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Wal-Mart Sells PCs Preloaded With Sun's Linux
badboy3062 writes "Wal-Mart this week started selling Microtel PCs preloaded with Sun's Java Desktop System. Prices start at under $300 for a system without a floppy drive or monitor. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's executive vice president for software, says this move is just another step in its plan to gain new audiences for its technologies."
This sounds great at first glance but my gut feeling is that most of these units sold will be reformatted with Windows. That's the ugly truth methinks.
Trolling is a art,
Does Sun require an annual support subscription for these things, like their enterprise versions?
Because if so, there's going to be a lot of unpatched Linux boxes out there in a year or so.
Reading the Walmart page (link in the article, or http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?cat=395 1&dept=3944&product_id=2592736&path=0%3A3944%3A395 1%3A41937%3A86796%3A132690) I finding it amusing that WalMart sells the Sun Linux OS as "the first viable Microsoft Windows alternative." Does this mean that Lindows and Mandrake, sold on other WalMart cheap-PC's isn't a viable alternative?
From what I understand, It's a Linux system, running a modified Gnome with some extra nicely well done integration with Java's runtime. I think more accurately it should be called the 'C' desktop.
I wonder if it's bundled with 'digital ready' speakers.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
I am a teacher and I wish more PC's would ship without floppy drives. When my students bring in disks from home (and I sometimes have 150 disks to deal with at a time), 1 in 3 has an error, and another 1 in 5 has a virus. I'd much prefer email or a USB flash drive!
Selling a $300 US computer with Linux is not "something that smacks of coolness." Wal-Mart just doesn't want to pay for an OEM Windows license, since that would end up being a significant portion of the cost. This is like Fry's on-the-cheap Linux systems. They cost ~$250 US, and use woefully outdated parts to achieve that low price. Adding a Windows license would kick that price up considerably.
And yes, yes it is.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
If the goal is Linux to the masses, I'm sad to report that the masses are at Walmart.
Because you know that a floppy drive adds hundreds to the manufacturing cost.
How much does it have to add to hit your profits on a $300 item? Say they make a 10% profit, that's $30, say the floppy drive costs $3. Not including the drive would increase profits by 10%. If a 10% increase in profits doesn't sound appealing to you then I'm going to guess that nobody lets you make those sorts of decisions.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
Maybe having Linux being "good enough for government work" isn't exactly the image we want Linux to have. Just like I think having Linux on cheap, disposable, sub-par computers from places like Wal-mart may not be the best thing either.
The real goal is to have people see Linux as a viable alternative, not a cheap Windows imitation or some eccentric thing the government uses.
main(0)
1 in 5 has a virus. I'd much prefer email or a USB flash drive!
and we all know that viruses can't be tranferred by email or a USB drive. i do agree that floppies are out dated and error prone, but getting rid of floppies isn't going to stop kids bringing in viruses.
Selling *anything* at WallyWorld practically guarantees broad exposure in markets that a vendor might not otherwise reach. Imagine if - years ago - you could have walked into [that store] and picked up an Ultra 10. I use the U10 as an example because it is/was essentially a low-end, mass-marketed (sort of) item from the Sun line. Wal-mart would be unlikely to carry the Ultra 60 just like they are unlikely to carry gigantic plasma TVs: the clientele probably are not the ones to buy high-end merchandise (or at least not buy it there).
PS Microtel makes very, very small communications devices. You're welcome.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Anyway even if this Linux based Wal-Mart PC did have an internal floppy drive the likelihood of it providing a breeding ground for spreading viruses is rather slim to say the least.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
MS probably won't do anything. If they were to do anything, they would have done it when Wal-Mart started selling computers with Lindows on them (reference the MS v. Lindows lawsuit). I have bought a few of the Lindows computers, just cuz they are cheap hardware. I don't care for lindows, I throw Mandrake on em and they run great.
bash: rtfm: command not found
I agree with that, and would add that they could just as easily sell it as an 'Internet Browsing' machine, or 'Word Processor', etc to appeal to the masses.
~Mike
So, let me take a guess and assume that the primary user is running with root level permissions? That may not be a good thing given 99% of the people who would buy a PC at Wal-Mart probably can't manage/secure their Windows based PC let alone a Linux box.
I think USB keydrives are the floppy of the future, though admittedly they are really expensive.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
I disagree. You now have two basic (non-tech) users- gamers and browser/shoppers. For the gamers the system isn't what they want- they'll beuild the overclocked AMD system from parts bought wherever. They may install Linux, but mostly likely it'll be windows.
