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Corel Linux to be Bundled w/20 Million motherboards
Hos writes "According to this
story,
PC Chips is going to ship Corel Linux with all of their
motherboards. " Basically, from what it sounds like, PC Chips is going to put a copy of Corel Linux, WordPerfect 8 for Linux, and WordPerfect Suite with the motherboards. PC Chips estimates that they will ship over 20 million motherboards over in 2000. Corel will also be doing more on their web site, as well as a "joint marketing campaign." I guess that's one way to get jump start a large user base.
If you want what your getting, its good. Say Microsoft gave Windows away for free. You get windows.. do you want it? Are you happy that someone who bought a new computer got it, and they stuck with it because they didn't know what of something better? Corel is giving away WP so that users can use their suite, and a lot will merely because they don't have anything better. In that regard, ignorance and laziness reduces choice, where as if you were asked 'Windows, Linux, BSD, Be, or QNX' (like walking into a car dealer and being asked the color).. that's good. A car that comes in 'x' color without choice.. most wont bother (by ignorance but mostly laziness) to change colors. They'll glance, make a fuss if its tangrine and dark purple.. and live.
Say.. the Windows vs. OS/2 deal. Back in the 80s, msdos was pre-installed on all desktops (well.. or given on 5.25" floppy). For most people, myself included, I knew of Windows because it was the big deal from MS, and I knew of MS only because of DOS. I didn't hear about OS/2 for a long.. long time, and was happily despising windows and using geoworks. Had I known of OS/2, I likely would have switched, as all I did was play games and write essays.. Had I known of Linux, I might have tried it, though without the drive space (anyone remember when it was cool you finally got 10mb free?).. Pure ignorance, because no one told me better and I just used what came and what family had already suffered with, from work or whatever.
Thus.. that's why I think pre-installing is reduction of choice. If 2 or more OSes are given as options, straight out without any default, and a list provided of others.. or nothing at all.. that's choice.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
If you don't want Linux with your Motherboard, take your business somewhere else. Unlike with top-tier PC's, you do have a choice in these matters.
they're going to need a really big box.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
This may be troll, but.. I'm glad to see this. Another step in the broadening of horizons, the sharing of knowledge, the diversifying of the desktop. Now, if only more companies would offer alternative OSes as the OS with their computers.. not necessarily Linux, of course, but BeOS (is it default with any systems?), *BSD, OS/2 (maybe? for the heck of it?), more.. that I can't think of right off hand. But there are many more alternatives, I know, and I wish that at least some company, somewhere, would start a trend; so that you could walk into a computer store and select any of a cornucopia of OS for your new computer. Wouldn't that be grand?
Insert mind here.
(Brief aside: I mis-read the title, first time. Pity. That would have been one hell of a Beowulf! :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Theres advantages to this, but also disadvantages. How many of us actually looked at the motherboard cds when we got our boards? I know I didnt till I needed that pesky driver to run my least favorite OS. On the other hand, corel tossing its weight behind linux is great. Also, I know there were issues with corel and licensing for their betas, I assume these have been resolved, although I dont know. Finally, if a typical user gets a cd that says linux on it, can we really assume they'll have a clue? Linux is doing great in getting to be as easy as windows, but it's by no means there yet. I doubt that this will increase the usage of linux significantly, but it certainly is nice to see another major proponent of the OS.
I guess my concern is who is going to be guying those motherboards. Are they a brand that is primarilly purchased by computer manufactureres, who are likely to use the Corel Linux CD's like everyones favorite coaster, 'the free aol CD'. Or will the CD's actually get to a consumer who will say, "hmm, a free os on this cd, let's give ita try."
This could be really cool!
/* CDM */
Wow, this is huge huge news. All the numbers I see are two years old, and they are around 10 million users.
How many people use Linux now?
It just occurred to me that hard drives are shipped blank. Maybe we can get Seagate to pre-load Linux on their hard drives at the factory! Just pop the hard disk in the machine and boot it up. If you want to put the disk in a non-Linux capable machine, no big deal. Just format and install whatever you want on it, exactly as if the drive was blank.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
That is definitely a way to increase user base, but that would only count as copies shipped. It doesn't mean that they were used, which is what "User Base" defines. Sorta like M$ saying Personal Web Server and IE were the two most popular tools of their fields. They counted numbers shipped rather than actual usage.
2. Unlike MS/AOL/etc who will stick a freebie copy of anything anywhere, this actually targets potential Linux users.
What difference does it make for AOL to put a disk in a magazine or send them to a list of people who've bought modems in the past 12 months? They're just as much "a potential user" as are buyers of motherboards are to linux.
