Won't lower prices to compete with Linux, eh?

[vniow]

If you remember some statements made by Ballmer some time ago, he defended MS's new Liscencing strategy which essentially locked customers into buying only MS products while also raising the price up to 100% and that it would stay that way.

For big businesses and computer manufacturers that is.

An article at Lindows.com spurred some controversy over MS's new 'addition' to Liscence 6.
MS will cut the price of bulk copies of XP in half for small white-box computer manufacturers that make PCs with Lindows pre-installed.

Why Lindows you ask?

While other Linux distros just sit back and wait for the hardware vendors to come to them, usually by word-of-mouth or by internet, Lindows have agressively been seeking vendors for some time now.

MS confirms this with a new 'addition' to their Liscence 6 plan called Open Value

Now if you're Dell, Sony, or HP, you don't get those disounts for the simple reason that it's illegal under the anti-trust settlement.

Dude, I'm, getting a Lindows!

 

[sparkleytone]

tell me what you think of lindows once youve had it for a while.

while i disagree with alot of the basis of lindows and how it works (paying for a frontend to get free software), it has gotten pretty good responses from the types of reviewers that know how to be impartial and are still in touch with the average user. that has peeked my interest a bit, since altho I am a power user and very technical, i LOVE for my OS to be simple and easy.

 

[vniow]

I've actually had it for awhile (v2.0) but I haven't used it much since there were a few things that weren't stable enough to be used regularly yet (mainly Click-and-Run) but most of these have been fixed in the new version which I haven't downloaded yet (waiting for iBook to ship so I can do it nightly, PC's too loud)

What I have seen of it I've liked, the only time I've ever had to use the console is to temporarily fix some of those stability issues and to apt-get a few things.

Lindows is basically Debian with a pretty GUI and an incredibly easy way to get software (including commercial ones which make up more that the $129 you spent on Lindows)

I agree that it's a bit overpriced for now ($59 would be much more convincing) but once they get a lot more software, commercial or not, $99 is going to look like a better value.

 

[sparkleytone]

well the deal is...if linux is ever going to break onto the desktop scene, the companies have to realize that its not about the GUI. its not even about the OS.

the reason m$ is so successful is because they have all the OEM business. pretty much everyone knows there are better alternatives. the reason m$ continues to stay on top is because everything comes with windows. they have a stranglehold on the OEMs. first walmart, next the world.

 

[vniow]

Exactly.

Like I said in my origional post, Lindows has been agressivley seeking those OEMs while other distros don't really see a need.

They also introduced marketing hype into the Linux world which it has been sorely lacking in.
Lindows has this way of drawing attention to itself which makes it more attractive to consumers because they've heard of it and know a little about it.
Most people haven't heard of Geento Slackware, or Debian. They may have heard of Mandrake and Red Hat, but chances are if you've been keeping up with tech news in the past couple years, even if you've looked at it only occasionally, you've probably heard of Lindows which is more than I can say for other distros, no matter how good their product might be.
Linux is not going to make even a small dent in MS's empire if they just wait for consumers to come to them.

Add: Most people also don't know or care what OS is on their computer, they normally just stick with the one that came pre-installed and leave it until they either upgrade or more often, buy a new computer.
MS may make an 85% profit off of individual copies of Windows, but most copies they sell are to OEMs in bulk.

 

[Sun Baked]

Originally posted by edvniow
MS may make an 85% profit off of individual copies of Windows, but most copies they sell are to OEMs in bulk.

Like they don't make a profit off the OEM copies, you may count the profit in dollars.

Somehow I don't see MS selling Windows at a loss to OEMs in order to profit off the sales of lucrative consumables (like a printer company, game system, or razor).

 

[iJon]

i never liked lindows. it says it will run windows software, yeah right. just to test it i put my warcraft 3 cd in there to see what it would do. warcraft gave me an error saying it wont run on systems running windows 95.

iJon

 

[rice_web]

Lindows incorporates Wine, a Windows emulator. It isn't perfect, which is why Lindows has stopped touting Windows emulation as a feature; you shouldn't be complaining.

