the WalMart gOS vs. the community? Nah.

I occasionally read, and usually enjoy, the Blog of Helios, written by a man who dedicates his entire being towards spreading Linux and evangelizing about the wonders and awesomeness that is Linux. I applaud him and his great Komputers4Kids project.

And his opinions are usually pretty dead-on, in my eyes.

But recently, Helios cried fowl at the Everex gOS GreenPC, the $200 'little' sold-out-at-WalMart, Ubuntu-based, E17-sporting, Linux computer. Apparently, *their* idea of an easy-to-use computer, with the gOS Operating System, differs from Helios' idea of an easy-to-use computer. Being that both are based on GNU/Linux, Helios fears that forever, Linux will be known as a wimpy, washed-out OS.

Helios bases all of this fear, it appears, on the fact that the gOS uses "shelves" in its Enlightenment 17 window environment, and goes on to say that the Elive distro has done E17 right:

I've never seen a "Linux" distro that has shelves. Gadgets, yes...widgets, most certainly, but the "shelves" thing is a stretch.

In a nutshelf...I mean nutshell, my complaint with this "distro" is that is takes a nasty 90 degree turn from what me and thousands of other Linux Advocates are offering and/or training other new Linux Users on.

...

I run Elive on two other production machines and as far as I am concerned, the developer of Elive belts it out of the park with his adaptation of the Enlightenment Desktop Environment.

Helios, buddy, really? Isn't the whole point of Free software to make it your own? No one owns the software, no one can stop you, or others, from customizing it. That is one of the Four Rights under the GPL, and you, Helios, want to take that away from a commercial company for putting their foot forward with some new concepts? A concept (shelves), by the way, I thought was a part of E17 already (since at least March 2007), and appear on the next release of Elive itself?

Am I wrong to think that the majority of Linux issues are pretty much tamed these days? Aren't the majority of rough edges ironed out of most mainstream distributions? So if a user looked up HowTos for installing software on gOS, might they not hear about Ubuntu or Kubuntu or Elive or PCLinuxOS, somewhere along the line of asking for help or looking for other softwares? Won't this possibly interest them, especially if they are dissatisfied with the gOS?

If the user knows that gOS is based on Linux, don't you think that they might have an inkling as to what other options there may be? Or at least look around, before spending money on a computer that can barely run Vista?

Maybe I am an optimistic geek, but I think the sales of the GreenPC can only help computing and computer knowledge, and help Linux. It is bringing computing within an affordable range for a lot of people in the United States. The gOS is putting GNU/Linux in front* of the eyes of about one-third of the US population, weekly. Not all shoppers are going to see the computer section of the store, but those that are shopping for computers very likely will. And yes, money (price) does speak; so soon will the stability of Linux speak to more and more Desktop users. Thank goodness.

Helios, lets let the future arrive on its own terms, and in the long run we'll all be happier. All righty then ;)



* You know, over there.... over behind those CDs, between the lawnchairs and the out-of-work local economy...