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Big Retailers Timid About Selling Linux Boxen
RollWaves75 writes "Jay Lyman reports in IT Manager's Journal that major Linux retailers like Wal-Mart, CompUSA, Fry's and Best Buy are being timid and waiting to see how a small, Midwest-based chain called Micro Center fares in selling Linux software. Turns out that Micro Center not only is out-selling Wal-Mart in Linux systems, it is taking the bold step to have Linux-knowledgeable clerks and trained sales support for customers like you and me." From the article: "[Kevin Carmony] described three levels of mainstream retail Linux: Wal-Mart, which provides no sales support, only offering its Linux machines online; Fry's, where Linux is viewed as a loss leader on the ultra low end; and Micro Center, which is only carrying Linspire Linux at this point, but is behind Linspire's in-store training for reps, Micro Center Marketing Communications Manager Ed Lukens told ITMJ in an email. He said the chain, which is selling boxed and pre-installed Linspire 5.0 desktops and notebooks, will promote the Linux systems with offers through its direct mail pieces."
good luck!
I used to live in Houston, TX (back when the world was young), and Micro Center was easily the best computer store in the city. They supported Windows and Mac equally, both with hardware, software, and classes. I am not surprised that they are doing so for Linux as well. In my opinion, this is exactly what Linux needs: Public exposure through a local store that can provide technical support to your average home user when it is needed.
I think it's time to give my local Micro Center store a visit.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Mostly I'm going to watch this thread to see how lively the 'boxen' discussion gets. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
all hail Linux.
Merchants are wary of selling a computing product that is all-but-unknown to the public at large? You don't say!
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Wal-mart has been selling Linux boxes for years though, so why is this news?
Pay girls to strip!
Linux-Knowledgeable Clerks
When is the last time you met a Knowledgeable Clerk in any retail store?
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
your life has meaning
Cool, I'll have to check out the local MicroCenter in Cambridge. Now when I'm talking to folks about dumping Windows for Linux I have somewhere to send them to see that this is available on computers sold in stores -- not just downloaded by geeks like me...
Volume!
Somehow I find this highly doubtful....
I may not particularly like Linspire, but I am glad to see the exposure for Linux. There are two Microcenters here in Atlanta, and I frequent one of them (as well as the Fry's just down the road), and while the salespeople are pushy (comission), some of them actually know what they are talking about.
Fry's has been selling Athlon/Sempron boxen running Linspire (Lindows) for years. There's one in today's LA Times for $149, for example.
We've got one here in the DC area, and it's a pretty great store. Not as impressive a selection as Fry's, but competitive in terms of price. And they tend to have a pretty good selection of really great blowout deals on a month to month basis on routers, last-gen videocards and miscellaneous geek paraphenalia like rechargeable batteries and memory card readers.
I miss Michael...
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
and waiting to see how a small, Midwest-based chain called Micro Center fares in selling Linux software
There is one of these in Fairfax, VA. How are they midwest?
That said, I'm gonna have to stop by my local one and check out the linux boxes. Been a while since I have been in there. Oh, and link to locations.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
...I would be timid to sell an OS for Losers too.
Retailers are leary of selling something that most of their employees do not understand. How many times have you overheard a box store employee telling a customer something completely wrong because they have no clue?
Seriously though, I really like shopping there. Stuff that should be cheap (cables for instance) is, and their sales people have half a clue.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Yes, but how much support will they provide if I want to install an alternative, non-mainstream operating system such as the almost ready for prime time Microsoft Windows XP?
Seriously, though, this will certainly be a test of Linspire's slogan of being "the world's easiest desktop Linux."
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
I can't think calling them "boxen" helps.
Hey Mister! You wanna buy some Linux boxen?
Get away from me you freak!
One of the things that I think will happen if this catches on enough will be the creation of a "Best Buy" distro of Linux, or something similar for other stores. Standardizing will allow them to have more control over how the system works and will reduce the amount of training that a store's techs will need. Seeing the "Best Buy" logo every time you boot the computer would be a nice piece of advertising, too.
At the very least, each companies will probably 'partner' with a prefered distro in order to control them.
From the article: "the bulk of Linux systems sold end up with other operating systems, particularly pirated Windows, likening the situation to PCs that ship to China. "I think they may end up with Windows," he said. "The stores just say, 'Look, it had an operating system on it when it went out the door. That's all we know. Hear no evil, see no evil."
I've always heard complaints that you can only buy PCs with XP (the whole refund thing). Or am I wrong (I built my own)?
I live in Columbus, Ohio and it is essentially used as a test market for a lot of different products. Many times when companies want to test out new products, well see it here first. New Soda's, resturaunts, fast foods, etc... I think it has to do with the demographic running parellel with the rest of the country. Anyways, theres a micro center here, and its pretty good. The staff is usually pretty intelliget. Most employees are typically comp sci students or generally tech smart people wanting to get into the industry. Sounds like a good idea, if it can succeed in Columbus, its got a pretty good shot nationally.
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
... sorry, couldn't resist it.
> it is taking the bold step to have Linux-knowledgeable clerks
I can't remember the last time I was in a store where the clerks were knowlegeable about anything. In Best Buy stores the clerks have to go consult their supervisor on the simplest questions (assuming they don't just make up an answer).
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
That would be a Knowledgeable Klerk.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
From TFA:
This is a huge mistake. Fry's seems to be equating "free software" with "cheap bastards". They should be focusing on giving their customers freedom of choice in their software selections.
But then again, this is Fry's...
/. discussions are usually conducted in English, and boxes is a perfectly reasonable word. Boxen is an attempt to use German pluralization on the English word Box. Box is not a word in German, so it is not like boxen is a fun foriegn word to use to mix things up, it is just stupid, and not any shorter or clearer than boxes. If you are feeling 1337 than you could say 80x35.
Now, before I get slammed by Linspire zealots, just let me say one thing:
I'm betting that, among Linux enthusiasts, that Linspire users are in the minority. How do I know? Because among Linux users, $DISTRO users are in the minority. And why is that? Because there are about six jillion distros out there.
Another poster in a previous article referred to this trend as 'the balkanization of Linux', and I believe that that is a very apt description. If Linux really wants to become a player in the regular user market, one distro (or a few, at the most) must claim ascendancy.
Just one question...which one will it be?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
That about says it all. I'm pretty interested in them for their software and peripherals, but the lack of Linux notebooks is still quite disheartening.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Just interested to know.
Deleted
...but I went to one when I visited my uncle. I was impressed. They seemed to have a better selection than CompUSA, especially books.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
There are 2 Micro Centers here in Atlanta. While I prefer to shop at the "mom and pop" hardware houses I shop quite frequently at Micro Center. The staff tends to be somewhat knowledgeable, especially when compared to the retail drones at CompUSA and Best Buy.
The biggest reason I shop at Micro Center however is their book/magazine section. It's easily 3 times as big as the tech section at a Barnes and Noble, and it's quite encompassing subject wise.
The deal bins also are nice. Deeply discounted hardware and software. They also put their books on clearence when a new edition comes out. I love getting Oreilly books for 2 or 3 bucks.
From the article: 'It's terrible...Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, "This is garbage and we should fix it."
When the market is saturated with wintel boxen, it takes very sly foxen with big coxen to prove them wrong.
If they (Micro Center or other retailers) would work on and sell a Linux-based Media PC that worked out of the box and sold for under $400, they'd make a lot of money... I thnk a lot of peiple have a PC (I'm _not_ saying "everyone" so let's not start the digital divide discussion) but don't have the tech skills to make it a media PC for the living room. Right now, so-called Media PCs sell at Best Buy and elsewhere for $1200 and up; Linux with less-powerful hardware can do the same thing, so they just need to get the software to the point where it works as a media PC out of the box.
