The raw materials cost more than $10. According to this...
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/07/hnunstud y_1.html...the average desktop(not laptop) pc requires more than 1.8 tons(!) of raw materials. Dirt costs more than $10 per ton. Unless they're making it out of garbage or air I think they're out of luck. And the cost or raw materials can only go up.
Most of the problems I've seen average users have with Linux is not downloading and burning a live cd. It's getting the hardware configured properly.
There is enough stuff out there today for Joe to get his taste of Linux if he's interested.
If you know nothing about linux and try to install from a cd, a "taste of Linux" is probably going to be a "taste of extreme agony and frustration." (It's been getting much better recently though.) How many times have you seen an install fail because of some obscure hardware misconfiguration/incompatibility? I would argue that hardware problems are the real obstacle preventing mass adoption of linux. This is especially true for distros that have gone to great lengths to entice novice users as Ubuntu has. If Dell does a good job configuring Ubuntu for their hardware (and selects hardware that "just works" with linux), it could be usable out of the box for the average consumer.
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The raw materials cost more than $10. According to this... http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/07/hnunstud y_1.html ...the average desktop(not laptop) pc requires more than 1.8 tons(!) of raw materials. Dirt costs more than $10 per ton. Unless they're making it out of garbage or air I think they're out of luck. And the cost or raw materials can only go up.
I've always found it difficult to beat some of the AI from this project:
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~poker