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Buy Lindows, Get Fedora and Mandrake Too?
tacarat writes "Lindows has an interesting deal going on right now. If you go to Linuxshootout.com, you can get Linspire/Lindows 4.5, Mandrake 10 and Fedora Core 2 or a mere $29.95 download or $39.95 for the 8 CD set. Yahoo! News covers this story. Quoting Michael Robertson,'Our emphasis on Linspire is ease of use -- making Linux quick and easy to install and use,' he said. 'Other products may have a different focus. That doesn't mean they aren't great products, just that their focus may be different. Every new Linux computer helps the Linux desktop industry, regardless of what company's product you choose'. Also, 'We want to encourage side-by-side comparisons of the latest Linux products.' Interesting strategy. Will their sales go up because people are buying Lindows plus the other two distros, or will it be the other way around?"
This isn't a terrible plan if you a truly confident in your product. I think we've seen that Robertson is confident in Linspire, and although he may be controversial, I think he's done a lot to promote Linux. Promotion is not a bad thing, and from my experience, Linspire is not a bad introductory distro, so this is probably a good thing.
Bill Claybrook vice president at market research firm Harvard Research Group, said he can't see the point to Lindows' three-in-one packaging. "Who is going to pay money to download three Linux distributions?"
...
Retail-box is also useless because one order mandrake and fedore CD from chapbytes.com and host of other websites for less $$
Looks like lindows is having hard time selling their *own* product
In fairness, it looks like The "Click-N-Run" is $49 initially for one year. Not sure what the renewal costs, but I think you just buy another one year licence.
Apt-get is free and great for experienced users, but it can be tough for new users to understand. Packages aren't always organized cleanly, and there is lots of old kruft on the Debian tree (How many text editors would a non-techie need?).
I've easily spent more then $49/year of my personal time dealing with problems from Apt-get.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Which is interesting, because they miss an opportunity to slam Fedora -- it *doesn't* come with built-in MP3 support (licensing issues), and they say it does. OTOH, they say Fedora *doesn't* have pop-up blocking available, and of course Mozilla has included that for a long time.
Kind of stupid, in my opinion. Still, it's an interesting way to persuade people to try them *all* out -- ain't the GPL great?
The site is produced by Lindows, and the bias is obvious. What makes me laugh even more is the example shootout with the "magic eraser" that makes it clear that they think Lindows is the best distro available. There is no talk about compensating the Fedora and Mandrake products, and there is only minimal support included. If a site doesnt clearly display such an important bias, I normally write it off (just like MartinLutherKing.org ... yet another example of where a (very important ) bias is not discussed)
I agree in that this seems to be a great idea. However, it would be interesting to see the "comprehensive" checklist they've included with that bundle. Notice how the screenshots on the Web site only show pictures for Linspire.
I think it's clear that Michael Robertson believes in Linux. I don't think he intends to compete with other distros in a dishonest fashion. Lindows are clearly entitled to use this bundle to promote Linsipre not only over Windows but over said other distros... I just wonder how are they doing it? (If they are doing that to being with)
In any event, it's a great marketing trick. Hope they manage to attract enough customers with it!
The revolution will not be televised.
Can anyone explain to me why I would want to give someone a distro that runs the root user as the system default (a.k.a. windows baggage).
In fact, I went to Frye's the other day, saw the Lindows demo, brought a manager over and showed him how to foobar the entire distro in 10 seconds by changing the /etc/passwd file (with the default root environment)
There is a business model available in somebody creating a pay-for-access server full of OSS software... the feature being that you don't have to fight the rest of the world to get what you want when you want it.
For that matter, ISPs should see value in mirroring major OSS distros on servers within their network... let customers use local bandwidth without having to the real "Internet" backbones, and that saves money for the ISP in the long run.
To me it seems like three diffrent levels of distros in userfrendlyness, to the new linux user.
