Posted by: hopethishelps
on August 09, 2008 02:40 PM
Even worse news is the level of comments in the first few responses. If I thought that they were indicative of the average maturity of FOSS supporters, I'd give up all hope for GNU/Linux right now.
Linspire accomplished what no other distro has ever done: it got a GNU/Linux distro pre-installed on computers sold in a major retailer. This is essential, yes ESSENTIAL, for GNU/Linux to get enough users to guarantee its long-term survival. Just for doing that, it deserves very great respect from everyone in the Free Software community.
Somebody will no doubt say that Dell sells GNU/Linux preinstalled and that Dell is a major retailer. But the fact is that if somebody goes to the Dell web site with the intention of just buying a computer, that somebody will end up with Windows pre-installed because you have to dig very, very deeply into the Dell site - and know it's there, somewhere - to find any mention of GNU/Linux.
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That is bad news
Posted by: hopethishelps on August 09, 2008 02:40 PMLinspire accomplished what no other distro has ever done: it got a GNU/Linux distro pre-installed on computers sold in a major retailer. This is essential, yes ESSENTIAL, for GNU/Linux to get enough users to guarantee its long-term survival. Just for doing that, it deserves very great respect from everyone in the Free Software community.
Somebody will no doubt say that Dell sells GNU/Linux preinstalled and that Dell is a major retailer. But the fact is that if somebody goes to the Dell web site with the intention of just buying a computer, that somebody will end up with Windows pre-installed because you have to dig very, very deeply into the Dell site - and know it's there, somewhere - to find any mention of GNU/Linux.
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