Sears selling a $200 linux pc with good specs

[madjr]

http://www.freespire.org/images/badge_sears.jpg

specs are way better than the gPC


http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00373907000P?vName=Computers+%26+Ele ctronics&keyword=freespire

note: the price is actually $299 but u get a $100 discount

oh and some good reviews on the site. Except for the winmodem not working i would recommend that person a cheap $20 bucks serial modem in amazon.

freespire is based on kubuntu, but kinda outdated, except for CNR which is compatible with many distros and their different versions

i would like to see freespire with kde4 soon

[mmb1]

Looks promising, I would ditch freespire and install Ubuntu of course. :)

[cardinals_fan]

The mail-in rebate probably requires attaching 37 different codes from different parts of the box.

[compiledkernel]

Those are Mirus Innovation systems, the ones most previously known for Koobox (another one of Linspire's initiatives to provide OEM based systems). The systems provided by Koobox at the time were less that desireable in hardware for the money. But here is the archive dot org's interpretation of the website --

http://web.archive.org/web/20060110020653/http://www.koobox.com/

Back in 2006, I picked up two of the essential model (then 299 dollars). Both of them are in an unhappy states of function for a variety of reasons that arent "user" related.

[zmjjmz]

Old news?
They could sell it in retail, but nyuuuuuuuuuu.

[AndrewTheArt]

I'm not going to even speculate as to why the loaded this machine with Freespire. Out of all the distros out there, they chose Freespire? This can only fracture the Linux community more. :confused: Freespire is 35 on DistroWatch. Yep, Sears's choice is logical all right.

[jetsam]

From the specs:

Graphics VIA Chrome 9, 2D/3D engine, DirectX 9
Does this work with Ubuntu? Via is supposed to be opening up their drivers, but I don't think that's shown many dividends yet.

The first review says the modem doesn't work out of the box. Pretty sloppy.

I worry a bit about this Linux as super budget computer idea. Not that it isn't a great way to save money and rescue older equipment... I just worry about it being marketed to people that may not do so well with it.

[hanzomon4]

I'm not going to even speculate as to why the loaded this machine with Freespire. Out of all the distros out there, they chose Freespire? This can only fracture the Linux community more. :confused: Freespire is 35 on DistroWatch. Yep, Sears's choice is logical all right.

WTF???

[compiledkernel]

Well, thus the reason that koobox was a failure for Linspire. Mirus selling linspire/freespire PC's in of all places SEARS makes no sense to me at all.

[smoker]

i'm not a fan of freespire (there's probably eulas to agree to, and nagging upgrade options to linspire), but i hope they sell well, it may encourage other vendors to jump on the linux bandwagon!

[AndrewTheArt]

WTF???
Yep, look at all the options they had -

1 Ubuntu 2352<
2 PCLinuxOS 1528<
3 openSUSE 1416<
4 Mint 1347<
5 Fedora 1326<
6 Mandriva 926<
7 Debian 836<
8 Sabayon 765<
9 Damn Small 684<
10 Dreamlinux 637>
11 FreeBSD 595<
12 MEPIS 577<
13 CentOS 551<
14 Slackware 525>
15 Kubuntu 507=
16 Puppy 482>
17 Gentoo 474=
18 KNOPPIX 439=
19 Zenwalk 436=
20 Arch 410=
21 Slax 367<
22 sidux 350<
23 Vector 332<
24 PC-BSD 299>
25 Xubuntu 279=
26 Ubuntu Studio 270=
27 Foresight 258=
28 OpenGEU 257>
29 Elive 252>
30 DesktopBSD 250=
31 gOS 245>
32 Red Hat 228<
33 Mythbuntu 224>
34 Xandros 208

[HousieMousie2]

**Wonders who's getting paid for that choice.**

[z0mbie]

How much does Linspire cost?

[compiledkernel]

49.95 for the download edition.

CNR is what costs all the money.

[madjr]

well freespire is umm.. free

this where i saw the ad:
http://www.freespire.org/

But at least they advertise CNR a lot more than what Ubuntu advertises add/remove and many new migrators enjoy CNR.

as an intro system freespire is not too bad. Then after a while, most usually upgrade to ubuntu, specially when they see that CNR is compatible.

i too started with freespire and now am here :).

[Joeb454]

True - CNR is compatible, but it's not officially supported by Canonical, therefore is not supported here on the forums.

Basically, what I'm getting at, is that if you decide to continue using CNR within Ubuntu, you would likely get no support here on the forums

[hanzomon4]

Yep, look at all the options they had -

1 Ubuntu 2352<
2 PCLinuxOS 1528<
3 openSUSE 1416<
4 Mint 1347<
5 Fedora 1326<
6 Mandriva 926<
7 Debian 836<
8 Sabayon 765<
9 Damn Small 684<
10 Dreamlinux 637>
11 FreeBSD 595<
12 MEPIS 577<
13 CentOS 551<
14 Slackware 525>
15 Kubuntu 507=
16 Puppy 482>
17 Gentoo 474=
18 KNOPPIX 439=
19 Zenwalk 436=
20 Arch 410=
21 Slax 367<
22 sidux 350<
23 Vector 332<
24 PC-BSD 299>
25 Xubuntu 279=
26 Ubuntu Studio 270=
27 Foresight 258=
28 OpenGEU 257>
29 Elive 252>
30 DesktopBSD 250=
31 gOS 245>
32 Red Hat 228<
33 Mythbuntu 224>
34 Xandros 208

No, I just thought that post was ridiculous....

[Midwest-Linux]

Freespire does video and audio out of the box, contains flash and contains proprietary codecs and programs like Real Player. I have used Freespire and I think it is pretty good, the "works out of the box" feature is a must for newbies.

I still think Freespire is better than gOS thats on those Walmart computers. Freespire is very easy to install, use and can do most apps without tweaking. I think I am one of the very few on this forum that actually likes it.

[compiledkernel]

Well for some of us Midwest, and there are a few, Freespire and the corporation that owns it has made a number of political and financial choices that put it at odds with the very community that thrives on it.

I stand fairly resolute behind Stallman when he stated "No other GNU/Linux distribution has backslided so far away from freedom. Switching from MS Windows to Linspire (or Freespire for that matter as well) does not bring you to freedom, it just gets you a different master."

[swoll1980]

I'm not going to even speculate as to why the loaded this machine with Freespire. Out of all the distros out there, they chose Freespire? This can only fracture the Linux community more. :confused: Freespire is 35 on DistroWatch. Yep, Sears's choice is logical all right.

I'm guessing because of legal issues in the US if they sell with freespire all the multimedia codecs are preinstalled legally

[Twitch6000]

http://www.freespire.org/images/badge_sears.jpg

specs are way better than the gPC


http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00373907000P?vName=Computers+%26+Ele ctronics&keyword=freespire

note: the price is actually $299 but u get a $100 discount

oh and some good reviews on the site. Except for the winmodem not working i would recommend that person a cheap $20 bucks serial modem in amazon.

freespire is based on kubuntu, but kinda outdated, except for CNR which is compatible with many distros and their different versions

i would like to see freespire with kde4 soon

That is about the same specs as my laptop but,40 gb less on the hard drive space lol.