It is cool though, that they're doing this. A big deterent probably is the hassle of downloading a distro, followed by actually spending money (no matter how little) on an OS you have no idea if you'll even use. If even 10% of the buyers decide to try out the free OS that came with their Motherboard, it'll make a huge difference
But the only way there will be a "death of MSFT" is via the Death of a Million Paper Cuts that involve not a single "killing" blow, but rather a whole array of tiny, relatively independent injuries that add up.
Other comments have suggested that a more logical step would be to push for Linux pre-installed on (say) Seagate hard drives.
Put all of these things together:
- Some copies getting deployed via bundling with motherboards
- Some copies getting deployed via bundling with disk drives
- Some copies getting deployed via being preinstalled by one of the fifty-odd Linux VARS
And it starts to add up to "a few paper cuts."And the point is not to "beat Microsoft;" that would merely be a convenient sideeffect of doing useful things with Linux.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I think Corel is really hiting the ground running with their Linux distribution. This is just another (great) way to get linux out there.
;-)
In case anyone's interested, here's an overview of Corel Linux (i'm a beta tester). This is all based on the 2nd Beta Release.
The thing that struck me the most about this distribution is that with the "default" install it asks you exactly 0 technical questions. Even the partition tool was pretty simple, though you can just put it on your current DOS partition and bypass all that. I got through the installation without seeing even a glimpse of the console. In fact, an average windows user could easily use this distribution for years never knowing there even _was_ such a crazy thing. While this may cause some of us who like linux for the things that CL tries to "hide" to shudder, this is exactly what Linux needs. Microsoft (from a marketing standpoint) knew what they were doing hiding DOS behind the clouds... it's the same thing. I'm not saying that with a few minutes of tweaking you can't get the normal linux feel back, just that newbies won't have to deal with it until they're ready. As soon as it was through and I was in X Windows, I clicked on the big Netscape icon out of perhaps morbid curiosity, and to my surprise I had an active connection to my LAN. On other distributions this took alotof tinkering. I think this is what splits the line between computer users... those who want it to work so they can look up a recipe or what have you, and those of us like myself who actually enjoy the process of getting everything to work. In a more philosophical mood I would probably make some journey vs. destination remark. It was a weird, almost empty feeling siting in front of a linux box that had been "auto-configured." Yes, i've tried Caldera, and it has its strong points... but what Corel has done could really make linux approachable to everyone (I would literally trust my grandmother to install CL... just stick the CD in, reboot, and hit next a few times). Hopefully Corel will continue to market this like there's no tomorrow... it could really bring linux to the mainstream.
And besides, this would make up for sending celene dion (think www.corel.ca)
No. If Microsoft were giving out FREE Win XX CD's with PC Chips mobos, we'd be jumping around, yelling things like
'We've killed the beast!'
'I always knew m$ was worthless!'
'Micro$#!t hit the fan 'cuz they can't compete!'
.sig: Now legally binding!
Ah, but Microsoft had no competition. This is good for Linux, because, should Corel start getting lazy, the OEM's would quickly go to Red Hat or someone. Microsoft had no such incentive.
And, as you mentioned, everyone is to lazy or ignorant to use something else, so they just use what's pre-installed. That means more marketshare for Linux :)
-Brent--
This is not necessarily bad. In fact, I think it would be interesting if Microsoft were forced to explicitly position itself as the "luxury" OS, compared to the "cheapies." But the cheapies are likely to soon include not just the various full-featured UNIX-based Free / free OSes, but also the rumored-but-vaporous "non-MS machines" which so many vendors are talking about to run their cheaper-than-the-same-weight-of-dirt Internet Terminals, WWW Appliances and whatnot.
Interesting because a) it might make MS OSes better than they are (I'm no fan, but they do some things fair, middlin' or well -- and it'd be nice to see that aspect continue) and b) I don't think they could actually hold the "luxury" ground very well, which would make for Interesting Times (my favorite chinese curse
But hey -- if Linux can be made to work with lowest-common denominator machines, Great! I think the owners are going to wish for upgrades in the form of faster machines, not "That grand vision of an OS that Microsoft has but that we couldn't afford a few years ago when we bought this piece of junk PC that came with Linux
At least, that's my conjecture.
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
This will get Linux into many more hands; you can't go to a small PC store without tripping over those cheap integrated PCChips motherboards.
