Wal-Mart Customers: Linux ain't our bag
Wal-Mart hatched a bold campaign to make the computer affordable for John Q. Public by selling a discount brand with nothing but good ol' free Linux installed on it.
But after just four short months the retail giant is pulling the plug on in-store sales of these rock bottom priced $200 Everex gOS Linux machines.
This news does not shock me one bit, as I had the privilege of seeing one such rejection first hand.
When my mother's computer finally died after nearly 5 years under the strain of never seeing an air duster, I got the call to find an affordable replacement. As a part-time Linux user myself, I figured it'd be easy to teach my mother to accomplish what she needed to do with the computer under the Linux OS.
In theory, I would have been able to. But the operating system that comes with the system, "gOS", is a cumbersome and ugly looking monster that teases you with an "easy-to-use" quick-launch bar for items such as "YouTube" or "GMail" but the system immediately bites you when you start customizing things such as the display resolution.
In my opinion this operating system was not well thought through. For example, if you click on the YouTube quick launch icon, it takes you to the YouTube website, but none of the videos will play since the system does not come with the Flash Player plug-in for the Firefox browser. And for any of you who have played with Linux, installing the Flash Player plug-in for Firefox varies from Linux distribution to distribution. It was no cake walk on this "gOS" system, that's for sure. Any average computer user would not have gone through the trouble.
If you adjusted the screen resolution, this "quick launch" bar did not adjust properly to your new resolution. What an eye sore.
Problems like this are inexcusable. Didn't someone sit down and put the operating system through its paces before selling this model to customers? This had all the makings of a "rush to market" product and the fact that it took as long as four months to figure this out makes me scratch my head.
The Linux OS is absolutely free but comes with an intimidating learning curve to life-long Windows users. When Ubuntu's distribution of Linux hit the Internet, that curve has rapidly started to deteriorate. Since Ubuntu, the hardest part of the learning curve for Windows users is the installation process, as any hiccups between Linux and your hardware can be difficult to solve for a beginning Linux user.
If a company was to craft a computer with 100% Ubuntu compatible hardware and strike a deal for commercial use of their distribution on their computers, then you'd have a real rock-bottom priced computing solution that people could sink their teeth into. Include a DVD instruction video on how to run many common Windows program via the included Windows Emulator (WINE) and it'd be absolute dynamite.
Here's where Wal-Mart could see success in selling these PCs while reaching out to the community at the same time. If they were to donate 15-20 of these new Ubuntu PCs to a local continuing education center in exchange for being able to use the classroom for one or two nights a week over the course of one or two years, Wal-Mart could offer beginning computer classes to the community and get folks trained on the basics of the Ubuntu system. Finding instructors for such a class is easy and inexpensive (I used to teach basic computer classes at local continuing education centers myself).
After a solid crash course in Ubuntu computing, what are many people going to want to do with all this new found computer knowledge? Use it, of course. And for $200 they can take home a computer of their very own from Wal-Mart. Class participants will either love the price or simply feel obligated to buy a system from Wal-Mart since they offered the class for free.
If you don't think that model of business works, try asking Baby Tenda how crib sales were after their "safety seminars" they invited parents to.
After seeing success in one market it becomes a case of "rinse and repeat" across the country. Before you know it, "Wal-Mart computer seminars" could become a household concept.
So when your elderly mother is running 4 desktops, checking e-mail, instant messaging and surfing the web all at once on a $200 value computer she got after a computer seminar from Wal-Mart, you can thank me (or hate me depending on how much you like prying e-mail and IMs from your mother) and hopefully by then I've got my feet up on a desk somewhere warm and living off of good Wal-Mart money.
I can dream, can't I?
Labels: business, computers, gos, linux, ubuntu, wal-mart
posted by Michael Beck @ 3:31 PM
5 Comments
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5 Comments:
WOW! This is crazy MBeck! While I have no direct experience with the Linux OS, it is obvious that it poses a serious problem! This is actually horrible for Wal-Mart because you'd think since they are marketing and selling a $200 computer, then they would make it as user-friendly as possible. But then again my friend, if you are only paying $200 for a computer that is not refurbished, then there may clearly be another catch to it.
I do applaud the efforts of Wal-Mart for trying to make affordable something that practically everyone needs to have, but they obviously fell short of their own expectations. But knowing the powers-that-be of Wal-Mart, they are already cooking up another scheme to make this system better...so we should hope.
Marcus LANGFORD
Marcus: There is a lot of promise here. If they can come up with a $200 laptop for use in third world countries, they should be able to offer something comparable domestically. Besides, those XO Laptops are rugged little buggers - I wouldn't mind having one myself!
I agree with you about Linux and about Ubuntu. If someone (perhaps Dell) could just put together a package with Ubuntu that included all the parts needed to make its use as complete and as "easy" as OSX or XP, and with minimal problems with the out-of-the-box experience, then we'd really have something.
And given that the Unix underpinnings to Ubuntu are inherently superior to Windows, the only thing missing is the robust driver support that's been available for Windows. It's all a matter of putting together a great user experience and supporting it.
I've played around with the gOS LiveCD myself. I was very impressed at first (very quick loading times, sexy interface), and then I ran into problems much like the ones you're describing. I think going with enlightenment was a good call, but the customization was indeed a pain.
I also tried loading it onto my father's old laptop, and had resolution problems like you described. It has lots of options, but for some reason none of them were working properly on his hardware.
Unfortunately "out of the box" is going to be the biggest priority to get desktop linux boxes to the general public. I think Ubuntu does this extremely well, even if they have to sacrifice bundling proprietary software or licenses.
GoS was not too well thought out, but I think the major reason for Wal-Mart to drop preinstalled Linux is that they thought they were going to use the Gillet model, "give away the razor, get rich on the blades." Windows users keep going back to the store for software. Annual tax-prep programs, periodic antivirus upgrades, new versions of Microsoft Office to keep up with Microsoft's ever-mutating binary formats and, especially, games. Most of what you install on a Linux system is available for free download. Not even Satan's Retailer can undersell that.
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