Shuttle's $200 Linux PC Part of a Trend?

eldavojohn writes "With $200 machines being all the rage these days, it's surprising that more coverage hasn't been given to Shuttle's KPC which is an Intel Celeron processor, a 945GC chipset, 512MB of memory and either a 60GB or 80GB HDD. With deals like these, will Linux become the dominant home operating system for the thrifty?"

Comments

no CD/DVD drive bay?

[FudRucker]

disapointing, i seen at NewEgg a few similar Shuttle BareBones kits had CD/DVD drive bays...

Re:no CD/DVD drive bay?

[jawtheshark]

If they start making faster bootable USB flash drives

All USB drives are bootable... You just need to

1. Format them that way
2. Have a motherboard that supports booting from USB

That's it, really...

Re:no CD/DVD drive bay?

[MsGeek]

External USB2 DVD-/+RW drive. Ridiculously cheap nowadays. Problem solved. Thank me.

Prefer a $200 laptop

[lobiusmoop]

Hopefully soon the OLPC will be available to buy here in the UK. It seems to fill a niche of being ultraportable (7 inch screen), good battery life (9-10 hours, 2-3W consumption, long life NiMH battery) and low cost ($200, dropping towards $100 in the future perhaps).

  I've already got several desktops and laptops, but would buy one of these in a second, given the chance.

Re:Why the thrifty? More like the reasonable

[edwdig]

Actually, it's not. There's no optical drive bay in the system. So you can't watch a DVD or rip music.

Re:QUICKBOOKS

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could just install this

http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/press_room/press_release/2007/06-13.jhtml

Re:Probably not

[bcrowell]

A lot of people, including me, are using an NSLU2 for that. Cisco officially says it's OK with them if people modify the firmware, install Debian on it, etc. The price is under $100, and it only draws 4 watts, so it's a much better choice than a general-purpose computer for an always-on machine.

Re:OSX/Windows/Linux are not even on the same scal

[KozmoStevnNaut]

3. What the hell is wrong with Firefox's save file dialog box? (This one pisses me off too, I hate the Gnome/GTK file dialog box - it's very different from the KDE ones and confuses people)

Go to about:config and set "ui.allow_platform_file_picker" to false. That'll give you the older and more sensible Mozilla file picker instead of the Gnome abomination.

Re:A potential buisness model problem...

[Simon Brooke]

If you think I'm wrong, name one application area where you think Windows is ahead

Anything productive by Adobe? MS Office? iTunes? Cakewalk? Fruity Loops? Starry Night? How about some software for my Garmin iQue M5? There are just a few of the software packages I run that aren't on Linux and I don't see any Linux equivalent of. And please, if you're going to mention VMing I may as well just have a Windows machine. It doesn't count.

You can't have those particular proprietary programs. But with the exception of iTunes, you will find programs which do the same things exactly as well. The ones you are looking for are:

• Flash player and PDF reader are available direct from Adobe. Additionaly, there are several open source flassh players, and PDF renderers are everywhere. Open source Action Script compiler here. Blender can directly generate Flash movies as good as anything produced anywhere, while lots of other Linux programs can produce some Flash output;
• Open Office; KOffice;
• granted, there's no equivalent to iTunes which will talk to the iTunes store;
• Freewheeling, SooperLooper, Audacity, Rosegarden...;
• Starry nights? Hell! you know the professionals use Linux, don't you? Start here and stop somewhere beyond the horsehead nebula...
• As for GPS software, the list is so long I don't know where to start. Anything you want to do with more or less any GPS - from professional navigation for shipping (although that's proprietary and expensive) to mapping your walks in the woods - is available. What is it you want to do?