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Fry's Electronics - Selling Linux... Or Not?
TheMadPenguin writes "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."
fry's is a great place to find cheap odds and ends and assorted hardware. Of course they compensate by not hiring anyone who knows anything. Fry's is the candy store for someone who knows what they're doing. Why would you expect more?
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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 PCs) is simple: If you are going to sell Linux boxes, please educate your staff on the subject, rather than allowing them to sound ignorant in front of your customers. It is an embarrassment to you as much as it is to the Linux community. Since you are selling Linux boxes, please make sure that they are set with a langua
The fry's in san diego sold out of their Thizlinux boxes quickly. One of the local LUG guys bought one, struggled with the interface (he couldn't find the counsel) then stripped the OS and installed RH. He was very happy with his ~100$ box afterwards.
I have to agree wholeheartedly that the Sacto store has something going on that makes it better than the other branches. I've been to Sunnyvale a number of times, and LA and Vegas once, but now that I live up in Sacramento I have no fear of going to Fry's. In fact, just 2 weeks ago I dropped around $1500 on a half ton of parts for a mammoth machine. The salesman (who was happy to get my big commission) was extremely helpful tracking down everything I needed, and wasn't afraid to say "I don't know" when the subject got over his head. Not having built a machine in a couple years there were some new technologies that I wasn't schooled on but he stepped right up with clear concise descriptions of it all and even had the ability to discuss the subjects in some detail.
AND!
I had to go back 3 days later to replace on of the hard drives I had just bought. I was in and out with a brand new HD within 15 minutes. And I didn't even have the packaging, just the reciept!
Maybe we're just lucky up here.
I've seen lindows boxes on the floor at walmart. Not open and on display, but in a big stack of boxes, right next to the big stack of dvd players and the big stack of tvs. I think people will buy anything walmart decides to stack in the middle of the aisle.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I bought machine from Frys with ThizLinux around one year ago. Back then it was pretty decent small linux box for very cheap price (around $400). It was cheapest PC they sold at the moment and I needed new small linux machine.
:)
The fact that it runs some linux distro was imprtant for me that hardware is compatible with Linux.
The first thing I did was to reformat it with RedHat Linux
Machine works perfectly and I am very happy.
I bought one with the SiS chipset and 1.1 GHz AMD Duron processor for $229. The hardware works, but you do get what you pay for.
The first thing you absolutely have to do is expand the memory. 32 Mb of the RAM is used for video so expanding it from 128 Mb (96 Mb useable) to at least 256 Mb (224 Mb useable) is mandatory. KDE barely loads in the original (128/96 Mb) configuration. I'm using 256/224 Mb right now and it is much better.
There is a reason why the KDE menu includes uninstall instructions, as does the manual. ThizLinux is a piece of unmitigated garbage and even they know it. It looks like a bastardized version of RedHat 8 converted to a combination of Chinese and English (Thiz is based in Hong Kong). Fry's probably receives these machines as-is from Hong Kong or China.
Now, as far as Linux distros that work on this machine, I'm typing this on my Fry's machine running Slackware 9 right now. It seems to work fine. RedHat 8 also works OK (as well as RH8 has ever worked but better than ThizLinux).
Mandrake 9.1 is a problem. The sound doesn't work (ALSA driver problem? It works in Slackware and RH8 with no ALSA) and neither does the wheel in the mouse (but it does see it as the middle button). Everything else seems OK, but I don't recommend Mandrake for this machine. It may be useable, but it shouldn't require this much work.
The SuSE 8.2 Live-Eval CD doesn't work with this chipset either. Don't even bother to try it. X won't even start. I tried installing it 4 times and it never was functional. That doens't mean a "regular" SuSE install won't work, but I don't have the full distro so I haven't tried it.
I haven't tried Debian, RH9, FreeBSD, Gentoo, or any other distro. They may work or they may not.
Same with any version of Windows. I would guess that at least Win98 would work. Based on other "odd" hardware I've tried to install it on, Windows 2000 might be a problem, but I haven't tried it on this box since I don't have it.
Overall, my recommendation for this cheap hardware is Slackware 9. This machine should only be purchased by those who can install their own OS.
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
Plus, I hate stores that make you "clear customs" before you can leave.
They can't legally enforce that without good reason to think you're stealing something -- otherwise, they can be legally sued for false arrest by detaining you as you walk out the door.
It's really happened, too (at least in Texas).
This isn't the case for places like Costco because agreeing to let them look through your purchases is in the agreement you sign when becoming a member.
I spent 3 years at the Fry's Corporate Headquarters as a consultant doing various Linux stuff for them. Note that this does NOT mean I worked for Fry's in the sense that I'm a drooling moron who can't tie his shoelaces without instructions. Actually, even that description is a bit inaccurate; Fry's has a videoconferencing network set up where vendors give technical product information to the sales associates so they at least have some foundation of knowledge with which to answer technical customer questions. I suspect that the popular perception of their associates comes from the fact that retail shops only exist because people want to feel superior or special somehow, and the folks on slashdot are at some extreme of the personality spectrum where they feel some overriding need to talk down to people at Fry's, or something. The associates in Fremont and Sunnyvale (the highest grossing store in the chain) actually know stuff like whether a motherboard will take DDR or what this onboard IDE raid thing means, for example; they're not all complete morons, especially now that they're picking up semi-technical people who got hit when the bubble burst.
One day at the corporate office when I was doing the ISP thing for them (John Fry had a hard-on for doing an ISP because he wants to be in some business with low-cost recurring service revenue, or something), they drop one of these boxes in my lap and said "give me your opinion of this thing". So I poke around and find out that it's a cheapo Asian Linux distribution with the then-amazing Linux port of PowerDVD so users could play DVDs on their Linux machine. Someone else and I grabbed a random sample DVD from the buyer's cubicles (an awful horror movie iirc) and tried to play it - worked mostly fine.
Then they wanted me to come up with installation procedures for Windows on the machines. I asked them why so I would have some context, and John did everything but say outright that they wanted to sell a machine that people could put their own operating system on. The reason why is because Fry's has this low price leader mentality where they feel something's wrong unless they have the lowest price on a certain product, and the Windows tax is applied pretty equally among the large computer manufacturers. The idea is that they could undercut everyone if they had a computer without an operating system... the fact that we were going to be supplying something with the machines (a set of instructions for installing Windows on the machines) demonstrated how important this was to them, because as a rule Fry's doesn't sell anything except what the vendor sticks in the box.
Regarding the posts about how there are people in the buying chain who understand Linux - yes, there are. There was a buyer who did do mainly Linux stuff, and had little stuffed penguins spread around his desk all the time. I was in there a lot asking about whether we would be carrying various things, or letting him know where he can get stuff from Loki to put on the shelves. At one point, they actually stuck the Wasabi distribution of NetBSD on the shelves, although it didn't sell very well.
Linux is actually pretty important for Fry's - at one point they were selling more of it than Windows, although I'm not sure that's still true now that the "hobbyist" feel is fading. The fact that Linux was outselling Windows was one of the main driving factors for Fry's to start sticking various infrastructure systems on Linux instead of Netware or Windows, which is what they've run in the past. They're still mostly Netware or Windows, but they're looking real hard at moving parts of outpost.com (their online sales group) onto Linux from Oracle/BEA/Solaris.
-- thalakan