Slashdot Mirror
Finally A Major-Brand Desktop With Linux, Not Windows
Fugwidzard writes "Sounds like an okay box from HP at an okay price, the NewsForge review says, but no modem, and even optional modems are Winmodems although they say they have Linux drivers for them. Plus it's not a true Linux preload - they give you a couple of Mandrake CDs and you're on your own, no support. Better than paying Microsoft tax, anyway, and a step in the right direction for HP. Supposedly they're going to have all their PCs 'Linux certified' in the near future. I hope other big PC mills do the same."
"Windows version of the d220 does include a modem option, but it is a Winmodem. HP tells me there is a Linux driver available for it on the Internet."
So if I read this right, you have to go on the Internet and download a driver for the modem in your new PC. Um, unless I have broadband, how am I supposed to get on the Internet to download this driver?
Seems about as smart as putting the installation instructions for your CD-ROM drive on a CD...
My guess is this is a testing-of-the-water here, see how things go over, probably mixed with wanting to take the easiest route. So, they toss out a machine, note they'll have everything certified, and see how it goes in the commercial market.
.
On a related note, how long is it going to be until SCO is mentioned in these comments . .
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
There has been a major brand desktop computer without Windows, since 1984 even. There's lots of good reasons for Linux vs owning a Macintosh, but you've had choices before this.
--
$tar -xvf
Yes, a step in the right direction but... Why couldn't they do it right? It wouldn't take much for a company like HP to do a decent preload. (Even Lindows has accomplished this!) I'm sure that HP has the right infrastructure and skills to do this job right. Just good enough should not be good enough!
www.mikesmind.com - www.daddyworkathome.com - www.freetofarm.org - www.tenfoottable.com
It is indeed good news that one of the bigger vendors is putting a Linux box in their catalog... However, just giving a blank box and a CD set is not the way it should be done.
Quite a lot of software should be preloaded, all nicely set-up to enable the buyer to start using it right away. When, in a later stage, someone asked him if his PC worked well with this all new, thing-of-the-underworld, very-neet-and-1337, futuristic OS on it. Only if the person can say then "yeah, sure, it had everything on it, I plugged it in and it started in 60 seconds, it came with an office suite preloaded and i browsed the internet and read e-mails in no-time...".
Only then Linux will Linux hit the home-market.
"Plus it's not a true Linux preload - they give you a couple of Mandrake CDs and you're on your own, no support."
That's the way I prefer it, actually. Whenever I buy a manufactured PC, no matter who it's from, the first thing I do is format and reinstall, even if I stick to the OS provided. Who knows what was installed from the factory? (Probably nothing bad but all it takes is one bad employee.)
I can't say I'm surprised by the company not offering support. Having worked supporting home PC users I know that they're far from savvy and can be testing at the best of times, downright infuriating at worst. If you then throw 'Linux' into the mix which is less user friendly than Windows - though it is getting friendlier by the day - you'd end up with a lot of frustrated users and techs. I doubt we'll see Linux being installed and fully supported on PCs sold to Joe Public till it's at least as user friendly as Windows. Which for all its faults, is quite hard to mess up.
That's the disappointing aspect of this - it seems like a rather half-hearted attempt rather than a strongly committed push. What is truly needed is a Tier One supplier to produce a preloaded Linux desktop with basic productivity apps like OpenOffice already installed - the sales pitch needs to stress ease of management, affordability, and security. I don't see how this rollout really hits those points...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
To play DVDs
Many people today are using broadband
Don't count on it. Linux is used a lot in poor countries where broadband is not an option.
Not that this matters though, since this product is aimed at the US market.
> Anyone who would be using Linux, at least in the USA, would just build thier own system
First of all, the d220 is aimed at business users, who want a warranty and generally don't build their own (as far as I've seen). I could also see clueless home users buying these at the advice of their pirate friend who would be happy to load Windows on it for free.
I prefer to buy an external for a number of reasons and a few extra when dealing with Linux.
I like being able to turn the modem off when I'm not using it. Some modems are preconfigured to answer the phone some aren't. It's just easier to turn it off when it's not being used.
More portable. Being that modems won't be upgrading any time soon the option of installing my modem on future PCs is very appealing.
But more than that a good RS232 port modem is pritty much universal.
Everything from the old Commodore 64 (with RS232 cable) to an iMac (with USB to sereal addapter) and everything in between.
I have a dial up modem had one for years and I don't even use it.
The modems offered by OEMs are always Win modems not worth it.
I did once consider buying a modem card but that was becouse the sereal card wasn't much cheaper. But I stayed my course.
Anyway for $20 a month I get cable internet a 64k baud. Not quite broudband of course but it's cheap and effective. No screwed up phone lines to deal with.
I don't actually exist.
... for first asking a question that the answer was obvious, and secondly for acknowledging that the answer was there all along, right in front of his nose. Moderators are definitely on crack this morning.
I hope that most people who have gotten past using the major brand-name monopoly operating system have similarly gotten past using a major brand name company-who-puts-computers-together (and I use this expression because I think to say that they build computers is a bit absurd)...
