Best Buy Is Selling Ubuntu 656
SirLurksAlot writes "It appears that Best Buy is now selling Ubuntu, both through its Web site and in its brick-and-mortar locations. Going by the release on the product page, Ubuntu has actually been available for the low, low price of $19.99 since May 6th of this year. It is being packaged as the 'Complete Edition.' While they don't specify on the site what version is being offered, a quick call to a local store revealed it to be Hardy Heron, the latest Long Term Support version. How did this development fly under the radar for over two months without anybody noticing?"
Re:is it legal to sell it? (Score:4, Informative)
Or am I missing something?
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:5, Informative)
Shareware shows that sometimes you can get people to pay more for free software than for pay software.
What do you mean? Shareware is not free software by any definition of free.
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Informative)
wtf? I thought you weren't allowed to actually "sell" Ubuntu for money? (Besides, of course, ordering the cd from Ubuntu for like $1)
Break out the beer folks, this one's gotta be good.
Absolutely nothing in the GPL states that you couldn't sell it (as long as you include the source code). So keep your beer and actually read the terms you are talking about next time.
Re:is it legal to sell it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Informative)
- idiot! why would I buy anything I can download for free
- doh! they'll return it when they realise that Windows SW does not work
- how can you sell something when it is given away freely?
They can sell it for as much as they want as long as they preserve the license - they are only selling the CD manufacturing and packaging as a service.
Ans I think this has all been a little unsupportive.
Frankly I support any and all efforts to make Linux more widespread, and a great many people will feel happier with a pressed CD instead of a cheapo burnt one. Yes we can download it, but we are NOT the target audience here.
And, to be honest, I'm just happy enough that it is now considered possible to sell it in best buy - that would of been unthinkable a few years ago.
If this caters for a new audience, or gets even a few thousand more people using it - then fair play to them.
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:5, Informative)
because verily nobody is stupid enough to buy something they can download legally! Right? Right!? I mean come on, people don't even buy stuff they can download illegally anymore ...
They're not just selling Ubuntu. They're selling Ubuntu with support. The support is what people are paying for.
Re:is it legal to sell it? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Best Buy review (Score:2, Informative)
No charge [ubuntustudio.org]. Keep the change and go buy yourself a new haircut.
Re:is it legal to sell it? (Score:3, Informative)
AFAIK, it's not only being sold at best buy but at Amazon and other places.
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:4, Informative)
They're not just selling Ubuntu. They're selling Ubuntu with support. The support is what people are paying for.
Maybe this is a level, but from all indications this is standard Ubuntu with standard support (i.e. go look it up on the forums).
Re:is it legal to sell it? (Score:2, Informative)
I would assume that, since the blurb says it's "the latest Long Term Support version," it includes some form of long term support.
No, Long Term Support (LTS) refers to Canonical's commitment to supporting a major release (which are only released biannually) for 5 years, mostly, AFAIK, through patches. It does not refer to Canonical or Best Buy's commitment to offering other kinds of tech support.
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Great news! (Score:3, Informative)
That's great. As long as they don't own a laptop (laptop audio and wireless support is still problematic out-of-the-box), run into any other unsupported software, or need to install anything. Otherwise you'll probably end up setting it up for them.
I recently switched from Vista to Kubuntu (8.04), and the process was anything but smooth. Getting full audio support working required me to write custom bash scripts to handle volume changes and muting. Wireless is still iffy, as it required ndiswrapper, doesn't work with the built-in wireless tools (custom configs required), and even still has a hacky DHCP setup that fails if it takes longer than 5 seconds to associate.
Weeks later, I'm still running into things that just don't work properly, requiring me to write scripts, edit config files, and generally muck about with things.
Oh yeah, and my printer, a $100 Canon (MP470) requires a $45 proprietary print driver (which is 32-bit only). Fun.
In short, while Ubuntu and Linux have made great strides on the desktop, I still wouldn't want my parents using it. I'd have to spend tens of hours setting things up for them, and even then it wouldn't necessarily "just work".
