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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?"
that NASA had actually put Linux on the Space Shuttle. Darn! What a disappointment! Figures, though. NASA could never spend as low as $200 on a computer; what, when they can gold-plate the sucker and buy a computer for $200 million?
disapointing, i seen at NewEgg a few similar Shuttle BareBones kits had CD/DVD drive bays...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
...but it would certainly be a good inexpensive network storage option for many folks.
Just for the record; I'm not proclaiming any great knowledge in this area.
I just wonder if the business model won't be fruitful at first and slowly fade into non-existence.
The allure of low priced PCs for the neophyte is a great one but one of two things are likely to happen: They'll either find out that they want more and end up willing to spend more and probably choose Windows for the software support or they'll find that the machine suits their purposes and latch onto them for a larger than normal span of time and repeat customers will be next to nil.
I've found that people who pinch a penny when buying hardware are normally not good business for vendors. They'll make a machine last to their dying day.
So while the initial repsonce is going to be great but don't expect to see lots of these people as return customers in the next few years.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
If you do not want to play games and all you need is office, mail, some MP3-ed music and watching an odd DVD that is more than enough.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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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.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Alright. I've said it OVER and OVER and OVER. And I still mean it. If you want to help Linux double it's presence in the small business sector, get a rock solid, customized, easy to use WINE installer for Quickbooks and make it compatible with new versions within 90 days.
Businesses, once they see it in action, will scoop up $250 boxes and switch because: they don't have to pay for the VM and the Windows license, they don't have to pay for yearly anti-virus subscriptions, and they don't have to deal with windows update constantly breaking and changing things.
But, I do look forward to the next version of whatever eye candy you guys are working on. Rotating xterms on a cube is really, really impressing the suits.
Well to a new computer user, Linux can be just as friendly as MacOS, or Windows. They all have equally steep learning curves.
Considering what people would want out of a $200 machine, I would say that Linux can be even more user friendly. On a bare bones machine, people don't have the expectation of being able to do 'anything' give them their large icons for a preconfigured email/web/word/musicplayer interface and that is what they will stick to.
For a $200 PC, I would prefer a linux distro. And this is coming from someone who prefers using XP for most of my computing needs.
Obligatory car analogy:
I love my pickup truck for its cargo capacity, not its gas mileage.
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Seriously, they couldn't spring the $20 for a simple DVD-R drive? What happens WHEN (not IF, WHEN) you bork your OS somehow and render it unbootable (or, at least unbootable without some herculean effort)? I gotta send it to Shuttle to reinstall the OS? I think not, varlet.
With specs like those, Linux may become known as a "low quality" operating system. To the masses, at least.
/.er can spend a couple hours reconfoobling a box, Joe Consumer doesn't have that luxury - he's got bills to pay, sleep to steal, and enough grief from the rest of his life. He doesn't want to know what a goddamn compiler is, he doesn't give a shit about GPL dogma, and he couldn't care less who Stallman is - he simply wants his box to do what he expects and wants it to do.
I'll explain: Joe Consumer buys a system for $200. He realizes that he can't run his Windows apps easily/at all, that it's "different" and "difficult" from what he knows (Microsoft, again), and it's kind of slow. He'll associate Linux with incompatibility, difficulties, and piss poor performance. And he may tell his friends.
I haven't even addressed the poor schmuck trying to bring home work from the office.
The typical
Be careful what'cha ask for, ya know.
Oh, yeah: save the argument about "educating the masses". They don't care and trying to shove propaganda, dogma and excuses down their throats will only drive them further away from Linux.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
I can imagine that many here will have a hard time seeing the utility of a device like this because it doesn't have the horsepower for gaming or 3D rendering. But I think back to how many WebTV users were in my site logs and realize that most people can get by with relatively modest hardware requirements. A 75% solution would run basic productivity software, email, chat, view pictures, play movies and run Firefox.
I'd get one for the times I don't feel like hauling a full size laptop. Many times 75% is plenty.
I think the popularity of appliance type devices in Japan may signal the market is somewhat bigger than many at Microsoft are willing to accept.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
How many people do you know that only use a computer for myspace and music that had to
shell out $1000+ in order to get the hardware just to run Vista?
I've seen plenty, and it pisses me off. All that hardware and money wasted for an OS
that's overpriced to begin with.
*** Steps off soapbox ***
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If you have six kids in school, this might be just the thing you need. I don't have any kids that I'm aware of, but friends do and their kids fight for PC time for papers and projects. I've donated old PCs from to to folks for just this reason. And your kid learns a Linux distro as well as Windows / Mac at school.