Not always. The benefit of building a machine yourself is not that it's cheaper, but that you can build using quality parts for an affordable price. I would imagine the motherboards and video cards in the average budget brand-name PC are crap compared to what you can buy OEM from a parts shop when building your own.
You and I can put together a top end machine, the sort that HP and Dell only hawk to the business market, for a fraction of what they charge. We support ourselves and thus don't have to pay for it, while at the same time OEM discounts on componants aren't as deep at the high end.
But don't fool yourself. The mass builders can put together bargain basement junk at a tiny fraction of the price you and I can do it, and still turn some sort of profit margin. They buy low end video cards and motherboards by the millions and do a lot better on the per unit price than you can find. They throw in power supplies that would make you shudder and they don't exactly get their cases from Addtronics.
These are throw away machines. The customers for them know they are throw away machines. They are price sensitive to the penny.
You can't match them to the dollar.
KFG
Given the pricing of this box, you can:
spend $467 and throw the Linux CDs away
spend $519 and throw the Windows XP Home CDs away
spend $589 and throw the Windows XP Pro CDs away
Which do you do?
(Those of you out there really in IT support can now tell me what's wrong with the above. My last sysadmin work was around 1996...)
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Somehow I doubt getting source code from Mandrake is going to be hard to do. Oh..I don't know... Their FTP site maybe?
The source has to be available to you, not included in the box.
Because nobody cares? Pick a random person off the street and then offer them a computer without Windows. They'll look at you like you just shit on their front porch. That'd be like giving them a car without an engine, but hey, you can build your own engine using parts from the store and this handy instruction HOWTO. The average Joe does not care about Linux. They just want to browse the web, read their e-mail, and play some games. Don't take it as some personal insult that most people don't want to run Linux.
Dell never really cared for their linux offering. You ever try to talk to them about it? They would keep pushing the Windows machines like linux was a last alternative. They really sucked when it came to offering linux. So when they found that not marketing linux, and not offering it to the general public produced little to no sales they killed it. It was a token gesture to say that they offered linux and it didn't work. Now their boss(Microsoft) could say that linux doesn't sell. Eventhough that's wrong they have sales stats that show they didn't sell. No matter that Dell did the crappiest job of marketing linux and those machines. So Dell is NOT a major player in linux.
from the numbers published over the last few quarters, it really looks like HP is losing the PC war with Dell (well, basically everybody is losing). Is HP pushing this because they're desperate enough to try anything (including risk a MS reprisal)?
I mean, nobody's under any illusions when it comes to whether or not MS plays hardball, right? You get the feeling this is one of those ventures where they hope to sell "many, but not so many as to trigger MS unhappiness"... between a rock and a hard place indeed.
I usually roll my own but for my last upgrade, I looked at pre-built systems to save time and aggravation. Since Linux would be going on anyway, Not paying the M$ tax would be a bonus. Not having to dick around with setting up sound, video etc etc etc. would be more of a bonus.
It may only be $52, but it's $52 that Bill's not getting.
Anyone not able to put a PC together in under an hour should not be running Linux anyway. If you don't have enough knowledge for the first step, you sure as hell won't be able to understand the second...
I disagree here. I've been using Linux/BSD/UNIX since 1994. I didn't start putting together my own PCs until around 2001. Sure, its not hard once you go ahead and do it, and I could've done it long ago. But there are a few mistakes you can make. Some people just don't know what they are doing putting together a PC, but are excellent with software. I've heard of people dropping their CPU causing it to fail, bending pins on the CPU, incorrectly installing a heatsink, damaging RAM, incorrectly clearing the CMOS (by taking the jumper off, leaving the battery in and turning on the machine), etc. Just being clumsy can be enough to screw things up. You have to take your time. And sometimes things aren't straightforward. I've had issues with certain motherboards that even your bearded UNIX guru would've had trouble with.
Sure, if your going to make stupid mistakes with your hardware, you're probably going to make stupid mistakes with software. But people gotta start somewhere. At least with software, the mistakes don't cost money.
Also, if you want a warranty on your machine, you're only choice is to buy the machine from a system builder. People who use their systems for doing actual work tend to go this route, regardless of whether or not they can build their own.
Refer to my previous comment where I mentioned their lousy bargaining position with Microsoft. Microsoft OEM licenses forbid selling PCs with no OS. Dell gets around this by mailing a FreeDOS diskette with a machine, and now HP is sidestepping it with the Mandrake Disk offer.
The question is, if a user is buying a machine with no OS, why would they buy it from a big name instead of building it themselves cheaper, and why would a big name want to support it not knowing what the user will have installed on it.
How many flavours of Linux are there? BSDs? Plan9? BeOS? Ancient operating systems that have no business being on the PC except that a Geek owns it? How can a big name hope to support all those configurations?
Simple answer: They don't. They expect that if you're going to roll your own OS solution you'll also roll your own hardware solution. If you want OS-less PCs to avoid the "Microsoft tax" there are vendors out there who specialize in that. Tier One vendors specialize in selling you a preconfigured solution that they can support.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Someone know how to let the members of the European Parliament know about this? I believe that only if PCs come dual boot, the abuse of Microsofts monopoly can be broken.
Bert
PC manufacturers are guilty of perpetuating monopoly abuse by M$ until they include a partition with Linux pre-installed