For the browser/shopper the Linux box is almost ideal- no viruses, no un-necessary software and they can type letters, browse the internet and listen to streaming radio. It's all my Mother does and she's on Linux.
So if she can use it (and she's really not technical) then most people should get by.
# nohup
The reason everyone hates them is because they strong-arm suppliers into providing them product at prices costs below what any other retailer can purchase the same product at. So they can sell it for less than the smaller guy's cost, and still profit. Small(er) guy can't win, has to go out of business.
Seriously, if you care, do a search and educate yourself. It's not hard to find -- the web is literally covered with anti-WalMart material.
Plus the fact they dont need to pay for the * Internet security suite that is almost obligatory these days.
although what will happen when a regular joe finds they cant put AOL on their new budget PC? they'll buy a more expensive one that "works".
How many computers are too many?
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What's up with everyone wanting to put their linux stuff in walmart? Does it actually amount to sales? My guess is that having something to sell in Wallmart is more about PR than sales.
Wal-mart appears to not be very pro-windows, their back-end systems all appear to be Unix or a linux/bsd-based variant. In fact the handheld units on the floor run a version of linux (watching them do a reload is entertaining actually). Wal-mart has also been pushing towards this for quite a while, they want things at the lowest price to pass along savings. Right now in low-end PCs the single largest cost factor is the OS when you have Windows. These systems are fairly comparable to the $499 systems they've had from HP & eMachines, but the only real difference is the OS and they're over $200 cheaper each! Business-wise, especially for Wal-mart buy cheap then pass along savings business plan, going with a non-Windows based PC is a no-brainer.Sorry, I did not intend my earlier comment for flamebait. But I still believe that Linux is not suitable for people being introduced for the first time. With windows or macintosh, a non tech-savvy user can modify settings, install/uninstall software, and manage devices (cameras, scanners, etc) with friendly wizards. Linux, while it has made great steps in this direction, can't be as user-friendly as OS X. If these browser/shoppers could have a little training, this would be great for linux. But I think dropping machines with Linux on unsuspecting moms and families is a bad idea.
The only people who would buy a non-MS PC are relatively technically competent ("enough to be dangerous"), and the majority of these folks should be smart enough to know what a bad deal this is--you can piece together a much better system for the same $$$. Hello, eBay? So the target audience is...?
I don't know what the Sun Java Desktop is like personally, but it is probably pretty good - Gnome and StarOffice and all that jazz.
As such it should handle what most people use a PC for pretty well - internet, e-mail, chatting, letter to the bank manager.
You don't need Windows XP for these tasks.
Now the price is a bit high given the hardware - you could build the same for a lot less, but Walmart will be making a slice and Sun will be too I imagine.
And these boxes will be faster than 2.8GHz Celeron boxes judging from reviews online.
I hereby nominate you for the most-useless-use-of-a-footnote award.
XML causes global warming.
Right. I don't think what Linux really needs is to be associated with really ugly, underpowered, outdated systems (please no replies on how 1.6 GHz and 128 meg should be good enough or how you're running Linux on a postage stamp). This just make Windows look more like the luxury option.
But how much luxury is it? When I bought my first IBM compatible in 1989, the guy offered to knock $50 off if we went with PC-DOS (or was it DR-DOS) instead of MS-DOS. My dad got pretty pissed at the assumption that he couldn't afford the market leader in software when he was shelling out $2000 for a top of the line 386DX40 (AMD!) with a genuine SoundBlaster 8 bit soundcard. And the difference there was much more subtle...you could run pretty much any MS-DOS app on the alternative OS. You can't do that with Windows and Linux. It's not the difference between power windows or the crank. It's the difference between driving on the interstate, or having to drive backroads all the time. That's one hell of a decision for $50.
Do we really want Linux and Java to be known as the ghetto class solution? Is the benefit of "availability" in Wal-Mart worth the detriment of association with Wal-Mart, especially considering you can't buy a single Linux program at Wal-Mart?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Well look at that. Here is a link to save others a stop at google. Also found a tutorial. Whats the chances this microtel thing comes with a non-winmodem though if any at all?
It has nothing to do with Gates' strangle hold. That was the only decent part of the settlement that remained IIRC (Microsoft not being able to bully the OEMs). It has everything to do with marketability. Prove that Dell can make money selling desktops loaded with Linux and they will do it.