I use wine to run an old version of quick-something at home and select kid-friendly games. It's not the impediment you think it is.
Qemu is the silver bullet. Let's say the company has legit Dell-sourced windows licenses. They can switch over to linux and run the windows partition through qemu in a window/fullscreen on the Linux desktop. Qemu is plenty fast enough to run quickbooks especially on recent hardware. There. Problem solved.
Except qemu has been around for a while and it's not the Linux killer app. Neither is wine. I'm not slagging qemu or wine, but merely pointing out that Linux will succeed on it's own merits. Smaller benefits include qemu and wine, but they aren't the killer app that drives adoption.
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I'm hoping that the introduction of very low cost PCs is going to open up computer usage, and more importantly the internet, for the developing world. Sometimes we like to think of the internet as a global community, but that really isn't the case. Most of the internet is still the anglophone countries and Europe.
Of course, cheap PCs alone aren't going to do it - there is still the question of the infrastructure to provide home internet connections to the world. However, that is more likely to occur in a situation of widespread computer ownership.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The article linked to from the slashdot article was missing some info, such as what linux distro it will have preinstalled. This one says it will be Ubuntu. All I could find on shuttle's own site was this press release.
Find free books.
I want a red one with a yellow hammer and sickle on the side.
Hi, I don't have a computer at home to play games.
Because I'm the neighborhood geek, people ask me about their problems. One problem is what to do with the old machine when they upgrade.
My advice for the past six months has been: buy it a new hard drive ($60) and install Ubuntu. The hard drive is what fails at 4-5 years, but the rest will keep on ticking and thanks to the thriftiness of Linux, doesn't slow them down.
They don't care that it's not Windows XP or Mac OS X. All GUIs look about the same for the tasks most people do.
With these newer cheap machines, I'm excited, but wary. Would I rather install $200 of junk or do a $60 upgrade to an older, but once more expensive machine with better hardware?
The Shuttle boxes I've worked with so far have been high quality but have tended to overheat. However, they were a good deal more expensive than $200. I wonder what corners got cut, and whether a five year old Dell that cost $900 when it was new would have these problems?
Either way, my compliments to the Ubuntu team. That's a convenient and reliable OS distro.
technical writing / development
It wasn't that they wouldn't spend $20 for a dvd drive.
It's that they wouldn't spend the extra 5.25 drive bay space
and cabling for something that's only needed once in a while for os-installation.
And when you're trying to make a small low power device, that's at a premium.
For that once-in-a-while need to reinstall the os,
there's certainly no need to go to the extreme of sending to the factory.
My company uses a lot of small linux appliances like these (esp for firewalls)
and I keep a external usb-cdrom on hand... use it to (re)install the os,
and thats the only time it's needed. Rest of the time it would be wasted space.
And I only had to pay for 1 drive, to use on ALL the systems.
So after 100 of these, that $20 would add up for me.
It's not a laptop. Next!
Not flamebait, but the truth. Cute little laptops have been either underpowered or the preserve of the rich till now, so Asus and everybody else knocking out workable, durable, cute machines is newsworthy. A desktop box that costs 200 dollars? where's the news in that? You can find those on every high street, and loads of people have brought out cute looking ones so nothing new there either. Plus it's not 200 dollars and press the on button, for Joe Public it's 200 dollars, spend some more on a monitor, then plug it into the wall. SO more like buying another desktop. Yawn.
But, one of the main problems to Linux adoption is the install process. Have you even seen XP's install? Its much more complex then Ubuntu's install (albeit much easier then Gentoo's). The other problem is most people don't know any other OS other than Windows. While it is true that some of these machines will be running Windows, the most will be running Linux on them because people just go with what they have.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Unless you can get IBM to kick out some cheap PowerPC PCs that you could sell with Linux. As we all know, XP/Vista won't install/run on anything but x86. Maybe if DEC/Alpha was still around and Windows still created HALs for these (I'm pretty sure they abandoned that support tree a while back).
Either way, it would require some low end, non-x86 CPUs and maybe that's an oxymoron in itself.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
The reason MS is very afraid is very simple. With prices of hardware dropping to a couple of hundred of dollars and below people nowadays get machines that do everything they need and it will probably be the most powerful computer they ever bought. With these tight margins, hardware makers proceed the next biggest cost factor they can cut and beat the competition again. That next element is Windows. Windows biggest enemy if falling hardware prices. When it was only a couple of percent of the whole price, no one noticed. Now it's in tens of percents.
But this is about a Linux PC and putting Windows on it, therefore the argument with "the computer came with it" is null and void about this particual computer for Windows.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
I thought that right up until 2 weeks after I bought my shiny new box, The damn thing blue screened on boot.
