Mandrake to Come Preloaded on Wal-Mart PCs

surfimp writes "Here's a story from NewsForge: 'MandrakeSoft CEO Jacques Le Marois confirms the news this morning, and company spokeswoman Margaret Waters says, while a contract with Microtel has not been finalized, the company is working on getting Mandrake certified to run like clockwork on the Microtel systems. Waters is hopeful that the dotted line will be signed and PCs up for sale by the end of next week.'" Update: 06/20 17:21 GMT by T : Ooops! The Mandrake spokeswoman's name is Margaret Waples, not Waters. Apologies, and thanks to Todd Lyons of Mandrakesoft for the correction.

Comments

Not at Walmart, at walmart.com

[ShawnDoc]

For those that are too lazy to read the story, the computers pre-loaded with Mandrake are going to be available at walmart.com, not at Wal-Mart retail stores. There's a difference.

Re:wow

[BionicElf]

WalMart doesn't provide support for anything they sell. Typically, there's a card in the box that you use to register with the source company (in this case, MandrakeSoft) to get support. I would assume the same practice would be followed here.

Mandrake is the most palatable...

[Nijika]

If I were to wish for the american public to have the first taste of one version of Linux, it'd be Mandrake. Mandrake in my opinion has always been the friendliest. Others have tried but Mandrake always managed to keep the install reasonable.

Re:Who's tried Lindows?

[macdaddy357]

I'd like to try Lindows, but you have to cough up $99 to join their insiders program, and sign a non-disclosure agreement, so I haven't. Lycoris is another distro aimed at the desktop for people who only know windows, and you can download it free. http://www.lycoris.org/

Re:wow

[astrashe]

I think that WalMart is trying to push prices lower, and that choice is a byproduct of that. They are as feared and hated in their circles as Microsoft is in the tech world.

Small computer shops in California are selling decent PCs without OSs or monitors for under $300. The cost of the OS is becoming a more significant chunk of the total price, and if you want to push the prices way down, you've got to confront it.

For all we know, this is brinksmanship, and Wal Mart is just trying to push MS into giving them special deals on OS pricing. They've done that to other suppliers.

Good News

[Anonymous Coward]

but the systems will only be listed on the website. Linux based PC's are easy to find this way already, although not by someone with such a big name...

PogoLinux

HP

Nixit

HP/Compaq

and now Walmart.

There are probably others too.

Re:The only way this will succeed...

[JabberWokky]

There's no solution for WMP, of course. For everything that you mentioned in your comment, WMP is the only valid point. Lack of WMP support just may be a problem on these computers. But it won't be a big one.

Look into mplayer. It plays just about everything: WMV files, DVDs, DivXs, and of course, all your MPGs, AVIs, VIVO files, etc. Excellent support for acceleration, video capture and other hardware features. It is very stable, and does full screen beautifully. There are several GUI interfaces for it now - probably it's major weakeness, as since there is no "standard one", there's not a single really strong one with semi standard interfaces. Work is being done on interfacing it to aRts, so any KDE player interface can control it, though.

--
Evan

Hardware Specs for $299 Unit

[Milican]

I e-mailed Microtel Computer Systems and asked them what their hardware specs were for their SYSMAR701 PC With 850 MHz Duron. I got a response back on 6/17/2002. Anyway, the motherboard for the $299 PC is the MSI MS-6378X-L (MS-6378 V.3) [msicomputer.com]. A quick rundown of major specs is shown below:

• 200/266MHz FSB, Supports AMD Duron/Athlon/Athlon XP up to 2000+
  
• Ultra DMA 66/100, 2 PC100/133 DIMM Sockets up to 1GB
  
• Integrated Trident Blade3D AGP Graphics Engine shared memory up to 8MB
  
• Micro-ATX Form Factor, 3 PCI, 1 CNR, AC 97, 2 USB, AGP 2x
  
• ADMTek AN983B 10/100 BaseT Ethernet
  

Also, I should note the motherboard used changes based on model. Not bad for a $299 PC with Linux!

JOhn

P.S. Big thanks to Rich at Microtel for the quick repsonse :)

Re:Hardware Specs for $299 Unit

[MsGeek]

Anyway, the motherboard for the $299 PC is the MSI MS-6378X-L (MS-6378 V.3)

That's no slug of a motherboard. I was expecting PC Chips crap, like EliteGroup or Amptron, but MicroStar International is not a company that makes crappy motherboards.

I've had one exemplary experience in dealing with MSI. I was putting together a machine with an ancient 486 motherboard. It was a weird bugger too...it had PCI SLOTS and none of the VESA Local Bus slots you expect on a 486. Anyway, I needed the jumper diagrams and the support area of the web site had nothing.

What did those nice folks at MSI do for me? They scanned the whole Fine Manual for me to a series of .JPGs, then they emailed the .JPGs to me. I had my jumper settings, they had a happy customer.

These machines are BARGAINS, folks. And to have them preloaded with a DECENT Linux distro is a Very Good Thing (tm) indeed. Yeah, Wally-Mart is an evil place. But so are most of the other big discount store chains. And often, what Wally-Mart does, more palatable establishments like Target will follow.

Ha ha, Bill Gates! Just watch as the floodgates open, and there's a cascade of bargain PCs with Linux pre-installed rushing out over the country!! Did I hear a "Glub, glub" somewhere near Redmond, WA?

PS: who makes their hard drives?

Re:Passing the Savings

[DunbarTheInept]

This is untrue. Microsoft has complained about certain manufactuers, and in many cases BIG manufactuerers, who knowingly sell "naked" (non-OS'd) machines to people for the express purpose of them pirating Windows.

Speaking of "untrue", selling a naked PC to someone so they can install the OS software they *already have* on it is not piracy, no matter what FUD from the industry you are swallow. If I want to upgrade to a newer, better machine and ditch the old old, but I'm not changing OSes, it is not piracy to re-use my existing copy of the OS. It only becomes piracy if the new and the old computer are in use at the same time, and both have the OS installed from one common copy.

I have way more copies of Windows (legally) than I do machines to put them on.

If ordering from an OEM and putting Windows on, I would prefer to put on my own store-bought copy of windows than use a broken "for OEM only" version that doesn't even come with the re-install disks and instead has some useless "system restore" disk that fails if I've upgraded any software or hardware. However, I don't want to have to pay MS for the OS twice to do this, which is what happens when I had no choice but to get the pre-installed OS with the computer.

Re:without MS all PCs should cost a lot less

[zerocool^]

The suggested retail price for Ms XP is $200.

That is a stiff item at the low end.

OEMs like Hpaq, IBM, DELL and Gateway should begin to offer PCs sans OS as an alternative.

You're missing 2 things:

1.) Windows does not cost us the same per licence as it does HP or Dell. They get it at a discount.

2.) In accordance with their agreement with Microsoft, they get a discount IF and ONLY IF they put Windows on EVERY MACHINE THEY SELL. Hence why if you buy a comptuer from dell, you get windows. Now, if you buy a server from dell, you can get no OS or RedHat or one of several options, but that's a seperate agreement.

So, In order for the big guys to sell computers sans OS, they lose all discounts on other copies of windows they get, something that would cost them more in the long run.

Regards,
Will