Why My Shop No Longer Sells Linux

My sister and I run a small computer shop (4 employees including myself) in a large metropolitan city. We cater mostly to small businesses and have hardware, software and complete turnkey systems for sale. In addition we offer consulting services for data systems including software. We started the business 9 years ago and have managed to earn a decent living despite the trend for shoppers to do business at big box stores like Compusa.

All of my full time employees are MSCE, CCNA and A+ certified at the very least and I also have some part time help that I get from the local college students looking to learn the business and make some spending money. In addition I have one employee who is RHCE because we have anticipated a growth in that specialization although currently we are not seeing it grow too quickly.

About a two years ago we decided to offer Linux as an alternative to Windows mostly because we feel there is a future for Linux and that Linux is a viable alternative to Windows.

We started small with a system built around MSI boards, Nvidia chipset cards and other midline components. The idea was to offer a quality desktop system at a price as good or lower than what our fully licensed Windows machines would sell for. Although our intent was to start with the home market, which is a large portion of our business, these machines were of high enough quality for 24x7 commercial environments as well. We did a little advertising, but the response was kind of low because Linux is not exactly something people know enough about to shell out $700 on a system. Our big break came when we attended a Linux install-fest, in fact we helped sponsor it but were not part of the original group putting on the event. Word traveled quickly and soon we were selling a fair amount of Linux machines, but only to a highly profile type customer. Mostly students-people in technical areas of employment or education. We rarely heard from these customers after the sale, and seeing as we offer free 1 year support in addition to the manufacturers warranties for various components, this was a good thing.

However all was not well because soon we made a major mistake in our marketing. We offered a base machine, still quality parts and still 100 percent Linux compatable, but more of a consumer machine. We sold about 70 of these systems to what I guess people would call average citizen.

And that was a crucial mistake! It wasn't long before the calls started coming in. In no particular order:

How come:

AOL won't load? My brother says Linux is crap and I was ripped off because Linux is free. I can't use extra features from websites like toolbars. My income tax program does not work. I can't browse my favorite website. I just bought a new printer-scanner-USB etc and I can't make it work. How do I install Norton Anti-Virus (many calls like that). I just signed up for broadband and the CD doesn't work. Why can't I use the earthlink CD. I want to play loveyyyyzz game and can't get the disk to load.

This is AFTER we fully explained to the customer what Linux is, what it isn't and what will work and what will not work.

People JUST DON'T LISTEN. They want to save a dollar or two, but are not willing to learn something new and in this case superior in order to do such.

In short, our Linux offerings turned into our worst nightmare and as best we and our student friends and loyal Linux customers can figure it all boils down to the lemming theory.

People want to be like, imitate and use the tools-cars-boats-mp3 players and so forth that other people are using and they take a staunch atbreastude in that regard and when another person, especially a family member or close friend tells them they wasted their money on an incompatable Linux computer, they will react and my phone starts ringing. Unfortunately every family seems to have a computer *expert* and most of them are village idiots.

Finally we made the decision to stop selling Linux systems because we just were spending so much time supporting clueless users that we were neglecting our other offerings and not making any money at the same time.

We still sell to students-techs who are informed about Linux and support our local Linux user group.

In conclusion, in theory Linux is ready to meet citizen Joe, but citizen Joe is not ready for Linux. For every 60 year old grandma who can be set up with a basic Linux system so she can communicate over the net, do email and such, there are 1000 people who are so locked into a Windows world that when they try Linux they become a merchant's worst nightmare.

And I think I have met every single one of them.

Selling Windows systems generates income for me. Selling Linux systems to citizen Joe generates headaches for me in terms of support and my conclusions are that it is just not worth the extra work to make a couple more dollars on the Linux systems.

Maybe this is why the major companies are hesitating with their Linux offerings? I am sure they have studied this from a business perspective and are concerned about the support costs and ramafications of turning Linux loose in the hands of the general public who have been weaned on Windows and operate daily in what is essentially a Windows world.

Kindest Regards. Phoung

Note, we did not receive a sigle call about a Linux system *failing* so to speak, but our calls were about trying to interface Linux computers in what is a Microsoft Windows world.