1 hour to reinstall the OS.
1.5 hours to reinstall the drivers and antivirus.
2 hours to install the nessessary software (Acrobat, Flash, Quicktime, Google Desktop, Skype)
30 minutes for Microsoft to patch itself up.
I am quite good at such things, and none of the questions asked during the process caused me any grief. God help Joe Sixpack in the same state.
To be fair, XP does give you a nice ride out of the showroom. It just gives you a bit more grief in the garage.
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you are comparing apples to oranges.
when it comes to pre-installed machines, they are both pretty much the same when it come to ease of installation.
when it comes to installing it yourself, Ubuntu is easier and faster.
you are comparing a manual install of Ubuntu to a pre-installed Windows XP. since these machines are preinsatalled with Linux, this apples to oranges comparison of yours is even more ridiculous.
Your average user will love this computer: it lets them spend $200, and they can just throw a pirated copy of Windows on it.
Since the $200 Shuttle doesn't come with an optical drive, I don't think the average user will be technically savvy enough to install Windows on it.
I had a small silent Pentium III 800 Mhz with only XDM and IceWM preconfigured stocked somewhere, waiting for the day it would make somebody happy.
Today was that day. My mother called that nobody could repair her expensive computer.
I took the train, placed the computer, upgraded, created an account, installed firefox and gaim and added her printer.
She was ready to do all she does with computers; browse, gmail, print, chat.
If this old computer can make her happy, I'm sure these powerful 200$ boxes can make many others happy.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
that was pp's point. That pre-installation is a hindrance to adoption of linux.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Unless Apple plans on abandoning the Mac mini it's high time for a tech refresh and a price cut right now. Because for a few dollars MORE than $200 I WILL get a computer that runs all those apps the naysayers claim this one won't. $600-$800 today is too high a price for that unit even if it is an Apple.
I have a nice little Linux palmtop running on a 330 MHz OMAP2420 cpu. It cost about $300 new, including touchscreen, 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, FM tuner and built-in camera.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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.
Eat the rich.
You haven't told me how many units Walmart had to sell.
gPC sales figures are unreleased from WalMart, but WalMart has re-upped their supply. If you imagine Walmart buying carloads and advertising it in their weekly flyers for Xmas you are severely deluded.
Has you ever given her the chance?
I think you mean, Have I ever given her the chance? Both of her older brothers run WinXP, Only one of them fulltime. She has plenty of opportunity to compare and contrast. There has been exactly one occasion that she has asked for an unsupported game, a game that is now supported.
Openoffice and other Open Source apps available on Windows. You say this as if it is a detriment of Linux/FLOSS? I love the claim that FLOSS apps started as Native Windows apps. StarOffice is probably the only one you could make that claim about. The fact that Firefox, Gimp, and OpenOffice have windows ports is not a reason for using windows . It is a way to keep your apps when you are chained to Windows Box at work. It is also a great way to introduce new people to FLOSS, making the switch is easier if all your daily apps are available.
Quoting sales figures of windows software is useless, What do you compare it to, # of downloads or hits at ftp.debian.com. Microsoft Office is popular, I never said it wasn't. I implied it was an unnecessary expense.
How many of these games have native Linux clients and how many need WINE or Caldega?
First off, it's Cedega and we don't use it. Most of the games I mentioned use Wine, but I fail to see the relevance. Wine is free, and makes those games run better than in native Windows in most cases. UT2k4, Doom3, Quake4 and a few others are Linux native. The 50 or so other games on her machine are native Linux apps.
What do you have against emulating games of yesteryear? I paid for it and it won't run in VISTA or XP or even Linux natively. Enter DosBox, problem solved. Again I point to my Sig, There are a ton of very good games for Linux and Windows. The pace of development is staggering.
My point is this: Linux is increasing in popularity, It's on your phone, your router, in your car, your digital camera, your internet tablet, digital picture frame, the fish finder on your boat, and even the controls of your hot tub.(You have me to thank for that last one.) The recent trend in PC manufacturers shipping Linux PCs is increasing and all your windows fanboyisms are not going to change that. Laptops from Asus, Everex, Lenova, Dell and OLPC sell like mad despite your perceived notion that not having windows will hurt their sales.
By The way, according to my search for Games at Sourceforge sorted by downloads, GlTron tops the list at 993,678 downloads. If you do it by category ZSNES tops it at 16,229,849 downloads, thats out of 22,681 or 14,583 projects (depending on which # you use). You are right that is significantly more than a truckload, sorry. Maybe you use a different Sourceforge though.
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