I'll be spending more time and money at Micro Center from now on. They've always been good about providing shelf space for OSS.
The #1 problem with getting Linux onto Joe/Jane Six-pack's machine is that there are few options that come with Linux preinstalled, and almost nothing that comes with support. The average computer user couldn't install any operating system be that a super-easy version of Linux like Umbuntu or a super easy install of Microsoft windows (heh). For Linux to make progress on the desktop, it has to come preinstalled on the desktop period. I applaud any effort to get Linux out there especially one that offers some support.
only one everything
In German, the slang term term for a mobile phone is a "Handy". Funny thing, everyone thinks this is a real English word ...
The masses do not know or care about Linux. And even if they did, they'd hate it. It's fine for server oriented solutions, but is in no way ready for the desktop. If the Linux zealots would stop wasting their time on a hopeless cause and focus on a viable alternative to Windows (like OS X), they could finally "change the world" as they so badly desire.
Never having seen a Linux system there, this surprised me. R'ingTFA shows that the real quote was "the small chain sells more of its Linux software than Wal-Mart."
1) That doesn't exactly shock me.
2) We're talking 500-1000 Linspire daily sales worldwide, so these aren't exactly huge numbers, anyway. (What the hell kind of ERP software do they have at Linspire? How can they not have more accurate sales figures than that?)
3) Micro Center is far and away the best computer chain store, although I've found they routinely pull bait-and-switches that proabbly get into the zone of illegality.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
they have a nice library section with tons of ref / programming books
They do all the work.
I'm swimming against the stream here but I think if you can't install your own Linux on a notebook or a 'naked pc' box you probably shouldn't be using it. Frankly I pity the stores that end up being expected to support them - maybe they'll just require costumers who hose their system to backup any personal files and they'll just reimage it back as it was sold.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I'm going to start building and selling computers with Linux preinstalled.
sigs, as if you care.
http://www.microcenter.com/
Get your Unix fortune now!
FTFA: Kay added while Linux users -- who as a whole are becoming less sophisticated, according to other industry observers -- might be more likely to shop at Fry's, the bulk of Linux systems sold end up with other operating systems, particularly pirated Windows, likening the situation to PCs that ship to China.
"I think they may end up with Windows," he said. "The stores just say, 'Look, it had an operating system on it when it went out the door. That's all we know. Hear no evil, see no evil."
That may be, but I've got four systems that came with MS licenses, and none of them are running MS software.
I would be very interested in seeing some valid numbers on this -- how many boxes ship with MS Windows but end up running Linux, vs how many ship Linux and run MS.
It wasn't too long ago that you coundn't buy a PC without MS software unless you built it yourself. I can't imagine every x86 system running Linux today was home-built.
Of course, it was reported on Slashdot when it became the first Linux store.
http://www.sub300.com/
Astro
I live in Cleveland and there is a Microcenter out in the eastern suburbs, about 30 minutes from my house. I can confirm what a ton of previous posters have said in calling Microcenter a great store. A lot of the people that I know that go there are the super geeks like us, but then again I am from the western suburbs. My girlfriend lives like 5 minutes from Microcenter, and her mom, who is completely clueless with computers loves Microcenter, as do many of her friends. The sales staff, I'd say about half of them know what is up with Linux, and the rest are at least familiar.
Problem however, at least at the Mayfield Heights Ohio Microcenter is the choices when it comes to Linspire machines leaves a lot to be desired. The display is small, the hardware is crappy. I had looked into buying one for my sister, instead I elected to build a computer from scratch.
If Microcenter is serious about Linux, they need to add decent hardware and some more choices than Linspire, I feel Ubuntu is fairly user friendly. A bigger section on Linux, some bad ass machines with Ubuntu and we're in good shape.
Maybe they think "boxen" is a stupid, stupid word.
Back in 1999, I actually bought a boxed set of Wordperfect for Linux at MicroCenter--they've been selling at least some Linux software in-store for years.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
http://microcenter.com/images/specials/0605a_page0 1_full.jpg
Look at the lower left corner. Not a great machine, but I've been debating getting one for my mom to replace the 486. $99 if you apply for the credit card.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Caldera? ^^
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
Revised title.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It's good to see Linux making a comeback at uCenter. I remember seeing Linux CDs there back in the day (when "Linux CDs" were snapshots of tsx-11.mit.edu or other FTP sites). For a while, they were a lot less clueful about Linux, though, so I haven't actually gone there for anything higher-level than keyboards and cables in ages.
They make it sound like people buying prebuilt Linux systems are basically pirates. We don't REALLY want Linux, we just want a cheap Windows box. Not True!
"If it is just us, seems like an awful waste of space." -- movie: Contact
I don't think it will ever be just one, but I'd bet on (K)ubuntu (really just one distro) and SUSE grabbing the lion's share between them, should Desktop Linux ever take off. Possibly with Xandros a not-too-distant third.
The very nature of the market means that Linux will replace nearly all of the commercial operating systems, including the desktop. What you see as the balkanisation of Linux is simply the natural evolution into niches, a bit like the evolution of small furry rodents into every mammalian life form we see today.
Deleted
Reading the comments here, I have come to the conclusion that not all Micro Centers are created equally. I've been attending the one in Cambridge, MA regularly for the past six years (my father works there) and have seen a disturbing decline in the "intelligence" of the sales personnel. Not to mention their Mac department has gone from half the store to a small cubby-hole behind the printer accessories.
Sigs are for suckers.
Micro Center isn't just in the west. We have one right here Cambridge. It's a great store, and not for nothing: beside their excellent support, they have a section of the store dedicated to building your own with knowledgable staff, and they have great sales and rebates (with a search function and printers available all over the salesfloor). I've never paid anywhere near full price for a hard drive there, and I never had to settle for a sketchy brand, either.
Love justice; desire mercy.
There is one near Cleveland, OH (near Mayfield Rd. and Rte. 91) When I absolutely have to go to a brick and mortar store for components, I go there (>30 miles) instead of the local Comp-USA. It's not an orgasmic experience or anything, I don't go there often, it is just that C-USA sucks so badly.
At Microcenter, the employees are actually helpful and accessible. They seem to know what they are talking about, which is a big plus. Compared to C-USA employees who hide in the back and don't know jack anyway.
When my coworkers ask about buying computer stuff, I usually tell them to go to MC, I specifically warn them against C-USA.
It is good to see that they are supporting Linux. With their emphasis on customer service, I think it may be a successful venture...and there is one less barrier for the average Joe, willing to try "this Linux thing" but afraid of doing it on his own.
More music, fewer hits
I live fairly close to the Comp USA store in Woburn, so that's usually my first stop. Only if I can't find what I'm looking for there (or Staples next door) then I'll head down to the Micro Center on Mem Drive... The only time I may head there first is if, like you, I need a cable, adapter, etc. that I'm 90% certian Comp USA won't have.
The main reason I want Linux pre-installed (regardless of distro) is that I want to know that the hardware will work with Linux (and I don't want to have to pay the Microsoft Tax.
That'd be essentially what it's like with Windows now. And yes, I'd be happy with that.--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Checking out the Walmart Linux laptop the other day, I found that it wasn't on the front page. There was a better laptop for the same price and XP on the front page. I had to dig to find the Linux box. My guess is that the sales haven't been astounding.
