Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> ____/ [H]omer on Monday 22 October 2007 11:07 : \____
>
>> Verily I say unto thee, that BearItAll spake thusly:
>>> On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 19:45:39 +0100, [H]omer wrote:
>>
>>>> Yup, when you start seeing Linux boxen sold by British supermarket
>>>> chains, that's when you know it's reached standard commodity
>>>> status.
>>>
>>> This will mean more to the general English man than the Dell thing.
>>
>> Yes, when you mention Dell to the average British punter, I'd be willing
>> to bet many couldn't even tell you exactly what it is, and of those who
>> could, you'd likely just get a scathing comment and a look of disdain
>> (IME).
>>
>>> But I can't help wondering if Tescos is the right vendor.
>>
>> Well they are Britain's /biggest/ retailer. You can't get much more
>> exposure than /that/ in Blighty.
>>
>>> There are bound to be people buying a Linux machine and pick up some
>>> PC game or something on the way to the tills. People will buy Linux
>>> and not have the faintest idea of what they have bought, do we really
>>> want this?
>>
>> IME few of the kind of people who buy PCs in high-street shops have a
>> clue about PCs or operating systems of /any/ kind. If you're going to
>> get your feet wet, you may as well do it with a /real/ OS like Linux.
>>
>>> Tescos customers services are much better than PC World, Curries and
>>> {that other one, I've forgotten its name}.
>>
>> Three more ... The Link, Mastercare and Dixons (all part of the Dixons
>> Stores Group: DSG). Although IIRC they sold The Link to o2, or BT
>> Cellnet as they used to be known, before they changed the name to try to
>> hide from their horrendous reputation.
>>
>>> Personally I think it might help if Tesco selected Linspire as the
>>> default distro, including a years access to the Gold Linspire account
>>> (if they still do that).
>>
>> Egads no! I'd sooner they were given Slowlaris than be subjected to one
>> of the Monkey-Club distros.
>>
>> I just tried Fedora 8 test 3, and even though I'm bound to be a little
>> biased when it comes to Fedora, I have to say that it surprised even me.
>> It is very, /very/ slick indeed, and it's not even /ready/ yet. Tesco
>> could do worse ... much worse. Failing that, Mandriva is gorgeous and
>> just as easy. Heck ... give them Slackware 12 ... have you seen /that/
>> baby recently? I'll stop short at recommending Gentoo though ... :)
>>
> Not to mention the fact that Linspire's days appear to be numbered.
>
Putting the Linspire-MS thing asside (and I personally wouldn't put that
agreement in the same class as Novell-MS, because it was for different
reasons). Even before that agreement Linspire users paid so that Linspire
could licence media stuff as part of the package, in that sence I have no
problem with a Linspire-MS agreement.
But Linspire the product is extraordinarily easy for home users who want a
computer but don't want to learn linux. They just want to use a computer,
browse the internet, play a tune, watch a video write a letter etc.
All the user does is pop in or boot the small download. Let it take over the
machine, the defaults of the install are fine, for a client, then they get
the browser page to sign up to Linspire. Select the software and can
guarentee that what ever they select off the Linspire site will work, with
no effort on their part, oh sorry, they have to click a button, so people
without fingers might have difficulty.
If at some time the PC dies, or just a drive goes, then once the user is
back online, he logs into Linspire and everything he has ever bought from
the commercial packages or selected from the free packages is brought back
onboard and set up for him. It really is a distro where everything is done
for you.
All of that does have a down side obviously, I've mentioned here before,
such as:-
It is very much a client, many services we might now take for granted are
not part of Linspire. Is that good or bad? Well it is simple, if you have a
home server then you have lost nothing from using Linspire. Also, I suppose
that if the users don't know what services are missing, then chances are
they wouldn't miss them :)
I said on here (just looked it up to see how long ago it was now) just over
a year ago, that I put someone on Linspire, he is still on it. He has a
different PC now and had done what I said above, minimum install - connect
to the internet - log into Linspire - let it install all of his software.
Isn't that how easy we would like computing to be for people? Some on here
like the oily rags, I used to myself, but not now, now all I do at a
computer is use it. My choice is openSuse, but I wouldn't feel the least
abashed putting Linspire in it's place.
|
|