Canonical will mail you a copy for free... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Simple Answer... (Score:3, Informative)
(for those outside of Canada and didn't get the joke...)
Future Shop is essentially identical to Best Buy. They sell the same products (audio/video, computers, appliances, music/games), with the same huges floor spaces and the same useless staffs. Same shit, different interior design.
Future Shop has been around for a couple of decades here, then Best Buy moved in as competition several years ago. Shortly thereafter, Best Buy bought out Future Shop, but didn't merge the operations. In fact, they still "compete", oftentimes with brand new stores being built directly across the street from each other.
It's all about legitimacy (Score:2, Informative)
I "get it" of course (and have since 1998...
Frankly, anything that will show the suits that Linux (pick your flavor) has sufficient market-share and penetration on the desktop is a Good Thing -- sales equals maturity/legitimacy.
Cheers,
BeerGeek
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:5, Informative)
Who buys stuff they don't need?
A wise man once said: "It's amazing the things people would rather have than money."
=Smidge=
Re:But... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:1, Informative)
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wait... (Score:1, Informative)
Are you happy that best buy is sanitizing the customer reviews to prevent anyone mentioning that it's freely available elsewhere?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=product&tab=7&id=1211587312374&skuId=8888563&childSku=null&count=null#headerCustomerReviews [bestbuy.com]
I'm not.
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:2, Informative)
Who buys stuff they don't need?
In this case, I would guess, people wanting to try out Linux who are still on slow dialup.
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Informative)
They don't even have to include the source code in the box as long as they provide a way to download it from somewhere.
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:3, Informative)
Cool! Where can I get one?
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:5, Informative)
But there's a page on Ubuntu's site where you can fill in a quick form and they'll send you as many copies as you like - for free.
Re:Wait... (Score:2, Informative)
It's actually legal to have it only available by request.
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually only 50 MB (damn small linux, that is). Just wanted to comment because it makes it even more incredible.
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Informative)
Been selling for years (Score:3, Informative)
Best Buy has been selling Linux distros for close to 10 years. They had SuSE on the shelfs for years and even had DebIan and slackware box/book combos for awhile. Every article talking about this is making it sound like linux is finally making a toehold on the shelf. Maybe this is Ubuntus shelf debut? It is definitely nothing new for linux.
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:3, Informative)
I wouldn't say that their current Enterprise line of products is for the weekend hobbyist or small business only. I would agree that their Fedora line is targeted at that market, but their Enterprise line is targeted at long, stable, high availability deployments.
Unlike with the Fedora line, the Enterprise line sets a baseline and through all the updates doesn't stray from it. Security updates are patched/backported into the baseline versions, and great detail is paid to not changing API calls or other things that might cause incompatibility problems with existing software built on the platform.
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, I'm not an MS basher, I use both Linux and Windows and have nice legal copy of Windows for all my computers at home - two XP Pro for me (laptop and desktop), and XP home for the wife and two kids... 5 total. I built all my computers and installed the OSs on them...
Ubuntu is NO harder, and easier in fact, to install on my laptop and desktop than Windows is. No drivers to install (they're all "magically" on the Ubuntu disc). Adding/removing programs is as easy as... selecting Add/Remove from the main menu, just like Windows.... only there's a whole lot more there.
So, I don't know where you've been, but Linux installation has come a long way.
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:5, Informative)
Then why would they have an entire site dedicated to it?
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ [ubuntu.com]
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:3, Informative)
Huh? You've always been able to get free disks. When the first LTS came out, they decided to only stamp those versions, so you couldn't get 7.10 sent to you, but you could get 6.06.
Now, at the moment, you're limited to one disk, unless you can write a convincing essay. It's still pretty amazing that they do that, though.
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:4, Informative)
Actually no. I just requested 10 Cd's for my LUG. you have to click on the "custom request" to request more of them and why you are requesting more than 1.
In case this hasn't been posted... (Score:2, Informative)
Best Buy lies (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:2, Informative)
It's been done.
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It flew under the radar (Score:2, Informative)