I had thought that a $500 laptop from Walmart was going to force down the price of laptops generally. That doesn't seem to have happened. Most of the laptops being sold seem to be about twice that price.
Walmart will sell anything that people will buy. I think the reason they haven't pushed the Linux laptops more is that people haven't been buying them.
Even in the "balkanized" environment today, there are enough users interested in any given approach to Linux to support many alternatives. This in turn leads to innnovations that would not happen in the context of a single dominant distro. I don't see why an expanded Linux market must lead to just a couple of players being dominant.
Perhaps this will end up being more like the market for ISPs, where a handful of large companies have millions of users each, but there's still room for lots of smaller companies offering better tech support or other added value. There's no reason the Debian or Gentoo Foundations will disappear just because Linspire and Red Hat grow larger.
Seems to me that the software more stores should carry is for Mac OS. I'm really surprised to see Best Buy and Circuit City (the two stores in my town for software) not selling any Mac software other than ordering online. Just seems that by now there are enough mac users out there to make it justifiable. I'm not asking for aisles and aisles, but a small corner of the more popular titles wouldn't hurt.
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Their stuff is always more expensive than competing stores. (around here that's CompUSA, with a little Officemax and Staples) Their house-brand systems are unreliable crap. Their few good prices always depend on multiple obnoxious rebates.
On the bright side, their service center guys are at least nice, though not particularly capable. This is important, since you'll be getting to know them if you buy a computer there.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
We have a MicroCenter in Philadelphia also, it's a pretty good store with competitive prices on hardware parts.
Linux power users probably won't be interested unless they only want the hardware. So that just leaves the in-the-middle folks looking for a cheap computer. Heck I'll bet half of them will just install a pirated Windows copy on it.
Retailers sell items because people want to buy them. Items that won't sell won't be stocked.
The problem with Linux today is that there isn't a company out there telling cusomers why they want to run Linux. And frankly, even though a users experience with Windoze is generally not all that great, Linux is no better.
For the majority of computer users out there there is no compelling reason to switch. Plus most of those users couldn't even tell you what a Linux is.
Sorry, choice just isn't good enough in this case. There needs to be more marketing before Linux could take off on the desktop. I might also suggest that there may need to be a Linux distro that doesn't suck eggs as a home OS.
The two Microcenter stores here in Atlanta have always been the best place to shop at. They beat CompUSeless hands down. They carry a better variety of products, even with some specialty hardware, such as a fair amount of scsi products. They also carried a bunch of software that could not be found anywhere else, even online. For them to do something like this is not all that shocking to see. Who cares if it's Linspire? At least people will get a taste of Linux.
SYS 64738
I want to believe in Linux, I can sense the robustness and simple, elegent software writing that is going on, even if I know nothing about programming. I like the idea of free software.
But to get anything done it is just too hard for less knowledgeable users such as myself.
For example, I was very excited by Ubuntu as it finally seemed to be the "real deal" as far as easily adding software and a simple UI. But I wanted to have essential software for example like a Real Audio player and a DVD ripper. I thought I'd found the answer with www.ubuntuguide.org. And yet the DVD ripper settings were extremely complicated, and Real Audio simply didn't load.
Now Linspire supposedly has everything like this ready to go out of the box, but I want to be able to add other software easily, not be limited to one minor distribution.
Until Linux become more simple to use, and more *easily* compatible with existing hardware, I just don't think people are going to think paying $100 per box for windows is a big deal.
Most linux zealots are just happy it's running linux at all. After all, they can replace the distro any time they want. The main thing is it shows the hardware will work with linux.
I am trolling
all the people crying about insignificant editorial differences. Seriously, does it hurt your head all that much to read a little slang?
boxen: /boksn/, pl.n.
[very common; by analogy with VAXen] Fanciful plural of box often encountered in the phrase 'Unix boxen', used to describe commodity Unix hardware. The connotation is that any two Unix boxen are interchangeable.
Micro Center is fantastic. I used to live in the Radisson right next to the Micro Center in Cambridge, MA, (because BU decided accepting more applicants than it had dorms for was a good idea, despite guaranteeing housing). I'm glad I did because otherwise I might not even know about the place.
There's a huge selection and a really knowledgeable staff (the store is about half a mile from MIT, so the supply of intelligent employees is high, and the demand for quality parts and service is similarly high). So, it makes sense that a place like Micro Center wouldn't be afraid of Linux. I can't speak for the other Micro Center stores, but if you live in the Boston area, you should check this place out next time you need hardware.
...anyone miss loki ports?
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
Ok guys I realize the /. audience is not a part of the "cool" crowd, but using asinine words like "boxen" or "virii" does not make you part of the cool subset of the /. crowd, it makes you part of the script kiddie subset of the general populace. Knock it off please.
To me, "boxen" - phonetically pronounced - is how rednecks pronounce boxing.
P.S. Mark me flamebait if you want, I consider the use of "boxen" and "virii" to be flamebait and moderate accordingly.
Question everything
...that the machines in question will be, how should I say it... 'more robust' than offerings in the past. The walmart laptops and desktops they've hawked have been cheap-ass pieces of shit, for the most part. Inexpensive doesn't have to mean cheap. Inexpensive and cheap are 2 different things entirely.
What's need is an HP/Dell (sic) quality _consumer_ machine with a top of the line distro, including support, pre-installed on it, at a decent price. I don't mean to sound condescending, but I'm not talking about Linspre or Xandros or Lycoris, I'm talking about the BIG distros -- Redhat or Novell/SuSE or even Mandriva... companies that are actively developing things.
Anything less is third-rate, and it shows.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Well, since that works for OEMs selling windows, why not for Linux as well?
...because there are those in the Linux "community" (even "editors" of a popular news site) that insist and calling boxes "boxen?" Who knows...? :)
:)
Seriously. That has to be one of the most annoying "l33t" things to do, especially in a headline.
Flame on!
jason
Have a good day?! Impossible! I'm at work!
Big retailers suck... they're slow-moving, and easily suckered into spending all their time on marketing and none on educating their staff or customers. (Micro Center is an exception--I've never found someone stupid there, and only once was someone a little pushy. Still not nearly as bad as Circuit City and Best Buy can be if you get a sales-droid.)
The way Linux will become popular is places like PC's For Everyone--friendly, local computer stores, where you talk to people who know their stuff and aren't just programmed to sell you the most expensive system. I bought my notebook from them and purchased it OS-free, saving $110 over buying it with XP Home. If you combine a friendly store like that with a distro like Ubuntu that is very familiar and usable to Windows users, you could easily start converting users.
(Coincidentally, they're also very nice about supporting Linux: I installed Gentoo--not the world's stablest distro by a long shot--and when I started getting segfaults and such, they easily could have blamed me, the compiler, or my choice of distro. Instead, they fixed it in a weekend, and I had it back with working RAM. Right now it's in for a new hard drive, since it suddenly stopped working unless I rock the laptop to keep it from stalling.)
They also have a much prettier and less cluttered website than Micro Center, and a much easier (and less slimy--it shows real-time price instead of waiting for you to customize your "dream box" and then telling you it costs $4500) customization then Dell. And did I mention they support Linux?
(Some of this praise is due to the fact that, after dropping off my laptop, one of their employees caught me on the way out and sent me home with an Intel hat, polo shirt, and travel mug as thanks for all the feedback I gave them on their website. ;-)
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I just checked out the MicroCenter Linspire offering. It is truly CRAPen boxen. Might run DSL well, but Linspire? Way to give the Linux n00b a bad first impression.