I personally use a PCChips m750i dual processor motherboard with two Celeron 300A's running at 450 - makes a kick-ass Linux box (currently running Mandrake 6.1) - although I am going to put a different video card in it.
Normally a lot of small shops sell PC's without an OS, and in small print have "+100 for Windows 98" - now they can say "Comes pre-loaded with Corel Linux + WordPerfect (add Windows 98 for $100)"
I expect Linux to keep growing; don't forget about the Mexican governaments project for Linux labs in all Mexican schools - just think of all those millions of new Linux users every year!
--------- Webmaster, http://www.cpureview.com and
It's exponential. For every b units, a new unit is added (b is the base). So Y=k * b^t , where k is some positive constant.
If you take the logarithm of something that's growing exponentially, then you get a straight line. That is, use a logarithmic display/graph paper to see exponential growth as a straight line.
I don't know if I like this. I use WordPerfect 8 for Linux and like it, but it's not up to the standard of WP8 for Windows.
I'm afraid 20 million people will try Linux with the old WordPerfect and get a bad impression.
I'd feel much better if they'd wait until WP9 for Linux is available and shipped that.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
I've never gotten Linux to run reliably on them (granted, these are older Socket-7 era motherboards). If you're looking for technical info, good luck. Their web site is slower than molasses, on a 56k modem or something... There's even a (tongue in cheek) PC Chips Lottery site, in which you can attempt to guess your motherboard model, and if you "win," you get a feeble amount of info on your board.
In short, if I were Corel, this is NOT the sort of relationship I'd be looking for. :)
> Astroturf doesn't get thick. In order for it to get thick, it has to grow.
No, you can stack it as deep as you want. Provided that you can buy enough of it.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No, a "tax" is where you don't have any choice, because (in this case) Microsoft has crippled the market into forcing you to pay for Windows. The tax isn't the simple fact that they sell Windows, it's that they prevent anyone from not selling Windows.
In this case, even if PC Chips has an exclusive contract, you could go to another vendor. You can't do that with Windows. Now I suppose if Corel had licensing with all Mobo makers, so that even if I wanted to run FreeBSD, I had to pay them their $12, then I'd be upset. But they don't
I don't see exclusivity contracts as bad. I see them as bad when they are used to force OEM's to capitulate in other contracts. If Corel was using its dmoniance with Wordperfect to force OEM's to pay for Corel Linux, that'd be bad.
But to license their product to be included with all mb's, that's not a problem.
-Brent--
it's still a tax. Isn't that what we're always complaining about with M$?
The difference I see here is that the motherboard manufacturer is going to have to ship some sort of CD anyway (for drivers and stuff). Most likely it would otherwise be mostly empty. If they can cut a deal with Corel to fill that otherwise wasted space with Corel Linux+WordPerfect, then it isn't so bad. It may not really be a 'tax' per-se if this is a mutual advertising swap, and no money changes hands. I can see Corel doing it just to get market share and potential future upgrade earnings. For the motherboard manufacturer it offers them the opportunity to get some product differentiation in a market where that is a difficult thing to find, and also a nice way to make their CD bootable at a much cheaper price than what they'd pay to do that with Microsoft -- potentially that could save them some $$$ in the tech support area.
in most manufacturing environments it costs more to leave something out than to just make everything the same.
Although when it comes to fabbing CD's, it costs the same to press a full CD as opposed to a mostly empty one. You are correcrt if you are talking about whether it would cost more to stock a seperate 'driver only' CD or to sell motherboards with or without a CD.
I like the concept a lot. I would rather have any Linux distro than the AOL CD that comes with my Sunday newspaper anytime.
I just hope that it is a well done distro. I'd reather see something conservative but reliable than some of these cutting edge distros that have a lot of rough edges.
Now all we need is RedHat + SuperMicro, SuSe + ABit, etc.
Maybe that's what the new RedHat non-profit should be doing? Stuffing the Sunday newspaper with cheap Linux CD's?
Linux will be crawling around like roaches at a flophouse. Sure, 99.9% of them will be microwave ammo and coasters but at least no one can give the old, "It's such a long download..." excuse with a straight face.
and of couse the obligatory, "101 uses for Linux disks." Scary.
The single worst thing about the 'Open Source movement' is that it is bringing about an army of marketers.
Come on guys! This what the marketing department of Corel and Microsoft do! "Hmmm. So, will this increase our user base?"
"Yes but will they find the software usefull?"
"Herbert! Get the new guy out of here now!"
I pity what the Open Source movement has turned into.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!