 

[scem0]

wouldn't it being an emulation cause the system to run mega slow?
It seems like it would. Wouldn't it be lik erunning Virtual PC on a
mac?

 

[ibjoshua]

Originally posted by iJon
i never liked lindows. it says it will run windows software, yeah right. just to test it i put my warcraft 3 cd in there to see what it would do. warcraft gave me an error saying it wont run on systems running windows 95.

iJon

this might interest you: http://bsd.slashdot.org/bsd/02/11/29/063229.shtml?tid=125

i_b_joshua

 

[Thirteenva]

Originally posted by rice_web
Lindows incorporates Wine, a Windows emulator. It isn't perfect, which is why Lindows has stopped touting Windows emulation as a feature; you shouldn't be complaining.

Actually there's a different reason they stopped touting there windodws compatibility.

MS decided it wanted to sue over the name Lindows, saying its to close to "windows". The judge ruled that the word "windows" could not be trademarked as windows was an industry word reffering to "windowed" operating systems and pre-dated MS windows. BUT as part of the settlement, lindows could no longer promote its MS windows copatibility because at that point it was using "windows" in reference to a trademarked product.

So lindows dropped its windows compatibility campaign.


And if anyone is looking for a cheap lindows box to mess around with, check walmart.com they had one for $299 a few months ago. Not the highest quality but for 300 bucks, it might be fun to mess with.

 

[iJon]

Originally posted by rice_web
Lindows incorporates Wine, a Windows emulator. It isn't perfect, which is why Lindows has stopped touting Windows emulation as a feature; you shouldn't be complaining.

I'm not complaining. One of my coworkers installed Lindows and I was just messing with it and seeing if things worked. I dont need to consider putting mandrake on my pc anymore because i purchased windows xp. its no mac os x but as for getting 'illegal operation errors" i get none. windows xp has been perfect for someone who wants to play games and do stuff without if crashing all the time(although i get freezeups now and then). I feel so sorry for my friends and people on these threads who have so much bad luck with windows. maybe i got some lucky box or maybe its because my pc is next to mac. who knows.

iJon

 

[vniow]

Originally posted by Thirteenva



Actually there's a different reason they stopped touting there windodws compatibility.

No actually it was WINE, not legal issues.

They touted that they could run Windows software in the beginning mostly to get their name out there. When they put over one million into tweaking WINE specifically for Lindows and got little out of it, they decided to take a different approach, to take existing Linux apps and make them easy to install and use, Click-and-Run.
WINE did nothing but slow releases and updates and it was so much a waste of resources that they have removed it in their later versions. If you want limited Windows app compatibility in Lindows, you can download WINE from CNR.

You can run some Windows games with WineX, but that doesn't come with Lindows, you have to order it from Transgaming for $5 a month.

 

[Thirteenva]

I stand corrected.

 

[vniow]

No problem.

If anybody wants to ask the Lindows people anything, just let me know.
Hell, you can even chat live with the president, CEO and many of the engineers.
And they actually listen too.

 

[rice_web]

I feel so sorry for my friends and people on these threads who have so much bad luck with windows

I've used Windows 95 since it came out, rarely running into problems. Yes, I still have an iMac running OS X, but for speed and practical applications, I'll run Windows. XP is nice, but the GUI is just a little slow for my taste (I stick with 2000).

 

[iJon]

Originally posted by rice_web


I've used Windows 95 since it came out, rarely running into problems. Yes, I still have an iMac running OS X, but for speed and practical applications, I'll run Windows. XP is nice, but the GUI is just a little slow for my taste (I stick with 2000).

Yeah, i have a 2ghz p4, that ran xp very fast even with all the features turned on. but since then i have turned off the features and switched back to clasic view, that speeds a lot of things up.

iJon