Sig? - yeah, whatever.
Save your sympathy. The unrebated full price is $249. That's £136 ! Try buying the same kit in the UK for that price.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I bought Suse 9.0 at Best Buy when it first came out. I think they have carried all the boxed versions since then as well.
I don't know what other distributions they carry, since I was specifically looking for that one.
This is in Phoenix, Arizona.
If 'the people' in Amendment 2 are 'the state' then Amendments 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 benefit the state, not you.
I've played with Lindows/Linspire since 4.0 and you are right about the older versions, but the newest one, 5.0, doesn't automatically run as root. The install creates a user account that is the default when you boot. Yes, you can still get to password protected root if you need to, but not automatically any more.
I installed it on an old P-III machine for one of my grown kids who had a spyware choked P-4 XP machine. It took 2 minutes of instruction as to what to click on to get the dialup going and the browser. I didn't hear any more about it from them, as in no tech-support calls, until I took the Windows box back to them and he and his wife didn't want to let go the older machine with Linspire.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Now, before I get slammed by Linspire zealots, just let me say one thing:"
There are Linspire zealots?
If you keep calling the products "boxen", the salespeople will be as enthusiastic about selling Linux boxes as they are about selling DEC Vaxen.
--
make install -not war
Yeah - Microcenter was one of the first Houston retailers to carry the full offering of commercial linux products. Everything from games to books to magazines, they had it all. No surprise that they are taking the plunge on this as well.
The one thing that always annoyed me about them was the fact that they ask your name and mailing info each time you buy something there. So, whenever I paid with cash, I would give the name Linux Torvalds. To this day, I still get their weekly mailer in my mailbox addressed to Linus...
Funny, I tend to think that M$ is leading to the balkanization of windows...every new version of windows that comes out leads to more confusion, problems, broken software, forced upgrades, etc. Gotta love that "standard" windows eh? 3.1, 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, 2003, XP, Longhorn and god knows what else they'll dream up.
:-)
Glad I can make the choice of which linux distro I want, modify as I wish, change anytime I wish (or not change, as the case may be). etc.
LONG LIVE FREEDOM!
And Henry Ford said you could have any color car you want as long as it is black. The last time I looked, there were several different models of cars in different colors. All of them basically do the same thing, operate in a similar manner, and obey the same basic rules but nobody says we should use the same model & make of car.
I've tried several different distributions (RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, TurboLinux, Debian and several other minor distros). The biggest difference I've ever seen is in the install and upgrade process and both of these have become a thousand times easier than they were 10 years ago.
Once Linux is actually running there isn't much of a difference between the distros. RPM vs APT is probably the biggest difference in installing software and with automatic download & install utilities (yum, apt-get...) the average user doesn't need to know how things are packaged.
Some distros seem to package different software by default and some use KDE while others use Gnome but all of them operate pretty much the same. Some seem to be better suited to servers and others do better on the desktop but the actual look and feel is not very different.
The biggest difference (IMHO) is in support. Some have none and others do. If you need it depends on your preferences. I've never used a Linux support service for i386, but I did on z-Series Linux.
I understand what you are saying, but I hope it never happens. I think it is a strength that so many distros exist.
Are there really Linspire zealots? i've never heard of such a thing...
That sad little bitch took the coward's way out. A real troll would have clung to life out of pure spite. He has brought dishonor upon the troll clan.
>have Linux-knowledgeable clerks and trained sales support for customers like you and me
That's a brilliant idea!
Now compare cost of selling Linux boxen with the cost of selling WinXP boxen (for which one can have the cheapest clerks possible).
ROFL! Columbus is nothing but a bunch of West Virginians... except they have jobs.
I've been shopping at the Micro Center in Saint Louis Park (Minnesota/US) for several years now. Selection is good, prices are good, usually there's enough help so I don't have to wait long, usually the help seems well-informed.
-kgj
-kgj
Recently I had to buy a new x86 compatible machine to help out a friend who was doing some Visual Basic work. He said he'd load up the OS and software I needed on the coattails of his developer subscription, but I neeeded to buy the hardware.
I went to the Frys and Microcenter in Atlanta to buy the cheapest/fastest thing they had. For around $600 Microcenter had an Athlon 64 3ghz with XP Home but I'd fallen through the cracks and couldn't find anyone to help me buy it. I went to Frys and they had a refurbished 3ghz Intel PC with Linspire on it, but unlike Microcenter the woman sales rep was actively trying to talk me out of the purchase. She was telling me why Linspire was a bad choice and that it was much cheaper to buy Windows when I bought the PC than later. So while Fry's had Linspire PC's for sale, I'd be very suprised if they actually sold any of them. They seemed very hostile to actually allowing one of them actually go out the door. In the end I went back to MicroCenter and got the Manager himself to help me get the PowerSpec.
That's the first time I had a salesrep actually try to talk me out of a purchase I'd decided on, and use the lack of Windows as the justification. Oh well, I've learned my lesson there.
If Linux really wants to become a player
Linux doesn't want anything. It isn't a person, it isn't a corporate person, it isn't a country.
If you want linux to become a player, go ahead and do whatever you feel is necessary.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Are there really Linspire user'S ? i've never seen or heard of such a thing..
I am a REAL American from Canada , not a wanna-be from the country , self called "last remaining superpower" "of America
Having a computer chain sell Linux is a good thing in some respects but I am not sure I like the idea of that linux being Linspire.
Whatever they call their pay as you download more free software model, it stinks. They want to be the Microsoft of the Linux World. If feel that they will do more harm than good in the long run.
and the plural of "beeeeeotch" is " beeeeeotchae "!!!
Just so you know Mandriva Bought Lycoris after they bought Conectiva.
http://www.mandriva.com/company/press/pr?n=/pr/co
I am a REAL American from Canada , not a wanna-be from the country , self called "last remaining superpower" "of America
But we don't even really try to sell Linux boxes (just Linux support). I didn't want to delve much into the computer hardware market. But a few people just asked if we could put together a Linux system for them, so we did.
As an ex-Micro Center employee, people don't buy the computers that have Linspire on them becasue they have linux on them. Basically these computers sit around, and they eventually go on clearance for a couple hundred dollars. Then people buy them up cheaply and put their pirated copy of windows xp on them. Nearly every single person I've talked to who bought one never had any intention of learning linux, and most didn't even knwo what linux was. As a side note, I personally would only shop at micro center for things like cables and such. Their hardware prices are way too high, and even though they claim to have a knowledgeable sales staff, they really just hire people off the street. No extra skills or certs necessary. They also treat their employees like crap, except if you bring in thousands of dollars a day in sales...
I got nothin'
Sounds like they're nixen the whole ball of waxen. What're they smokin, craxen?
** duxen **
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Much as I like Linux (I bought and installed a second HD in my machine just to run Fedora), I'm going to have to say that it has a long way to go to approach the level of Grandma-readiness that Windows has.
Among the many difficulties I've had getting Fedora to work, the ones that stick in my mind at the moment are:
- The lack of out-of-box and auto-configure support for 802.11 lan cards.
- Having to not only recompile the wlan drivers I did find and write my own rc.local script to start them, but having to make source code changes, to get them to compile on FC4.
- Having to patch and rebuild the kernel in order to get captive-ntfs to work (haven't tackled that one yet). The equivalent on the Windows side (ext2fsd) was a snap to install by comparison.
- Being unable to change the label on a hard drive without manually altering a plethora of configuration files; I still don't know all of them, so I'm stuck with '/' until the next time I do a clean install.