But who uses Linux right now? Mostly us geeks. Do us geeks buy computers from Dell? Most of the geeks I know (in r/l and on the net) build their own systems and wouldn't be caught dead with an oem box -- laptops usually excluded of course.
Dell and the other OEMs will sell Linux for the masses once the masses prove they will pay for a PC with Linux loaded on it. Not before.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If there is one company that can stand up to Microsoft and sell the OS that they want, it's WalMart.
The other computer OEMs haven't done it. They're not big enough to say "screw you, MS, were not paying $100/license"
WalMart is extremely interested in delivering the lowest price to their consumers, and removing the Microsoft OS is one way to do it.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
What's up with everyone wanting to put their linux stuff in walmart?
If I had to guess, it's because Wal-Mart is the only retail outlet that a certain monopolist can't bully. The reason Linux OS's are showing up there is that Wal-Mart doesn't care if they piss off the folks in Redmond.
--Mid
Until you try to walk out the front door after cashing out in the electronics or jewelry department so you wouldn't have to wait in the lines up front. Then they ask you if they can search your bags and see a receipt and when you refuse (I don't recall checking my civil rights at the door of Wal-Mart) they bully you with threats to call the cops. At which point (if you are a stubborn person who sticks up for your rights like me) you say "Go ahead." Eventually the manager comes out and after some explanation of the concept of civil rights and burden of proof (and a well timed threat to sue them for false arrest if they don't let you leave) they back down.
Go ahead and stop the teenager that you saw stealing makeup on your closed circuit TV system. But I'll be damned if you'll search my bags just because you didn't personally witness me checkout. Besides if I was going to steal something I'd think of something more valuable then chewing gum and a picture frame.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The Machine might be mediocre--much like many of the cheap desktops people are buying. However, a quick spin around the Wal*MART catalog shows that they are pushing the Sun Java Desktop brand along side Lindows and Lycoris. The Windows and No-OS machines they are selling use THE EXACT SAME HARDWARE, except that the Sun version costs $100 less than the Windows install. Sure, you can buy the WinXP box, but they're putting the same machines side-by side and effectively saying "Hey, you just use this for web browsing and email, why pay an extra $100 for the exactly the same machine that does exactly the same thing? Besides, Linux is cool and makes you look smart. You're smart, right?" Ka-ching.
Don't be so quick to write this off. They are truly offering what everyone has been asking for: CHOICE. Hell, I HATE Wal*Mart, but I give 'em kudos for this.
Oh, and I don't know if you noticed, but the kind of people who shop at Wal-Mart are the dregs of society.
The clientele is really just about everybody. However, you are contradicting yourself now. If what you say really were true, you would want a Wal-Mart, as it would draw only the "Dregs" out of your downtown, right?
That's not wanted in our town
Which town is it? I would bet you that your claim is not true. Everywhere Wal-Mart goes in over the objections of tiny mindless activist groups, the customers and workers flock there, proving it is wanted and that the so-called community activists were lying all along.
If it really isn't wanted, why not let it open? You'd prove a great point as this unwanted store closes within 5 months
(...but you and I know it would be quite popular, and your town would love it)
Instead of a night out shopping for cheap plastic shit made in Asia that we don't need,
Actually, people guy stuff at Wal-Mart because they have actual need for it. It is the good name-brand stuff as well. Sony is made in Asia, but it has a good reputation.
Really? So if you are a guest in my home that means I can require you to undertake a cavity search when you leave to make sure you didn't steal anything?
As if the closed circuit TV systems that monitor every square inch of the store aren't enough. Let's stop someone walking out of the store with a pack of chewing gum and a picture frame in his tiny little blue Wal-Mart bag to make sure he didn't steal anything!
My civil rights are violated if they ask to search my belongings to make sure I didn't steal anything. If they caught me on camera doing it then fine -- call the cops. But Wal-Mart employees don't have the power to require me to submit my items for inspection or to require me to remain there until the cops arrive. I'm sorry but that blue overcoat and smiley face t-shirt doesn't give you arrest powers.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"belief in Marxism forced capitalists in the US and Europe into broad concessions in order to preserve their system. That's the only reason that people have a decent standard of living."
It is the other way around. Belief in Marxism has created systems where the well-being of the rulers is paramount. The more Marxist a place has been, the more abject poverty there has been. Marxism has always made governments more oppressive and brought down the standard of living.
