Ubuntu being sold at Best Buy in the US

[techieMoe]

I've read about this here:

Canonical Blog » Blog Archive » Canonical and Valusoft bring Ubuntu plus support to Best Buy

But I just now found someone who took pictures and detailed what was included:

princessleia2: Ubuntu at Best Buy: Package Details

I remember a time when I used to be able to walk into a Best Buy or CompUSA (may they rest in peace) and pick up a retail copy of SuSE, Mandrake, or Redhat Linux. Could Ubuntu be bringing those times back?

[carlosponti]

I saw this on slashdot today I was happy to see they made the move. but if it was anything like the suse and mandrake offerings not too many people except us linux users are going to buy them which means best buy will ultimately stop carrying them.

[techieMoe]

I saw this on slashdot today I was happy to see they made the move. but if it was anything like the suse and mandrake offerings not too many people except us linux users are going to buy them which means best buy will ultimately stop carrying them.

Yeah, being relegated to the bottom shelf isn't a good sign, but that might have been due to uninformed stockboys that didn't know what it was. Oh well, at least for a while I can tell people who are iffy about a burned CD with a sharpie title that they could also purchase it from Best Buy and get 60 days of technical support for $20USD. That's not too shabby.

[carlosponti]

Oh well, at least for a while I can tell people who are iffy about a burned CD with a sharpie title...

that's funny


I do like the official copies as well. I also send away for the shipit services for the purpose of giving cd's away to people but the support might make it more of an incentive. I have run into people who work with the computers at best buy who talk big about knowing computers who didn't even know what linux was.

[elija]

Often when people say they know about computers they mean they know about Windows. Which means they probably wouldn't buy Linux anyway.

Time was you could walk into Dixons, yes Dixons and buy a Red Hat Linux distro. Normally you would finally find it in the games section, but hey, they made the effort...

[techieMoe]

Often when people say they know about computers they mean they know about Windows. Which means they probably wouldn't buy Linux anyway.

Time was you could walk into Dixons, yes Dixons and buy a Red Hat Linux distro. Normally you would finally find it in the games section, but hey, they made the effort...

You can still buy openSuSE at some stores here in the states, such as Fry's Electronics. They have FreeBSD and some Linspire boxed sets too. They're not as numerous as Best Buy or Wal-Mart, and being an electronics store there's a better chance the average customer would know what on earth Linux is in the first place. I even saw a copy of the retail version of Tux Racer there once.

[oz]

Yeah, I remember back when I used to buy the boxed SUSE Professional sets at Best Buy, and CompUSA. Seems like they were about $70 at the time, but they did come with some nice user manuals/guides.

It's sure nice to have fast internet connections these days.

[carlosponti]

I used to see boxed copies at My local bookstore as well.

[bigvoo]

I used to see a box ( behind glass ) at best buy a few years back that said ( linux ) that's all it said, and it cost over a hundred dollars, I was curious back then, but wasn't going to pay that, I currently use ubuntu, that i got out of linux format, which cost $ 15.00 and has some great articals too. Why would the store bought disc cost so much ?

[Agent-X]

For the record, I hate Best Buy. They just want to cash in and claim things as their own. They have ripped me off so many times. Last time I was walking in there talking about Linux, the elder geek squad guy told me "Linux is dead." Yeah, either he is out of the game, or he's just trying to look intelligent. I've found so many faulty things, and I've even had a $100+ monitor stolen because they didn't give a receipt (I wasn't thinking that day).

As a bright side, maybe the nix users will be able to kick them out and replace them.