- The lack of help and other documentation
- The lack of fit-and-finish on various included apps (auto-update comes to mind - if you choose to download but not install updates, no option is provided to install later)
As many problems as I've had with Windows and apps that run on it (espeically legacy ones for '98, '95 and DOS), nothing there rises to this level of aggravation.Ya, das Linux boxen! Okay that was terrible.
I used to work for a computer store...it was a mom and pop type place but the idea still stands. Linux distros update regularly...Windblows updates every few years. So you end up with alot of old unsalable copies of Linux on the shelf each time an update is released. It just doesnt sell fast enough to warrent the loss each time there is an update released because no one wants to buy the old version.
luxury wooden computers that already have such a tiny market appeal
Considering what the car makers are doing, it wouldn't surprise me to see some wood panelling on computers soon.
Yup, plastic woodgrain accents that make the car look like a welfare family's 1972 station wagon sure do belong on the luxury models! I've even seen the word "sophistication" used in conjunction with this crap.
*shudder*
Then again, I prefer cloth over leather upholstery, so what do I know about being sophisticated.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I worked at a Micro Center for 6 LONG DREARY YEARS and while I was there we started selling the Linspire(Linux with WINE support for some windows applications) machines. I worked in the Walk-in Technical Support Department. And I am sad to report the their Tech Support has been going down hill since it technically makes 'no money' and is just an expense. Because of that, their budget (if they even have any) for training associates or teaching new emerging technologies (linux and the like) is non-existant. So, none of the techs there know ANYTHING about linux except for how to mispronounce it and say LINE-X. We basically didn't support any Linux machines in our Tech Support unless they wanted to come in on the weekends (that's the only time I worked). Maybe it's different at other Micro Centers (I'm talking about the one in Tustin, CA). So there was no way to support any clients whose computer was running Linspire or any other linux distribution. And even more important, salesmen just wanted to sell something even a lowly 299.99 computer. They would just tell the customer to borrow a copy of Windows XP from their friend and install it on the computer so hardly did I ever see a pre-installed linux computer with linux in tech support. The only thing I saw people in there was for Windows XP Drivers. That's it. So, customers ONLY buy linux machines because they are cheaper not because they HATE Microsoft or want an open source OS.
They were certainly central in carrying such items and for a while was the only store in my area , Metro Atlanta GA, that had an entire shelf devoted to Linux related software packages. I think even at the time I was there, they even had a retail package version of BeOS on the shelf.
Gotta give em credit there.
Now as to the selection of Linspire....that I kinda have to question. I wasnt aware that Linspire was THAT profitable or THAT popular amongst the retail consumer base.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
Linspire seems pretty solid, although I haven't played with it that much. It is definetely one of the most "out of the box" friendly system for non linux familiar people to use. So you can sell it to anyone not just those familiar with linux. I think thats the point of it.
Also, and importantly they also offer support http://support.linspire.com/ , which has bulliten boards and phone numbers. The phone is slow. But when you want to retail a linux box, that support becomes critical to your sales, so linspire shares the support of the OS.
Michael Robertson the ceo is alos very agressive, giving it marketshare with prominent partners Compusa/Bestbuy etc....
I love how the Micro Center is characterized as a "small, Midwest-based chain". I used to shop there when they were a tiny store front in a strip mall and specialized in Apple IIs.
I normally find myself in the Micro Center every couple of weeks anyway, just for normal sorts of computery purchases. I'll have to check out their Linspire stuff.
I have Linux boxes at home and at work but I wouldn't buy from that store because they only have Linspire and that's not a distribution that I'll run. This is the story all over... with so many Linux distributions and everybody having their own favorite distribution, a company would have to sell and be knowledgable in at least three (maybe four or five) distributions which would costs them a lot to hire knowledgeable sales clerks. They'd have to carry RedHat, Mandrake, Fedora, SuSE, Gentoo, and maybe Linspire to cover probably 90% of the Linux base... and it's worse than that because they'd also have to support a number of releases... Mandrake 9, 9.1, 9.2, 10, 10.1... then SuSE 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3, etc. By the time you hire knowledgeable clerks with all that, you'll be paying a fortune just for labor and you have to recoup that somehow... which is by making your merchandise more expensive.
With all the religion, if you don't carry a particular distribution, all the fans of that distro won't buy from you. So, while the OS is "free", labor will certainly be expensive and your prices will reflect this.
Another poster in a previous article referred to this trend as 'the balkanization of Linux', and I believe that that is a very apt description. If Linux really wants to become a player in the regular user market, one distro (or a few, at the most) must claim ascendancy.
Just one question...which one will it be?
Okay, so would that make the paring-down phase "the Higlanderization of Linux" and who would you put money on? My take is that Torvalds might survive the first few rounds but DeRaadt would probably take his head from behind and we'd end up with BSD.
Joking aside, it is very true. And is Linspire the bunch to do it? Or Red Hat? Or Novell? Well since people want what they find at work to work with what they find at home, and not what their kids find as school no matter what Apple zealots think, it would depend on the corporate market.
Therein lies the rub. Unless and until a distribution comes out that is easy to use for all those idiot end users whose skills are not tech but other things which merely require using a PC as a tool and not configuring it as a co-administrator, Windows will continue to be what mommy and daddy buy for home; I'm ignoring as well that the installed base has already convinced them Windows is easier, if not yet, let them try installing Knoppix to a hard drive without a techie holding their hand and they will be.
Novell used to have a very large corporate presence but their intransigence for so long on adopting TCP/IP, their Apple-like arrogance of thinking themselves great because they were Novell and not because Novell was doing anything great, etc., has squandered that away and those shops which spent so much migrating away from Netware aren't going to be forgetting the reasons that Novell made it necessary so soon. So while they are big and semi-imposing as names go, they have a long way to go to make Suse a common sight.
Red Hat is very nice and growing larger. I use Fedora and Red Hat and like them a lot. I especially like Raleigh, NC. That doesn't make me delusionally think that is enough. The Fedora crowd's legion of faithful packagers and repo maintainers however are a big plus. Not everyone wants or needs to go through Dependency Hell and the torture of make and these people deserve great applause from FC and RH users. Still not enough though.
IBM? OS/2. Need I say more?
HP? Carly Fiorina. Need I say more?
There are no perfect white knights ready to rescue Linux on the corporate end-user desktop.
What is needed is at long last recognition by the Linux vendors and community of what businesses do need. Not "free, free, free" which shows the infantile level of knowledge about business held by so many in the F/OSS world. No, their basic needs must be explored and catered to.
Load-balancing Linux clusters putting all the processing hardware in one room and putting thin clients on the desktop is one good way to begin. But useability, reliability, and compatibility must be there. If businesses cannot leverage existing Windows skills (such as they miserably are) of their workers, it's a no-go because no business is sitting on endless cash to hire trainers to repair the broken mental transmissions resulting from another paradigm shifting without the clutch (with apologies to Scott Adams).
I've seen businesses shock-switch from NT to OS/2 to NT to Win95 to NT in the space of one year as if their CIO was Racter. It's not pretty. No one in business needs the headache. So unless it looks like Windows, feels like Windows, is more stable than Windows, and costs less than Windows, and does more than Windows, easier than Windows, it won't fly.
We aren't there yet. We won't be as long as the zealots and masochists are in control or even very visible. We need to start with ourselves and use Linux because we like it, and NOT because we hate Microsoft/Windows. When we are honest with ourselves, our actions will follow, and all will improve starting from there.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
1 r34||y d0n'7 533 why 50m3 p30p|3 d0 n07 |1k3 b0x3n?
