It seems that your local Wal-Mart is not, in fact, the best place to go to pick up an inexpensive Linux-powered desktop computer running gOS.
The Everex gPC line — which our intrepid editor John Biggs called “the suck” with “a half-baked ‘Google’ OS” — will no longer be available for in-store purchase. Company spokesperson Melissa O’Brien was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, “This really wasn’t what our customers were looking for.”
The Everex gPC line along with the Everex Cloudbook notebooks and other Everex products are still being offered online via the Walmart.com web site, though.
Google Focused Linux PC’s Fail At Wal-Mart [TechCrunch]
That’s too bad, I would love to see Linux machines and Macs at Walmarts.
I went to a few Wal-Marts to check out the Everex Cloudbook when it was set for release earlier this year and all I got from their electronics department was “Uhhhh… whats that?”. Needless to say I didn’t even see any on the shelves.
O’Brian’s quote should have been “Our customers kept returning them because they did not have Windows on them.” I saw about 10 of these just sitting on a shelf in the back of the electronics department at my local Wal-Mart – they were not marked, not priced, and not looked at by anyone but me – it was sad.
Linux will never maintain a noticeable market share in the desktop market. People have predicted it would for years now and it is repeatedly proven that the masses prefer Windows for ease of use, support and range of applications.
Ubuntu was just one more of a doomed line of Linux flavors wasting the time of talented developers who could have been doing something worthwhile with their talents than reinventing a crappy version of the wheel that will never be used by more than a few extremeists.
Couldn’t disagree with you more Echostorm! UNIX runs your internet and the majority of all your websites, and there’s no reason it can’t be used to run your home computer as well. In short, it is definitely not being used by just a few extremists. Besides, I fix more problems with windows than I ever run into with UNIX based architectures. Obviously, you don’t know the facts well enough to call it a crappy version of the wheel.