- Lindows for the newbie
- Mandrake for the more novice
- Fedora for the more expreienced and experimenting
This could be the package for people new to linux wanting to try it out.. And ready to blow their machine up some times.
Lindows is indeed a soft switch for those migrating to linux from windows. But somewhat locked into that position.
This would perhaps mean that the user buys at least one CnR license, then realizes he doesn't realy have to pay anything and switches to the one with the cutest penguin(mandrake?).
Perhaps better for Linux in general than for the Lindows distro.
Mohahah!
My university does that. Since I have never actually used their services before, I can't really say what distros are actually available. It definitely helps the people living on campus, since a lot of them would like to get their hands on Linux distros, but would have to save up three month's of "download rations" in order to get it if it were to go through the Internet.
There's also an office on campus that burns Linux distros for CDN$1.50/CDR (or free if you bring your own), but that's a different story.
This seems like a pretty clever plan to get people to try their distro. They give the user the "comfort" of being able to thing "Oh, this is good... at least if I don't like Linspire I can try out the others... there's bound to be one distro I'll like," and even if that person does end up choosing one of the others, at least they made a profit.
Were I a newbie looking to try out Linux, I would probably test drive Mandrake or Fedore before giving Linspire a spin, so this seems like a clever way to profit off that tendency.
Let me rephrase that: it alleviates the first half of the problem --
There is a business model available in somebody creating a pay-for-access server full of OSS software... the feature being that you don't have to fight the rest of the world to get what you want when you want it.
Of course, the ISPs could sense BitTorrent files going through their pipes and start their own temporary tracker. That would seemingly take care of the second half.
A long time ago there was a cheap cd set available in shops, that had 5 or 6 distros on it. I think it was called InfoMagik but I'm not sure. Anyway, that was back in the day that not too many people had heard of Linux, and it was still pretty popular. So I guess the strategy might work. Lots of people will probably buy a CD so they won't need to download 2 distros that might take them over a download limit... At least people that might already be considering buying Lindows might jump on it with this offer..
karma capped
It's a very canny move. By giving these away free but charging for the product they are coming with, they will draw people that would otherwise have bought CDs from their competitors thereby decreasing the revenue of the competitors while increasing their own revenue.
Lindows is stripped down so much that probably only the extreme newbie (as in computer newbie, not so much Linux newbie) will find it suitable.
This weekend I bought my father a $150 Great Quality machine from Fry's. They used to come with Thiz-Linux, and now they come with Lindows preinstalled. I actually went ahead and installed FreeBSD on it instead, but I did take Lindows for a test drive, and in some ways I was really impressed. Heck, maybe my dad would have been better off if I'd left Lindows on it. One cool thing was that it automatically configured itself correctly for my piece-of-**** LCD monitor, which, e.g., Knoppix choked and died on. Although it was a little disconcerting to find out that typing `man' in an xterm gave `bash: man: command not found,' it really looked like a reasonably nice system for people who just want a GUI. The desktop was configured a lot like Windows, which I'm sure would be comforting for a lot of switchers. I mean, not everybody is a slashdotter -- there are secretaries where I work who still are afraid of Word three years after being forced to switch from WordPerfect.
Find free books.
They can charge you for the distribution of the Linux software. Also Linspire/Lindows contains commercial code that does not fall under the GPL. Sort of like CrossOver Office being based on WINE. While you can download WINE for free, CrossOver Office is only available if you pay for it. Such is the same deal for Linspire/Lindows.
;)
Finally a Linux company with a workable business plan, find a way to make Linux pay off besides just charging for support and Tux Dolls.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Spent the weekend at Mom & Dad's house trying to get Linspire (nee Lindows) to print a test page on his Epson inkjet (connected via LPR/LPD on a DLink print server). Started: 4pm; Finished: 9am the next morning. Next I loaded RedHat 9 -- same thing.
Stuff like this is why OSS software will have a tough time displacing software from Redmond.
Chip H.