Just as logically sound, while more practical, is the focus on standards organizations:
.app
http://www.linuxbase.org/
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/
They promote compatibilty between distributions.
Other than that, we need a superset of existing packaging systems, let's call it ".app", which will allow a binary (or source) package to be installed on all popular Linux distributions. It would contain enough metadata and be compatible and supported by all package managers.
Then the only differences between distributions would only be default settings, artwork, support and distribution-specific packages.
Now you could acurately call the differences between linux distros "flavors" rather than now where I'd call them "forks" or "reinventions"
*No intended correlation to Mac OS X
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
I've been to the MC in SC,CA a few times since they first opened, and while the first year or so they were usually pretty busy; after Fry's re-located to their larger location off Arques Ave. in Sunnyvale, MicroCenter has been a ghost-town every time i've gone there since. I only ever see 1 or 2 staff, they never come around and ask if I need assistance (which I admit I actually prefer that they're not buggin' me), and at most I see ~5 people in the store. To some extent the local CompUSA has also been pretty empty everytime i've gone in, whereas Fry's is crammed full of people, not to mention the busloads(literally, they're brought in by bus) of asian businessmen getting dropped off, looking like kids in a candy store.
I always thought MicroCenter would go the way of Computer City and just give in to CompUSA, but now I wouldn't be surprised if CompUSA gets bought out by Best Buy, and MicroCenter gets bought out by WalMart.
$199 with better stats(double the ram, double the harddrive space), its expired but it probably come back in a week. Also it comes with XP and is cheaper since i don't count rebates in the actual price. I don't see how linspire can compete against Dell and Windows when obviously its more expensive with less features.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
No merchant is "timid" about selling a product that moves and makes them lots of money.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I just purchased a copy of SuSE 9.3 Pro at MicroCenter about two weeks ago here in Houston, Texas. I've bought several versions of Linux over the years at MicroCenter, starting with RedHat, then Mandrake, and so on.
Currently they carry SuSE, Mandriva, BSD, and Linspire. They have two versions of Mandriva (basic and PowerPack) and they have an excellent book section with virtually a whole side of an aisle dedicated to Linux (about 20 yards times four shelves high)!
I don't even consider any of the other retailers when I need a Linux product. Here in Houston, CompUSA is for tech-newbies (no depth anywhere except gadgets), Fry's is competing against BestBuy (except in hardware where they rock!) and the other big-box retailers, well, you know the score.
I used to live in Boston and there is a Microcenter on Memorial Drive just outside what used to be Central Square (now it's an urban yuppy wasteland).
They have been selling Linux software for more than 7 years anyway. I would always go and buy the latest SuSE release from them.
Their book section is simply the best I have ever seen. They clearly have people in the purchasing department who know what they are doing. They carry not only the latest programing craze books but also advanced engineering books, theory, product spec books and out of print material. Simply amazing.
I also found the staff to be generally quite good. Usually when a store clerk asks me if I need any help I reflexivly say "no". But at Microcenter I would always pause and override that defensive behavour because more likely then not the clerk would take the time to understand what I wanted and help me find it.
They also supported Apple through the dark times. They are a company that has determination and creativity.
Hats off to Microcenter.
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
In all my experience of the Microcenters in clolumbus (Bethel more specifically) the salesmen have been very unknowledgable. They know only mainstream info, and possess no common sense at all. They do, however usually have good prices (and they carry 2600).
Its gotten so bad that I call them and do everything off the LinkSys router before they even pick up the phone.
:-)
As long as its a simple problem I never want to really speak to them.
When they hear that I am actually even using a router they just get flummoxed and, after a few 'uh's and 'hmm's, tell me to disconnect it and plug my PC directly into the cable modem. (Like I would. I've got enough problems already with script kiddies and nefarious people knocking on my firewall door and rattling the knob. Some of whom are people I know
I don't even, or want to, tell 'em I run a Linux box as a server (with a DynIP addres) or that I'm running a couple of Macs and a Win2k box on a wireless LAN.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The truth is (and pardon if it's been said before, I'm not a regular)
* People who want to save a buck will pirate Windows before they will bother with Linux.
* Only if/when piracy is stopped will Linux flourish.
* In this way MS loves a little bit of piracy, just not too much
I've been to the MicroCenter in Westbury, NY many times. As far as retail stores go, they definitely have the best selection (although its still pathetic compared to online stores), and the salespeople while I wouldn't call them geniuses, they do know there stuff, and if you know what you're looking for, they'll definitely either be able to say they don't have it, or show you were it is. There is a small downside in that I find them to be a little pricy, even compared to other retail places. Speaking of Linux though, they sell a bunch of commercial distro's and a few years back I picked up some Loki games on the cheap there.
Why not fork?
Who gives a fuck. Linux still isn't ready for mainstream morons.
Slickdeals is awesome, but Fatwallet is even better!
Boxen: Plural for Box. Example: Hey human, I got a couple boxen I need moved over near the Mossen beside the geese. Shamless Brian Regan plug .If goose is geese, then moose is messen. If you never listen to Brian Regan, sport. He is comedian
Deserving got nothing to do with it.....shuffle
I'd like to see an increase in the number of people who use Linux, and I'd like to suggest this as an avenue of focus to win people over. Sure, this way puts Linux at a moderate disadvantage because of the following factors:
1. they have to install it, which isn't tricky, but seems very daunting because it's counter to maintaining what is on the hard drive. Most users do, and should, stay very far away from options that format hard drives, which is why I think Linux should have some PR for it being an option to 're-animate' older/outmoded hardware.
2. It makes Linux seem automatically second best to the pre-installed OS with big name support, Windows on any major PC manufacturer's hardware, OS X on ppc/ppc64. However, isn't it better Linux be seen in second place on whatever hardware than not placing at all?
3. Buying a product makes you more willing to put at least some effort to getting some value or worth out of your purchase. If you 'splash' 90 for a distro like I did you're damn sure that that distro is going to be used and have some tweaks and customizations, and will be used to access the internet, while a free as in beer and speech download that's tricky (read Gentoo) is not perceived at such a loss if you give up on it before you emerge a GUI/desktop environment.
4. Having documentation in print form, in front of you at all times, even during a reboot, is sooooo much more helpful than the most verbose and sensible man page or README file. And if it doesn't cover the area you need it to, you can throw it across the room and your computer will be in the same state. Throwing whatever contains the man library or README across the room is notably more destructive.
I think shipping/selling Linux distros pre-installed is a good thing, and plays to Linux's strength in that it's a lot cheaper than proprietary operating systems, but I'd be more inclined to look at Linux as something you learn about when you make the switch, so if you want new users put them in the self-help section of a book store with all the "Teach yourself [insert random 3rd or 4th gen language here]" books which mostly come with software anyway.
If you put a boxed distro in a bookstore with proper advertising and charge $50 or less and plaster the fact that it's "A TOTAL ALTERNATIVE TO WINDOWS" on the stand you'll get people intrigued enough to make purchases.
Alternatively, tell me why I'm wrong.
This is really nothing new. In fact, it sounds to me like Micro Center has simply come "full circle", back to the way computers were once sold, when they cost much more than they do today.
If you want to generate relatively good sales numbers compared to your chain/discount store counterparts - knowledgeable staff is the key.
But the catch is, if you grow too large, you're going to have a really tough time keeping knowledgeable people working for you. You can't afford to pay very much, and profit margins on hardware just aren't good enough to support big commissions on sales.
