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Ubuntu Linux launches via Best Buy
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 10th July 2008
The Ubuntu Retail packaging has been designed to highlight the advantages Linux brings to the end-user.
According to a post by Steve George, director of Corporate Services at Canonical, on the official Ubuntu blog yesterday the boxed product – produced by software distribution company ValuSoft – will include an Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop CD-ROM, a quick-start guide, and sixty days of support by Canonical-trained ValuSoft employees.
Retailing for $19.99 – around £10 – the product is aimed at “users who are unaware of Ubuntu or who are bandwidth restricted and don't want to download Ubuntu themselves.”
If you want to try out Ubuntu but feel that, even with a sixty day support package, it's a little too scary, Best Buy's in-house technical team – the rather painfully monikered “Geek Squad” – will install the OS for you; sadly, they charge a rather eye-watering $129.95 to do so, according to ComputerWorld.
This isn't the first time a Linux distribution has been available as a boxed product in a high-street store, of course: my very first installation of Linux was of a SuSE Desktop retail package purchased from PC World, which included a lovely series of manuals and around four CD-ROMs containing all the packages you could possibly want. SuSE, along with other Linux distributors, has discovered in the past that boxed retail products for an operating system that can be downloaded for free perfectly legitimately just doesn't work; whether the shift towards user-friendly Linux distributions alongside the sensible price point chosen by Canonical will allow the company to buck this trend remains to be seen.
Tempted by a boxed Linux distribution, or are the days of physical software purchases numbered now that broadband is the rule, rather than the exception? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (15)
I think this could work for Ubuntu as it is more average user orientated. Even my Dad can use it and prefers it over windows because it works better with no random popups all the time which he has no idea whether to say yes or no to.
i tryed it when they first put out their free-CD scheme. and it was bad! so bad, i throw away the Live CD after 1 boot.
Fedora Core or SUSE is what people should be looking at
We are talking about the years where command line was something you used more than anything else, and FWMN95 as your GUI (if you manage to install XFREE86). On that Dial Up Era the issues where many. A simple update mean you had to stay online all the night in case a file stop downloading to kick it again. Or else you where losing money connected over the phone and doing nothing.
I would like to see more distributions like that, coming with a nice fat manual with them too. I hate online documentation/book.
What the ****, you can order free CD's of the distributions anyway.
Yes, I know there are a shedload of compromises in Ubuntu to make it "user friendly", I know it has issues, and I know you can dowload it for free. I've done it, I hand out copies of it at work. This is not for me, or even for the averave bit-tekker. This is for the people who buy a computer and expect it to work. This is for people who would never, ever consider upgrading, much less downloading, and OS because they're afraid they'll break it.
Even if you're a die-hard Windows fanboi (*caughgoodbytescaugh*), this is still a good thing. Real competition will force MS to make new versions of Windows significantly better than the last, because people now have a mainstream, cheaper option. MS cannot compete with linux on price, so they have to compete on brand loyalty and value.
For those of us who already use *nix this is still a good thing because this will strongly encourage manufacturers to support linux with good drivers, or risk losing market share to someone who does. It also means that some people who would have never been exposed to linux will go on to become power users and advocates for the FOSS cause.
I don't know how to say this strongly enough...
This IS a GOOD THING!!!
services are where the company makes profit
and yes , all their services are freaking rip offs
We do take annual maintenance from Canonical for 2 of our key network servers and while it is not cheap it is a wonderful feeling knowing that my cash is supporting people trying to change things for the better with the open source movement. On the contrary, most of our M$ spend leaves me feeling sick most of the time with an unhealthy dose of guilt for feeding the global money-making machine. Don't get me wrong, I am not anti everything M$ and some of their products are unbeatable, but it is refreshing to see other players out there offering far better value to the client and still putting food on the table.