"Funny thing is that in 'Communist' China, Marxist ideology is actively repressed so that you can get your $30 slave labor"
Under Marxism, all labor is slave labor (everyone is owned by the state).
"Maybe you should read "Capital" before you snicker at it."
I did. It did a very poor job of describing history and current events, and its predictions are so off-base that of course it is a primer for the worst dictators ever to have fooled people into giving them absolute power.
Even then, you're paying for the "slap" step. Who decides what packages get included by default? What version of Debian? KDE or Gnome? Which default web browser? Which default mail program? Does the shipped kernel provide full support for every bit of hardware on the system?
Then, you have to pay someone to regression-test new packages and security updates to be reasonably sure that pushing a bugfix to your customers won't result in tens of thousands of disabled machines.
I assume you've heard the phrase "Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing", and in the corporate environment, this is very true: payroll time is, in fact, not very cheap at all. The question is whether Wal-Mart could get the per-unit costs of a home-rolled distribution to be lower than what Sun can offer, and as Wal-Mart isn't in the business of producing software for external clients, that very well may not be the case.
And a decent Linux hacker can roll a simple distro fairly quick 'n' cheap, by basing it off of another distro.
That hacker is wonderful and cost effective if he happens to be you, or if he works for your company and you can have him fix problems on-site as they occur. That same hacker is not useful in the situation where he's building a release that will run on (hopefully) millions of customers' desktops. In that case, you want an engineering team to design a system, then hand it of to a QA team that does their best to break it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Who is "we"?
What, do you think there should be some Arbiter of Right who says who gets to use Linux and who doesn't?
You say you have a goal. Why? Why do you care if more people use Linux? If it works for you, use it. If it doesn't, don't.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If you look at the major Desktop OSes out there (Windows and OSX for now), a VERY large portion of the drivers are not created by the OS vendor, they are created by the hardware vendor.
... we are our own barrier in this respect, and I can't honestly expect that hardware vendors will want to open up all of their drivers.
Do you seriously expect Microsoft or Apple to write your NVidia latest/greatest card driver? No.
How will Linux get to the point where there is better commercial driver support? By getting to the point where it is a major Desktop OS. That won't happen for all distributions, a couple will have to excel and get to the ubiquitous point.
Waitaminute though, half the people seem to argue against closed source drivers
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Unlike the "good old days", when each and every one of those towns had a Wolworth's, a Dairy Queen, two churches (one Catholic, one Protestant), and three bars?
Give me a break. Wal-Mart's arrival might have been bad news for the handful of people in town who owned corner drug stores (which were often Snyder franchises, even if they called themselves "Punytown Drug"), and small shops who were exploiting the monopoly of being the only place within 200 miles who sold hex-key screwdrivers, but it certainly didn't hurt the real hearts of small towns: The antique stores, the bait shops, the upscale boutiques, and the mom-and-pop restaurants. I pass through small towns all the time, and all that stuff is still there... in fact, the small-ish downtowns which have Wal-Marts nearby are often doing better than the ones that don't, because people are driving in from all the one-horse townships to do their shopping, and the towns with Wal-Marts have a lot more to offer.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I bough my 128MB usb drive for $50.
Now, put some data on it and hand it to someone who will probably never give it back. That was really expensive.
(where did I put those floppies...)
I still run on an 800MHz P3 desktop and a 600Mhz P3 laptop.
... the ability to show that we don't need to have a 2 or 3 GHz box to run a productive desktop. That is a very powerful argument for corporations who care FAR more about having long-term supportable environments than upgrading hardware or software due to the either obsoleting their environment.
Would I like newer hardware sure, but I don't need it.
Maybe this is what Linux needs
Besides, $300 is the first SKU, it goes up to a 3GHz hyperthreaded box. They're just giving a range of choices.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Dell could easily sell the computer with Dell Linux and everyone would buy it. Its the Dell name brand that people want, not the Microsoft Windows crap.
They trust Dell, and if Dell were to say that Linux is the next big thing, well it is. Without Dells support Windows XP would have never taken off! Windows 98 was far more compatible at the time and XP wouldnt run any dos based games or 16 bit software.
Why do people use XP now? Because OEMs shoved it down their throats. No one went to a store and purchased XP, XP sold because new computers just come with XP instead of 98/ME. Many people including myself removed XP and put Windows98 or 2000 on there.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I suspect the same people that will buy these systems are the people that use AOL as their internet provider. I doubt the geek crowd will buy them because they're underpowered. The office "power user" crowd won't buy them because they're not loaded with Windows and Office. The remainder are casual internet users. These people don't know what Windows is, yet alone Linux. Many of these same people also use AOL as their internet provider.