The Apple stores seem to have a bit of an edge over your standard Windows PC dealer in this regard, because the whole "cult of Mac" thing works to their advantage. (EG. You can find a really knowedgeable Mac junkie who would kill to say he works at the local Apple store, even though he's woefully underpaid for his level of knowledge and skills. He wants the "street cred" of being an Apple employee, and the "warm and fuzzy feeling" of being around others sharing his interests every day.)
Maybe the fact that Linux is still a relative "niche market" helps Micro Center out too. (If you know a lot about Linux, you're probably having a tougher time finding a good-paying job than if you're some run-of-the-mill MCSE. Sucks, but that's just the nature of today's marketplace. Many more businesses use Windows than Linux, so that's who they need to hire.)
Mod parent down for promulgating the MS corporate-think.
I will rephrase the corporate-think.
Consumers that buys a low-end non-windows PC have a pirated copies of windows xp that they want to install on a new PC.
-Every- consumer?? Really?
Most people don't want to steal Windows and won't because it's too much trouble. To them, they get it with a new PC anyway.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Including, but not limited to, jumping off a bridge onto sharp rocks below. It's roughly the same experience as using linux, but you get the added bonus of fresh air and sunlight (or moonlight, you could be a linux fatty/goth).
Yeah, Fry's is much bigger, has better selection of anything and much lower prices.
I have to give one thing to Micro Center - there was a time when they had very good selection of Loki games. Then Loki went bust and they had a sale and I got several of them for $5 each! Since then selection of linux software at Micro Center became much worse. And I would like to buy VMware in retail store, yet, I havent seen it anywhere.
Micro Center is close to my work so I sometimes shop there but, but it is really a ghost town. The only big ticket items I bought there was iPod and iBook for my wife. But then due to Steve's tight control of Apple retail prices you cannot buy it cheaper anywhere. It is very funny to see Fry's ad in a newspaper showing $3K Apple G5 at 3 dollars off.
You have to realize that half the people you're addressing were wearing diapers in the 80s, and the other half were too busy teasing their hair to notice.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. You guys loved the Germans and Russians and their dweebish technologies enough to adopt their inflections. We kind of like the Romans, since it looks like Club of Rome turned out to be right, and our dweeb leaders make movies about how our politicians march around like Roman Emperors. "Cracker" is of course just a shout-out to our homies in the GNAA. Hell, if the Japanese didn't come from a completely different language family, car geeks would be speaking Engrish.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Gives a new meaning to hack!!!
Get your Unix fortune now!
mod parent down, he obviously hasn't heard the kernel rumbling for better driver support from hardware manufacturers. maybe the racket from his case fan was drowing it out
You have a valid point, but if the boxes/boxen are NOT low-end machines - in other words, if they're computers that I would be okay with having in my house - then I don't really care what distro is on them, as I can install whatever I want -- WITH the assurance that the hardware is compatible. That's not as important for desktops as it is for laptops, but the point remains the same... RW
No,not every consumer. Just the ones who choose to buy the Linspire machines at roughly $100 less than the the same machine with windows pre-installed. Consumers who dont want to bother with pirated copies just buy the more expensive machine.
I got nothin'
I thought 'boxen' referred to large clusters of servers together, so I assumed the article was referring to distributed computing.
Did the slang change?
Two suggestions as to why Linspire is mentioned.
/.'s don't know how retail works. It's not so much about a great product.
1. Linspire PR got the story in. One should -always- wonder this when one brand keeps being mentioned throughout an otherwise uninteresting story.
2. Linspire is in retail because they know how to create a package and the retailer likes the price and market possibilities. Plus, Linspire can afford to pay the shelf/promotional fees required to be and stay in the store.
I'm thinking most
Vendor's Side:
- Can the vendor afford to be in the store? Setup, shelf and participation fees. Not to mention "influencing" the buyers.
- Is there enough money to advertise? Because it's not moving in retail without it. (Even a "small" retailer like microcenter)
- Are the retailer's pricing practices compatible with the vendor's?
Retail Side:
- The big retailer has to know that the branded vendor is generating enough demand through advertising on their own. They read all the market-share research.
- Every vendor has to be able to afford to "participate" and "influence" (read: $$$) the retailer.
- One way or another, the retailer has to meet/exceed their ROI on that shelf space. So they either get it through sales or the vendor pays extra (and pays and pays) to stay.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
From Brian Regan Live: My roomate loves it.
. .Jackson 5...Tito!"
I remember my teacher asked me, "Brian, what's the 'i' before 'e' rule?"
"Um...I before e always."
"What are you, an idiot, Brian?"
"Apparently."
So she explains it, "No, Brian, it's:
'i' before 'e' except after 'c'
and when sounding like 'a'
as in neighbor and weigh
and on weekends and holidays
and all throughout May
and you'll always be wrong
no matter what you say."
That's a hard rule. That's a rough rule.
Plurals were hard, too.
"Brian, how do you make a word a plural?"
"You put a 's'...put a 's' at the end of it."
"When?"
"On weekends and holidays."
"No, Brian. Let me show you." So she asked this kid who knew everything. Irwin. "Irwin, what's the plural for ox?"
"Ox. Oxen. The farmer used his oxen."
"Brian?"
"What?"
"Brian, what's the plural for box?"
"Boxen. I bought 2 boxen of doughnuts."
"No, Brian, no. Let's try another one. Irwin, what's the plural for goose?"
"Geese. I saw a flock of geese."
"Brian?"
[Exasperated laughing]"Wha-a-at?"
"What's the plural for moose?"
"Moosen! I saw a flock of MOOSEN! There were many of 'em. Many much moosen. Out in the woods...in the wood-es...in the woodsen. The meese want the food in the woodesen...food is the eatenesen...the meese want the food in the woodesenes...food in the woodesenes."
"Brian. Brian! You're an imbecile."
"Imbecilen!"
"What? Are you speaking German, Brian?"
"German...Germaine...Germaine...Jackson.
"Brian, what the hell are you talking about?"
"I don't know. I don't know, really."
The reason that I'd want to buy a Linux Boxen instead of a Windows XP Home machine is that I could be reasonably sure that the hardware would work with Linux. Downloading third party drivers only to find out that the driver causes the machine to crash isn't my idea of fun.
XP Home isn't my idea of a real OS and so I'd have to wipe it anyways. I would add the cost of XP Professional to the cost of the windows box for a true price comparison. And for the Linux box, I'd add a set of Suse CD's (or other distribution).
Regardless - I can't believe how cheap computers are now. The last machine I bought for home was an HP Pavillion 500Mhz 128MB/20GB with a CD and DVD for $900 in 1999. Maybe its time to upgrade?
A great server OS. I've been using Linux since 1994 and it seems to me every so many years someone or some company pops out of nowhere and tries to somehow convice us, once again, that Linux is now "finally" ready for primetime. Lets face it, Linux is not going to take over the desktops. It's had well over a decade! Why can't this just be accepted as the way it is? Every major player in computing we know of (IBM, Sun, Novell, Corel, etc) has had a crack at it and still no fireworks.
I think what people misunderstand is that it's one thing to build a system that runs a handleful of relatively basic services (ie. web, ftp, database) and another to interactively play video games, watch movies and burn DVDs all without requiring a 1,000 page manual, compiling drivers, shared library dependencies and then expect mom, dad and little Billy to make all this work and be simple to use. For that, it takes decades of time and hundreds of millions in R&D to make happen.
Why can't we just accept Linux as a great server OS and put this whole rediculas "Linux vs Windows" desktop battle behind us once and for all?
