$200 Linux PC at Walmart sells out

linux.slashdot.org

8 points·rms··4 comments

Grr. Idiots. Keep linux on the server side. The billions of dollars that ma, pa, uncle sam, and MegaCorp spend on windows is beneficial to all of us. Replace Windows with a zero-dollar system and you're going to have 10,000+ MSFT programmers dumped on the labor market.

It's not that simple, of course, but the irrational hatred of Microsoft seems to prevent its critics from putting one and two together.

So you'd rather be using an inferior OS that has no competition and costs $400? Either that or you have a lot of MSFT stock.

The market will take care of itself. Windows is severely overpriced, and at least the low end PC market will most likely be taken over by Linux in the near future. An average OEM Windows license costs $40 I believe. That $40 (or less) may be the entire profit margin in a $200 PC. Microsoft's free ride on OEMs is finally coming to an end.

For the record I use all of the Big Three: Windows, Linux (Ubuntu), and Mac. My personal opinion is that Mac OS X beats the other two hands down as a consumer desktop OS.

you'd

Where do I say "me"? To repeat myself:

ma, pa, uncle sam, and MegaCorp

"... Grr. Idiots. Keep linux on the server side ... and you're going to have 10,000+ MSFT programmers dumped on the labor market. ..."

It doesn't really matter what we think, "Free Software" [0] is going to prevail. There is also no reason MS can't co-exist. The difference is this time the user choice will be on things other than marketing or dodgy tactics.

Most important of all there is the freedoms that comes along with this choice. [1]

[0] Free software, not to be confused with Open Source software ~ http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...

[1] The Free Software Definition, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

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