How is Walmart/Sun/Etc... going to deal with the fact that AOL does not run on Linux? I expect massive returns of these computers if that issue isn't solved.
Dell may help bring a version of windows (such as XP) to the masses. But that's much easier to do than bring a completely different operating system to the masses. I think Dell can help (as well as other vendors). But Linux needs to establish itself as a viable desktop alternative.
What average Joe is going to buy a computer that doesn't have Windows and MS Office on it? Even if there were alternatives (Linux & Open Office) it's a complete turn off and wouldn't work unless the price was drastically different.
Seeing prices on Dell's nowadays...I don't see that happening.
Better than Flickr - Manage, Share, Archive
How is that you can even logically have a mail-in rebate to a mail-order company?
I understand the logic of why they do it. But the fact that "we" as the public go along with that escapes me.
Made-up senerio:
Me: "I'd like to buy your widget for $279"
Them: "That will be $379 on your credit card then?"
Me: "I thought it was $279?"
Them: "It's $379 with a $100 mail-in refund to the manufacturer."
Me: "Aren't you the manufacturer?"
Them: "Yes"
Me: "Don't you know that I'm talking to you and buying it right now? Why do I have to send you proof of purchase and a rebate form, to prove to YOU who I'm talking to, that I purchased the product, that you are selling to me, NOW to get a discount on the price that YOU'VE set?"
Oh, and I don't know if you noticed, but the kind of people who shop at Wal-Mart are the dregs of society. It pulls in about the same clientele as strip clubs and pawn shops. That's not wanted in our town.
Great insight, Mr. Free Pron! Pot calling kettle black, maybe??
Unlike Perl Python and the others Java scared the crap out of MS management about the time of the adoption of the internet. They are smart enough to know that the reason Windows sells so well is that there are huge network effects (the system becomes more valuable the more users you have) to operating systems. ie developers write for the platform that has the most potential users and users choose the platform with the most software. MS figured this out early and ran with it. They saw Java as a new platform that didn't care what you ran underneath it (Windows, Solaris, MacOS) they all run Java progams fine. Taken to it's extreme it means the OS is merely an interface between Java programs and hardware (since Java would be the method of software delivery users would choose the cheapest OS that enabled Java or the one that ran it best, SUN). MS obviously didn't want this to occur without a good fight so they purposely broke the Java standard with their own Java VM that added a bunch of features specific to Windows. This meant that there were effectivly two types of Java SUN's and MS's and software written for MS Java wouldn't work on SUN's JVM. Since MS could easily bring hundreds of millions of users to their JVM they won that battle. That's a big reason why they got into the last round of anti-trust hot water both here and in Europe. The browser wars would have been better termed the JAVA wars. It's also why SUN has been on a Quixotic quest to destroy MS's monopoly.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
In addition to the reply you've already gotten, because those technologies were not created, nurtured and depended upon by any one commercial entity.
... it is more in Microsoft's (IBM as well) interested to undermine it than it would be for them to go after any of the other items. If anyone were to fork gcc, python, perl or whatnot they would have no effect on Microsoft or Sun.
Sun created Java and has a significant stake in it's success
In the case of Java, though, Microsoft has the ability to push out to a HUGE install base (how many microsoft users would ever think about installing any of the other items you mentioned). If Python or Perl or Sendmail, etc ever became items that were useful to the end user, I think you very likely -would- see MS "embracing" their own versions.
Listen, I'm not saying that Java wouldn't be more ubiquitous if it were open sourced, but that is only one factor in the equation.
Besides as a commercial product I think it would be harder to find a more fractured product than the Linux kernel. Each distribution uses slightly different versions and that often requires device drivers and services to be compiled specifically for each and every commercial distribution. That has continually hampered Linux adoption in business. Very much what Sun is trying not to have happen to Java.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
You're not too quick, it seems. The company (Dell in this case) can offer the product for $279 if they offer it with a rebate. They know that they'll only pay out maybe 50% of the rebates. If they just gave everyone the discount, they know that they could only offer the product at $279 + $50 (i.e. 50% of the $100 rebate). So they would have to advertise it as being $329. If some other company offers a similar product at $279 (after $100 mail-in rebate), more people will go to buy the "$279" one and they'll lose sales.
That's the secret. Rebates are a trick of statistics.
My other first post is car post.