Could Bricks and Mortar Stores Work For Linux?

[Mark76]

It's all very well getting more manufacturers to stick Ubuntu/Fedora/Red Hat/SUSE, etc in their boxes, but if you have to go to a special secret part of the website to buy one then, really, Linux visibility is no greater than it was if they didn't bother. The fact is Microsoft owns the PC retail space. None of the big boys (Comet and Curry's in the UK) would ever dare put a rival to Redmond (and I'm not including Apple in this. They're a tolerated competitor due to appealing to a different market) on their shelves next to all the desktops and laptops with the see-through OS installed because they know that if they did Redmond would make trouble for them. Somehow.

So. How about taking a leaf from Apple's playbook and opening a chain of Linux stores? Start with a few in the major centres (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Cardiff, Belfast and Glasgow for the UK) in well visited, but not necessarily fashionable (and hence expensive) parts of town. They could even have the Linux equivalent of the Apple Genii (Penguistas?) to help and advise people. I've never rented retail space, so I've no idea how feasible this is, but at least it's an idea.

Oh. And for God's sake don't let programmers design any part of the shops :p :lolflag:

[Mark76]

Neither is Windows. And that's never stopped them.

[RiceMonster]

Windows dosent crash out with a SIGEV fault if you try to connect to a wireless network.

that doesn't happen to me on either operating system, or either of my computers. Cry more.

[Mark76]

Oh boy. Not the bloody wireless thing again.

I don't use wireless (it's the work of Satan :p), so I'm not really qualified to comment.

[SuperSonic4]

What would such a shop sell? I've been in the apple shop in the bull ring and they sell mac, macbooks, accessories and iPod accessories and most manufacturers sell only for windows - if it supports Linux it's by chance. Apart from giving out ubuntu CDs what would it sell? It could be more of a support shop I guess but, speaking from the common man's point of view, why should you go for linux instead of windows

[azangru]

I am sure it would help! In fact, brick-and-mortar stores would be the best place for common folks to see Linux in action and to buy computers with Linux preinstalled.

[gn2]

To open a succesful bricks and mortar store, you need a product that people want to buy, otherwise the business will fail very quickly.

The simple truth is that for the most part the general public simply do not want computer hardware supplied with Linux installed.

[SuperSonic4]

To open a succesful bricks and mortar store, you need a product that people want to buy, otherwise the business will fail very quickly.

The simple truth is that for the most part the general public simply do not want computer hardware supplied with Linux installed.

I'd agree. The two root causes of that are ignorance and familiarity. As long as people perceive windows as the only choice if you don't want a mac then there will be few sales. Linux should market itself as addressing windows' faults starting with the most annoying - viruses and malware and stability

I also think customers want something homogenous, at the moment Linux is too fractured for the common man to understand. GNOME or KDE? Fine, want something else? There is also XFCE. Don't fancy a DE there is always a window manager like openbox or fluxbox. The common man would like linux to be synonymous with one distro - while this is most likely to be ubuntu then ubuntu's faults would come to the fore which, IMO, is bad for GNU/Linux.

[RiceMonster]

Good to see nolliecrooked made an alternate account.

[Swarms]

I'd agree. The two root causes of that are ignorance and familiarity. As long as people perceive windows as the only choice if you don't want a mac then there will be few sales. Linux should market itself as addressing windows' faults starting with the most annoying - viruses and malware and stability

Oh please no, no more childish mudthrowing like "your mom stinks more". That game we will leave at Redmond.

Canonical could utilise it's brand and market computers with it.
It would though be important to separate Canonical and Ubuntu in a way so other companies still easily can preload Ubuntu with their products.

Canonical should keep having their webstore, where they could sell the computers through, but also brick and mortar stores in very large cities (talking London, New York, Paris) for starters, and then expand where there is a demand.

[lloyd_b]

I suspect the idea would fail miserably. Not because there's anything wrong with Linux itself, but simply because of the power of Microsoft's marketing department.

Have you ever heard of OS/2? OS/2 2.0 was *vastly* superior to its Windows counterpart when it was released. It had the marketing power of IBM behind it (okay, so IBM ain't so great at consumer marketing. But they put a LOT of money into the effort). They had lineups of great applications available, and they had better support for Windows programs than Windows did at the time.

Yet despite this, MS managed via marketing (okay, mostly FUD) to keep OS/2 from gaining enough "mindshare", until they were able to first create a technical incompatibility (Win32s), and later produce an OS that could at least *pretend* to be comparable (Win95).

Apple's retail stores succeeded because they *already* had a large fan base. So they didn't actually create a customer base with their stores, they just provided their fans with another way to buy from them.

Unless a time comes when average people go out explicitly looking to buy a "Linux" machine, any attempt at mass-market retail would fail, if for no other reason than being crushed like a bug by the Microsoft Marketing Steamroller.

Lloyd B.

[calrogman]

and Windows will highlight Linuxs craptastic inability to work with most webcams, and most other periphirals/stuff.

I'm running Linux Mint 7 and my Sony Eye-Toy worked as soon as I plugged it in. As do two wireless adapters I own. None of these work, without third party software, in a Microsoft Windows environment.

Under Linux, I plug in my Sony Ericsson mobile phone, and can start browsing straight away, under Windows I need to install drivers (read: download drivers, hard to do without a connection to the internet) before I can even consider trying to use my phone as a modem.

Linux also supports more architectures than any other kernel.

The notion that Linux supports less hardware than Windows is a deluded one at best (http://ostatic.com/blog/linux-supports-more-devices-than-any-other-os).

[calrogman]

See updated post...

[Swarms]

Canonical cant afford that kinda suicide move...

If they started small I think it could work... I am not saying they should buy a megastore on 5th Avenue.