Here's a reanscript of a Brian Regan bit with "Boxen" in it for y'all who were wondering: http://www.brian-regan.com/Regan/transcript.html
"...Turns out that Micro Center not only is out-selling Wal-Mart in Linux...
Look where Micro Center locates its stores. In Mass, we have one Micro Center AFAIK and its not out with the big box retailers in the malls. Its in Cambridge, a walk from B.U., MIT and Harvard. If they have located their other stores as intelligently as this one, they are a mining a niche in the market [relatively sophisticated college students who need to stretch their computing dollar and got the brains to RTFM] but may have little success out in the burbs.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Amen, brother...
As someone who spends his free time leading a team that makes Gentoo's releases, I can tell you that this is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine. I always enjoy hearing people tell me about how "If Linux wants to..." this or that. I usually just laugh and shake my head.
Why isn't home a real OS? Do you need to join domain? Do you need IIS? Encrypted file system? SAP agent? Netware drivers? Most home users don't need Pro.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Would they all come with Firefoxen?
Linux is improving but it doesn't make it as easy to do some common tasks that can be done easily in windows.
/dev/muvoTXFMhd* into /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules . Case: If a distro doesn't want to use udev to do this then is there a distro which automatically checks dmesg to see what the /dev/sd* will be and then automatically configures a mountpoint in the user's home directory (so becoming root isn't necessary, e.g. adding entries to /etc/fstab into /mnt) ? Will the kernel even allow this? I doubt it because its too insecure for linux ..honestly its a local security risk only and isn't going to allow an external intruder to zombify the box.
/etc/fstab. He just wants to get the muvo to just work like in windows when it is plugged in and shows up in "my computer" as an additional drive E: .
/etc/fstab (once again could this have been done automatically by the distro?), it was ready to mount. Hint: winxp/macos people hate typing commands unless they're in a word processor, typing emails, chatting, or browsing the web. Luckily Konqueror allows graphical mounting and unmounting as long as the entry is in /etc/fstab. You can just click the "Home" icon on the desktop -> devices -> muvoTXFMhd1
..it seems the wav file can't be read by k3b. K3b won't tell you what the problem is and even if it did tell you that it couldn't decode the ADIDblahblahPCM format that the muvo records to, your average user would have absolutely no clue what to do.
/mnt/muvo/voice/muvoTXFMRecording.wav
For example last night I was helping my dad burn an audio cd from a recording of a talk he made on our Creative muvo tx fm. I can't speak for other "ready made" distro's like fedora/ubuntu/linspire but most distro's out there are made for power users and require configuration (altering text config files, sudoing, or su -). I run a dual boot winxp+gentoo system and although my dad is patient (and was writing down everything) he did say it could be done much more quickly in winxp, which he is correct about.
So here are some things that needed to be done and are ideas to be added to linux distributions to make them more user friendly.
1) first we need to prepare linux to mount the muvo into the usb drive. Is there a distro which can *automatically* configure udev files (and create custom dev entries)? For now, I had to do this manually by putting in a custom udev entry for
Your average user isn't gonna care about udev, what it does or how it works, or about
2) ok so then after I put the entry into
3) Now we open up k3b from the kde kicker, select new audio cd, with the konqueror still open to the wav file we want to burn we drag and drop the file into the newly created audio cd template area in k3b. Oops
4) at this point my dad was completely lost. Now I had to figure out how to convert this wav file. First I tried lame'ing the file into an mp3 but this just produced a loud hissing noise. Then I found that the wav file can be dumped as an uncompressed wav in mplayer like this:
mplayer -ao pcm
There's no escape from opening up a konsole and typing commands! Imagine telling a winxp user how to convert a wav to mp3 using a command line utility at the dos prompt (he would download his favorite gui application from download.com and do it using drag and drop methods). Now this could also be done easily in konqueror if there was a feature to just right click on the wav file -> convert with mplayer -> raw uncompressed pcm. Things need to be integrated and easy to find. I shouldn't have to install every little program under the sun to do one or two little tasks in any OS. Even decoding takes a while and this process took about 1.5mins. We have a decently fast athlon xp 2800+ w/512mb ram, but on some of the lower end machines i've seen prepackaged with linux this could
microcenter's house brand, powerspec, does not have a linux option. and as for them being midwest based, see if you still belive that after looking at this.m l
http://www.microcenter.com/at_the_stores/index.ht
but i do respect them, and have great service and is a great place to get obsure hardware.
I had never heard of MicroCenter when they first arrived a few years ago in Minnesota. They are definatelty the best computer store in the area. The sales people are actually knowledgable and lots of them run Linux. I send home user-types there to buy and especially the first time Mac buyers.
They have a good selection of Linux on the software shelf, although it is near the back of the store. RedHat, SUSE, the BSD's, Linspire, Slackware, Mandrake. So that's kinda cool.
Kudos to them to breaking ground in this area!
-m
http://www.invisik.com
it's not. but it is the only company that makes their boxes (boxen?) natively run linux.:(
Or specifically, Winnipeg? All the small stores I've been to around here have fairly unknowledgable folks, and the big stores are full of morons. Perhaps not morons, but certainly not people who should be working in the "computer department".
(Most recent example I have: "The Radeon 9600XT costs the same as the 9800Pro because it runs Half-Life 2 far faster." Reality is that the 9800Pro is probably 2x the speed, but heck, that's only one example out of many).
I get Micro Center mailings and I was quite surprised a few days ago with the amount of Linux everything being promoted in the few page mailer. Two versions of SUSE were on sale, Linspire installed low end desktops were advertised as well.
All your Sybase are belong to us.
I'm a regular customer at the MicroCenter Chicago store and feel that they do a fine job. Their geek book selection is amazing. I've purchased SuSE linux at MicroCenter in the past, but did notice lately that Linspire linux is always on the shelves but SuSE is not (or perhaps sold out frequently.) Yes, I could have downloaded SuSE, but I like to support Novell's efforts in promoting SuSE.
Say hello to my little sig.
Microcenter's cheapest computer is sold at $250 ($200 after rebate, http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results. phtml?product_id=0184679)
The cheapest box you can build for yourself at zipzoomfly with equivalent specs except that you can't get 128mb of ddr333 ram so it has to come with 256mb, totals for $215.78.
Product Description Quantity UnitPrice ExtPrice
101284
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120002
Asus CD-S520B 52X IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM Drive (Black) Retail ***Free 2nd Day***
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80139-R Quantity Limit: 20
AMD Sempron 2200+ 1.5GHz Socket A Processor Retail ***Free 2nd Day***
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373002
Ultra ULT31580 Wizard Mini Tower Case (Black) Retail
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270500
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Subtotal: $215.78
The summary:
Sorry, wrong. The story doesn't say this is the case. The only place anything similar is mentioned is this line:
That's right, "may be". Just like Microsoft "may be" ready to sell Linux versions of Office and Windows Media Player, if the groundhog sees his shadow this year... Just like Apple "may be" allowing OS X to be pirated... etc.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
...that Zope and Python are too hard for a camwhore to use, but Rails and Ruby are not?
I use both Python and Ruby, and at the risk of igniting YARW, Ruby is better pretty much across the board. Not panning Python, either, since that's also ahead of the pack. Perhaps you don't "get" it, perhaps your prejudice has insulated you from how much fun Ruby can be.
Perhaps you're an AC. <sigh>
Oh, well, I'd already typed it up anyway. Submit.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...I am not now, nor have I ever been, a camwhore.
I do, however, take pictures of stuff that ain't whores.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Just checking.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Please.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing