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paul sutton said:
Hi Just had a chat with Kevin at Farseer, He wants to sell a line of PC's running Linux so they are cheaper than the windows boxes he sells. One of the problems is that not just Linux users are going to buy them. Because they are cheaper, any user will go for them simply because they are cheaper. His concernes are .....
<snip> Whoa there ! It seems to me that Kevin has no interest in linux or anything other than windows in fact. It would be fruitless to waste your time trying to convince the guy to sell linux systems with an attitude like that. As I pointed out in my previous post on this subject, he will have to build machines that are 100% hardware compatible with linux in order to be able to support them. If he is going to be upset because he can't play the latest windows games, then he isn't going to spend days or even weeks researching the correct hardware and suitable distros for a marketable machine. I think the best you could convince him to do is, to create some dual boot machines, using various different distros together with the usual XP. Then he can sell these as normal but with an added "extra". He can (after suitable instruction by you) educate his customers in the added security of linux when using the internet, and lack of viruses etc. Maybe even convince them to use linux exclusively for web browsing and mail etc. (I do that now, windows is for dvd shrink and my crappy hauppage wintv usb). Then after a while, he may start to get some customers asking for linux only machines, because they have tried it, liked it, and are already aware of the associated issues with hardware etc. This is a long term goal. Remember the dos games that needed a special boot floppy, so that they could access extended memory properly ? Even dos is unknown to modern computer "users". Linux is no different in that respect. Preaching will do no good, only gentle persuasion and education. In my opinion, he won't sell any linux only boxes, unless its to an previously initiated user. But thats only my opinion ;-) alan -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.