[Mark76]

If they started small I think it could work... I am not saying they should buy a megastore on 5th Avenue.
That's what I was thinking as well

[earthpigg]

what i see as viable: a computer store with an innocuous sounding name that includes a cute little penguin in the logo.

sell computers, and give the customer a wide range of options for OS preinstall. advertised price would be with linux, and below that in smaller letters, with windows preinstalled.

for all individual pieces of hardware sold (graphics cards, bluetooth stuff, etc), have a little informational display next to it:

"
This [device] is plug-n-play compatible with the following:
-Ubuntu 8.04+ / Linux Mint 6+
-Red Hat / Fedora
-Windows Vista / Windows 7
-Apple OS X

This [device] is compatible with the following, if drivers or additional software is obtained and installed:
-Windows XP
-Linux Kernel
-Apple Darwin
-FreeBSD
"

Linux-friendly, instead of Linux-only.

customers that don't know wtf 'freeBSD' or 'linux kernel' is will not be bothered by it, customers that do will be quite happy to see this information.

[Swarms]

what i see as viable: a computer store with an innocuous sounding name that includes a cute little penguin in the logo.

sell computers, and give the customer a wide range of options for OS preinstall. advertised price would be with linux, and below that in smaller letters, with windows preinstalled.

for all individual pieces of hardware sold (graphics cards, bluetooth stuff, etc), have a little informational display next to it:

"
This [device] is plug-n-play compatible with the following:
-Ubuntu 8.04+ / Linux Mint 6+
-Red Hat / Fedora
-FreeBSD / Apple Darwin
-Windows Vista / Windows 7
-Apple OS X

This [device] is compatible with the following, if drivers or additional software is downloaded and installed:
-Windows XP
-Linux Kernel
"

Linux-friendly, instead of Linux-only.

And now we come to the discussion if 5 linux distros would confuse people too much.

I personally am glad that of the linux distributions, Ubuntu is the most known one. It is much easier for new customers to get 1 product instead of 5 and force him into picking one when they don't even have the education required.

A very important thing for Canonical's success (or who is gonna do it) is to have simple yet powerful products to market.

Edit: eric.shun09 was faster. :)

[earthpigg]

dude, enough people have trouble just choosing a computer.

they dont need 25353252474743737 different Linux distros to choose from to confuse them even more.

list RHEL, SUSE, and the top 5 distros from distrowatch.org on the hardware compatibility list in small letters at the bottom of the list, keep ubuntu and windows in bigger letters at the top.

standard 2 options advertised are the latest Ubuntu LTS or Windows Vista (7 when it comes out.), with other operating systems available upon request.

[Swarms]

I believe that we have to follow a strategy like Apple's.

Few different computers to pick between, a netbook, a 13, 15 and 17 inch laptop, a desktop computer and maybe Android phones (depending on market in different countries).

The computers should then have the possibility to be customized in hardware to fit the customers need and pricerange.

In operating system, only Ubuntu, Windows or no operating presinstalled should be available. To as previously stated, keep confusion at a minimum and make product easier to market.

[aysiu]

It's been proposed before:
Ubuntu: The Open Source Apple Challenger? (http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntucat/ubuntu-the-open-source-apple-challenger/)
Idea #6847: Physical Ubuntu Hardware Store (http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/6847/)

It would have to be done right, but if it were, it would be the most successful way for Ubuntu to make inroads into the consumer space.

[Swarms]

Thank you for the links. :)

[drawkcab]

I still don't know what you're going to actually sell in such a store besides merchandise. Computers? Installation fees?

I could see this maybe working in certain neighboorhods in places like Portland OR or Austin TX. There you could easily convince some fixie-ridin' hipsters who are insecure about their social and political commitments that apple is played-out and it's time to buy into GNU/Linux. Not sure that it's worth the effort though.

[MikeTheC]

There's some basic issues with this.

Now, mind you, I say all this being an advocate of F/OSS, GNU, the GPL, etc. That being said, however...

Without regard to the fact that Ubuntu in particular, insofar as Linux distros go, has most of the rough edges either taken care of or reasonably smoothed out, the thing to remember is that GNU/Linux as an overarching platform is *not* intended to be a commercial product. It's intended to be a community project, with community support. "Of the people, by the people, for the people" in essence, I guess you could say.

For one, who is it that's going to steer all the projects in GNU/Linux in one cohesive, consistent and agreed-upon direction? Who is it that's going to set the priorities of what should get love, and in what order? Who is going to force some kind of standardization out there in the GUI world, in the package manage world, etc.?

This is simply not the way it's going to work, and in any event isn't optimal given the Linux community's nature of being like trying to herd cats, or stack marbles in a corner. I don't mean that in a derogatory way, I'm simply stating a fact. Not everyone is going to agree with methodology, or with package management, or with the desktop interface, or with what software to include, or with the support for non-free items, or with who should be in charge, or what distribution methodology is the best, and so on and so on. Linux is a volunteer movement that's not keen on having a central leader. You cannot have leadership in that kind of environment, and without leadership you cannot have a successful business, period.

[arcdrag]

yea except that you cant install any nvidia driver deyond 173 something in Hardy LTS without breaking it.

Ubuntu is great but it still has to evolve a WAY lot more.

Weird...using 180 on all 3 of my computers now (2 of them still have hardy). They all also connect just fine to my wireless connection at home, at school, and at my mom's. Sorry you've had bad luck, but your problems aren't universal...and lots of people have the same issues with Windows.

[zmjjmz]

It would be easy to address a lot of the problems by selling a few computers with Ubuntu preinstalled, then some Linux compatible PMPs, maybe even a MythTV or Boxee box.
We could offer tech support in store, and have tutorials explaining how everything works next to it. It's not a bad idea, it just has to be done correctly.