Wal-Mart as a company, but a lot to do with what it's Buyers and Marketing dept think will sell. (To those who have never worked in the corporate side of retail, Buyers are the guys/gals who buy the things the company then sells to it's customers, they typically work out the deals, many retail firms use independant buyers, but Wally world (and a few, very few) other companies do it all in house)).
If someone really wants to know why they are selling Lindows, then ship off a message to president@wal-mart.com, The are quite good about responding, though I'm not sure what their answer will be.
About the crack about rednecks buying Lindows...what do you think the average demographic of a Wally world online customer is? I'm willing to bet it's not ma and pa kettle in podunk Arkansas.
--Tadghe, former WalMartian.
Bugs Bunny was right.
I live in a redneck/hick town. I don't think of myself as better than my neighbors. I have sold computers to several of them, though. All of them want nothing more than to run an old version of Quicken to manage the books for the dairy, Word Perfect 6.0 to type letters to their grand kids, and Printshop to make birthday cards. There were a few exceptions: some of them had kids who wanted to play Star Craft and Half-Life, and one person needed to run the latest QuickBooks to handle payroll for his construction business. Most people can do anything they already do in Windows, with Linux.
The problem for me, however, was that I was 16/17 at the time I was selling these computers, living at home. I got all my referrals from my mom, since she knew the people. She has seen me coding in a Linux console, and after seeing that, started spreading anti-Linux FUD to all the people she was referring to me ("He'll build you a great computer, but he'll try to put Linux on it -- don't let him do that."). I found this out when people started specifically asking NOT to have Linux on their machines (though I've never sold a Linux machine to anyone). Star Craft and Half-Life both run under WineX.
What's the point of this rambling? If you are young and live at home, make sure your parents don't spread Linux FUD, and if you are older, make sure your wife doesn't spread Linux FUD, and if you're old and single, well, get out more. But the real moral of the story is: most people don't need Windows, or even the apps they're used to. Give them a few of their staple apps, such as Star Craft, Quicken, Word, and then fill in the rest with Open Source software, and slowly convert them away from their staple apps (and convert game programmers away from their staple OS). This is exactly what Lindows is doing.
Some people think Lindows will take over Linux and become a Linux monopoly, others think Lindows will just act as the gateway into a new world of software. Whatever. See above for the point of this disjointed, redundant rambling.
A solution to the problem with music today
Perhaps Slashdot should interview the president of Wal-Mart.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
there are potentially bad consequences to this. consider:
/dev/usb0" into every single app's preferences.
- lUser buys a Lindows PC from walmart
- lUser cannot figure out how to cut and paste from the Mozilla web browser to Abiword (a harsh welcome to Xwindows indeed). Worse, he never did figure out that to print he had to type "ghostview - | lpr -Pepson277
- lUser realizes that the "screen is ugly" (i.e. fonts suck)
- lUser cannot get onto The AOL.
- of 100,000 units sold, 70,000 get returned.
- walmart takes a bath. "Linux Sucks" is now "proven" to all the business execs with buying power. Nothing scares the CFO like "losing money."
- Linux returns to it's ashes, the supergeek community.
linux may not be ready for this, folks.