System76 at WalMart?

[steveneddy]

Saw this article (http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/484595.htm) while surfing and it looks like a System76 laptop.

Good going guys.

:popcorn:

[trash]

aw, my mom was gonna go get till she realized there's no wireless.. still sweet lil machine. She's gonna go testdrive it anyway.

[greg_g]

Umm, that is a picture of their laptop, but it doesn't say anything about System76 in the article, only Everex. Plus, Sys76 doesn't do VIA CPUs.

Sounds like someone infringed on Sys76's copyrights. Unless, for some reason, the author knowingly used a Sys76 image and got permission for it, for an article that has nothing to do with Sys76, other than the words "Ubuntu" and "Laptop."

EDIT:
Plus, that article is very crappily written. And, Sys76 doesn't do gOS (an Ubuntu derivative). They are using Ubuntu in the title of the article to get hits, even though the OS is gOS.

<End_Rant>

[asmiller-ke6seh]

I smell a ripoff. Typical sleazy internet journalism. The author and editor deserve to b ehung by an old typewriter ribbon.:lolflag:

[BLTicklemonster]

Yep, ehang him by an etree!!

Anyway, that laptop has Ubuntu on it, not the gOS. How messed up is that?

[wesley_of_course]

How in the world do they get away with that ?, false ad-
vertising ?????????

[osx424242]

I think we can all agree that 'opensource.sys-con.com' may no longer be a reliable source.
However, I am personally a big fan of Everex and their gOS. They're bringing a low-cost PC, and now a laptop, to the masses, using WalMart as their distribution source -- and Linux as their OS. They're using an Ubuntu-based OS to achieve this. You should all be thrilled with their goals, their techniques, and the size of their potential user base.
It looks like an enthusiastic journalist took a screen capture from the front page of the official Ubuntu site, which, as we are all happy about, occasionally shows System76 computers (I seem to remember that members of this forum were pretty excited that System76 got some love on the Ubuntu main page when GG was released).
I should also point out that the article refers to OpenOffice instead of the technically correct "OpenOffice.org," which indicates that the author is less than intimately familiar with the open source movement.

[thomasaaron]

That sure does look that the old Serval (EL80).
But we're not selling through wally-world, guys.

The sales manager says he thinks that pic was taken from our website.

[sx66gns]

Disrespectful.




Also wth is this about , from that page:

"steve ballmer wrote: Microsoft Fracturing the Open-Source Community? Mark Shuttleswrath, iconic Linux cult leader and famous space cadet claims that: "Microsoft has succeeded in fracturing the Linux and open-source community with the patent indemnity agreements it has entered into with several prominent vendors ... blah blah blah" Correction "Mr. Spock", in order to fracture something, dosen't it have to have some type of unity in the first place? You guys are "Open Source", that means that anything goes! The only thing that you guys have in common is that your stuff is cheap, ugly and consistently confusing. Be glad that we show any interest in any of this stuff, you see when you guys sign "contracts" with us it stops us from suing you into oblivion over the 235 unspecified patent violations in Linux. Convince your little buddies to sign up now, my patience is running out."

[thomasaaron]

I read somewhere not too long ago that Microsoft, in response to being sued for patent violations, has threatened to sue the Free Software Foundation (or some other similar group) for a bunch of "unspecified" patent violations.

Sounds to me like a bunch of useless posturing.

[steveneddy]

Hey - now that I look at it, I have that laptop.

[asmiller-ke6seh]

I read somewhere not too long ago that Microsoft, in response to being sued for patent violations, has threatened to sue the Free Software Foundation (or some other similar group) for a bunch of "unspecified" patent violations.

Sounds to me like a bunch of useless posturing.

Um hmm. Looking to sue the Free Software Foundation for alleged patent violations in Open Systems softwareS (plural emphasized) is like trying to declare war on Al Jezeerah as a way of stopping international Islamo-terrorism -- and just about as likely to be successful.

See "What Microsoft Doesn't Want You to Know" in my sig (below).

[jml]

The story has a grain of truth, but they did a bad job of research. According to the Everex web site:

http://www.everex.com/

They will be releasing an ultraportable laptop called the Cloudbook to compete with the ASUS EeePC. It will run gOS which is apparently an Everex supported version of Linux optimized to utilize Google's online apps. According to the Everex web site, it will be available from Walmart.com after January 25th for a selling price of $399 US.

It is very similar to the EeePC in several respects; in cost, size, wireless and wired networking, memory card reader and a lack of any type of optical drive. It differs in that the EeePC utilizes a 4 gig solid state hard drive which is very fast, but limited in capacity. The Cloudbook utilizes 30 gig 4200 rpm hard drive. Better capacity, but slower and a bit more fragile. The Cloudbook also has a DVI output jack where the EeePC has a standard VGA output jack.

I own an EeePC and am very satisfied with it. It will be interesting to see the reviews on Everex's offering when it finally ships.

Joe

[asmiller-ke6seh]

The story has a grain of truth, but they did a bad job of research. According to the Everex web site:

http://www.everex.com/ It is very similar to the EeePC in several respects; in cost, size, wireless and wired networking, memory card reader and a lack of any type of optical drive. It differs in that the EeePC utilizes a 4 gig solid state hard drive which is very fast, but limited in capacity. The Cloudbook utilizes 30 gig 4200 rpm hard drive. Better capacity, but slower and a bit more fragile. The Cloudbook also has a DVI output jack where the EeePC has a standard VGA output jack.

It sounds live Everex is trying to take a page or two out of the One Computer for Every Child project computer program.

It also sounds like the internet appliance has finally arrived.

[Squish]

Well so far this is the only thing I have seen walmart do... that I actually approve of.

My question is, how many regular people who buy the EEE, or the wamart computers actually know that its running linux?

Heh...
I was dissapointed somewhat with the EEE, because at the store, i wanted to get to its commandline to see what it was made of.
Unless there was a terminal I was missing out on, they disabled the all mighty alt control f1-f6....

Prob for the better.

another question...
When did VIA become linux friendly anyways?

[jml]

Squish, to access the terminal from the default user interface you need to press ctrl-alt-T simultaneously. That will open a terminal. Typing exit closes it. Once you enable the "advanced" interface you have a standard desktop environment. I think its ICEWM. From there, you can select terminal from the menu.

One thing to note about the solid stade drive the EeePC uses. Each sector has a finite number of write cycles before it fails, about 100,000 - 200,000. Not a problem if you use the computer with the supplied OS, but if you install a different distro, its important to use a non-journaled file system and to not create a swap partition. Those two things write to disk a lot and could shourten the working life of the drive and since the ssd is soldered to the motherboard, its not user replacable. This fact makes the Cloudbook with its traditional hard drive look a bit better.

As for Via, I was not aware that they were Linux unfriendly. Several years ago, Walmart.com sold several Linux PC's. One of them was, for the time, a very inexpensive laptop that had a Via processor. It was sold with Linspire installed and came with a three month paid account for the click and run repository. It was not a speed demon, but it was functional for basic computer tasks.

Joe