Reminds me of the OLPC failure. Turns out cheap netbooks, the intel classmate, etc was what the market really wanted, not a top-down academia led turkey.
We've been doing "here's a linux distro on some old windows hardware" for literally decades now. It just won't catch on, especially in the age of mobile where people want less technical hassles, not more. A cheap/used android tablet with a BT keyboard is probably the low price leader here and will probably also keep someone from rushing to an idevice immediately. A $30 Chromecast turns your TV into a giant monitor as well.
In this situation (and many like it) the linux computer was free, which beats any cheap tablet. Tons of computers are trashed every day, but a lightweight linux distro could give them new life.
If you were struggling financially, which would you rather receive: a free, full featured computer, or advice on where to buy a cheap android tablet?
OLPC didn't fail because of Linux. And I for one am still looking for a durable and cheap netbook designed for small children, as I have a 5 year old son. He has access to an iPad, but besides games, there's nothing else it can do. I really wanted to buy an OLPC, except I couldn't find one, which btw has been the problem. Now I'm looking into buying a Chromebook and installing Linux on it. Only problem is that these Chromebooks look fragile. If you have suggestions, I'm all ears.
Chromebooks are not fragile by laptop standards, but are nothing like XO.
You could try out one of these with a Bluetooth keyboard?
They are somewhat sturdier than other tablets and have some OLPC-inspired software, plus whatever else for Android you can find. There are other Android kid-targeted tablets around, but they are all more expensive, afaik.
We've been doing "here's a linux distro on some old windows hardware" for literally decades now. It just won't catch on,
And yet, this is how I started when I was 12 years old. We had a 386SX-25 with 4MB RAM and a 40MB hard disk running DOS/Windows 3.11. I couldn't afford a commercial compiler, I got a magazine with Slackware 1.1.x, and installed it.
I took some years before I got further than writing some basic programs. But I read any documentation I could find (IIRC it had the TLDP HOWTOs on the CD-ROM), and not much later there was a Dutch book about Linux on the market. Halfway high school, I knew enough about networking and UNIX that I was paid to set up and maintain servers/firewalls, etc. at my school.
Sure, 90% of the people will probably buy an iDevice or Android tablet. But lets not forget that there are also tens of thousands (if not more) whose technical interest was ignited by installing Linux on an old Windows machine.
Me, I am still thankful to Pat Volkerding. I would probably be in a different place without his (and others') heroic work.
If anything, Android and ChromeOS are good examples common users don't care about GNU/Linux userland, rather a packaged experience. Which none of the distributions has been able to provide so far.
We've been doing "here's a linux distro on some old windows hardware" for literally decades now. It just won't catch on, especially in the age of mobile where people want less technical hassles, not more. A cheap/used android tablet with a BT keyboard is probably the low price leader here and will probably also keep someone from rushing to an idevice immediately. A $30 Chromecast turns your TV into a giant monitor as well.