from Hacker News

Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003)

by dannyrosen on 9/12/17, 5:34 PM with 157 comments

  • by git-pull on 9/12/17, 6:36 PM

    Anyone else here remember LindowsOS (later changed its name to Linspire)?

    In the early 2000's (around the time of the article), they were trying to get point and click simplicity for installing software (which even back then was abundant in Linux). I remember a few others distros, like Mandriva (Mandrake at the time) had graphical package managers. There were others.

    To anyone who's curious and feels like giving old Linux distros a try, https://old-linux.com/ is a good resource. Unfortunately I can't find any mirrors of repos with packages that go back to 1998 and early 2000's.

  • by jordigh on 9/12/17, 5:50 PM

    Last week I was sitting in an undergraduate lecture hall with hundreds of students. I looked back at their laptops and it was a sea of Apple logos.

    We've traded one monopoly for another.

  • by throwaway2016a on 9/12/17, 6:23 PM

    I've been looking to "upgrade" my OSX laptop to Linux and on a whole have been disappointed by the hardware build quality on the Linux machines.

    What I really want is a thin and light unibody aluminum frame and high density screen on a Linux machine. But since I can't find that, OS X is a nice substitute.

    Edit: Thank you for the suggestions everyone.

  • by thehardsphere on 9/12/17, 5:51 PM

    I'm guessing in the ensuing 14 years this offering did not continue. I wouldn't know; I'm part of the generation that swore off buying software or computers at Wal-Mart when they were selling Duke Nukem 3D with the parental control option permanently turned on.

  • by burntrelish1273 on 9/13/17, 4:07 AM

    Wasn't this about the same price-point as eMachines (sans Linux)?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMachines

  • by aabajian on 9/13/17, 3:02 AM

    I bought SuSE Linux at Best Buy 15 years ago. This was before I had a fast-enough internet connection to download it. I remember there were a few other distros available as well.

  • by MentallyRetired on 9/13/17, 3:21 AM

    15 years and Linux still has barely improved the usability for the average user.