
$349 Ubuntu Linux Desktop - samspenc
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/349-ubuntu-linux-desktop/x/4649707
======
zdw
This isn't hard to do.

A barebones, back of the monitor net top runs around $150 or so appears to be
exactly what they're using:

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856119...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856119072)

Then throw in a small HDD or SSD, a monitor, RAM, keyboard, mouse, and you're
still at or below the $350 mark. These computers will get even better as the
low-end battle between Intel and AMD heats up, and ARM alternatives appear.

I set up a bunch of systems like this that PXE boot into Debian off an older
server last week. They run great, are nearly silent, and take up less space
than the aging G3 iMacs they replaced.

~~~
aray
I'm just comparing it to my $250 chromebook that I installed Ubuntu on. It's
additionally portable and battery powered.

Edit: the specs are actually almost identical to the $329 chromebox
[http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebox.html#...](http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebox.html#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-
ha-na-us-bkws&utm_medium=ha)

4GB RAM, SSD, WiFi, Bluetooth.

~~~
pkulak
There's even the Chromebox, which I think is less than $350.

------
DocG
I think I am missing something.

349 is pretty big price tag, I don't think it is low-cost.

I had a lot of examples and reasons lined up in here, but I think I am missing
something. But what?

EDIT: I think I am missing the part where you are making it black and white
clear what makes your system different and why is it good deal for that kind
of money. At the moment, I can see it why it would be worth the money.

Good luck anyway:)

~~~
shanpc
Thanks! :) Am copy-pasting a reply posted to another comment about the price
point...

===============

We wanted to price it below $300, but were a bit nervous since
Indiegogo/Kickstarter take about 10% including the payments system
(Amazon/PayPal), so we're pricing it safe.

We'll certainly try to provide the best hardware we can at the price we can
get it - who knows, maybe we can throw in an i3 processor or 128 GB SSD!

Also, we are pricing it below most of System76/ZaReason offerings - I think if
you look at Dell/HP offerings at the same price range, they provide similar
specs. But if we get the volume we need, we should be able to get much better
hardware.

~~~
DocG
Thanks for the reply!

i3 processor or 128 GB SSD it would be worth it probably! But still, for me it
wouldn't be low cost. But in the other hand, I do not live in US.

And I confess, I am not familiar with how popular is System76 and similar
machines.

Although, I will say. For 200 euros I get Atom netbook from my local shop,
with 50-100 dollar investment I can update to meet your current
specs(ram+ssd). So Only difference I see, is that you have ubuntu preloaded.
But you do not have screen included.

I think it would be good offer if I would get full deal within 349. Screen,
where the PC is built in, keyboard and mouse. It should be hassle free for any
grandmom for her internet machine.

Nevertheless, I wish you good luck. You have become further than most of us,
making real difference. I can only talk, you really did something :)

~~~
shanpc
Thanks for the feedback and support! :) (Sorry for the late reply, looks like
HN was throttling us for posting too many replies.)

Yeah, we really want to do a low-cost netbook or a full-fledged ultrabook with
Ubuntu, but this is not within _our_ capability at the moment.

But we have built this desktop you see in the video, and if we show enough
demand, might be able to convince a manufacturer to work with us to do a low-
cost netbook with Ubuntu pre-installed. But let's see how it goes! :)

At least we'll be able to show there is interest in having Ubuntu or Linux
pre-installed on machines, and a larger manufacturer can take the ball and run
with it.

------
benjamincburns
This is a really tough market. Most people who want to run Ubuntu are still
quite tech savvy at the moment (though it is shifting), meaning they're
willing to build their own machine. Those who are cost conscious and tech
savvy will ultimately have more motivation to build their own machine, since
they'll be able to "tweak the knobs" to choose their own trade-offs.

Complete wild ass guess, but you might have better luck selling a top-of-the-
line Ubuntu machine on well-tested hardware. That last part, the well-tested
bit, that's a _really_ attractive value-add.

In the prior scenario you're asking me to give you control. In the latter,
you're saving me risk and a big hassle.

~~~
neltnerb
Yeah, I think this is about right. Your target demographic is the intersection
of:

\- People who like Ubuntu. \- People who can't install it themselves.

I think this intersection is pretty small at the moment... trying to
simultaneously create a significant market and also create the product is
going to be super hard.

Sorry... I've been looking for a cheap replacement for my current Ubuntu
desktop, but this is not very attractive at that price point. It either needs
to be much nicer, or much cheaper and I don't see that happening without
backing from a big company like Google.

~~~
xur17
Last time I upgraded my desktop, I ended up building it myself, not for cost
savings, but so I could pick out components that worked well with Linux. A
prebuilt machine like @benjamincburns mentioned that has been well-tested
would be an interesting idea, especially if it was closer to middle of the
road spec wise.

~~~
shanpc
Absolutely. If Google Linux (based on Debian or Ubuntu) had come out by this
time, I'm confident there would have been no need for us to do this. :p

Also agreed about the target market: you're right in that the crowd wanting
low-cost Ubuntu machines are likely to build it themselves.

As for a high-end Ubuntu machine: well, we don't think there is a need for
_us_ to do this. System76 and other vendors already do a good job with the
high-end Ubuntu market.

~~~
neltnerb
Maybe it would be helpful to clarify what you see as the use cases. I find it
difficult to see a situation where I would want to use this. While I'm
probably not the target demographic, what would this be a good option for?

School computer? Seems to me that a portable is preferable.

Office computer? Maybe - but not many offices use linux.

Libraries? This seems like a reasonable market to pursue.

Government Offices? Also might be reasonable. Big cost saver if the
applications necessary are pre-vetted.

Maybe it would be worth talking to some local libraries or similar to see if
they'd be willing to be a test bed for the machines.

Get Steam on there, and you could use them for video games as well, which is
something libraries are now becoming open to in the interest of community
building and getting kids in the building.

------
Cthulhu_
This... isn't some startup project, it's abusing indiegogo / a 'startup'
campaign to get in pre-orders to fund the project. It also lacks being
remarkable. Also nobody's giving them money for that, it seems. Not
remarkable, seeing as how anyone can get an Ubuntu desktop with comparable
specs for $350 or less already.

------
alanctgardner2
I don't really see this being the domain of Kickstarter: ASUS already makes a
very cheap 'nettop' box, for example[1]. Commodity Linux boxes are hard:

1) they're small volume, so there's always a premium

2) at the low end there are very few people who even see the benefit of Linux.
It's got to be a gift from a geek, basically

3) if you don't get tripped up by (2), you're probably capable enough to buy
an EEE box and install Linux yourself

I wish you guys the best, but I don't see this getting funded :(

1\. [http://www.asus.com/Eee_Box_PCs/](http://www.asus.com/Eee_Box_PCs/)

------
will_work4tears
While I can build a 250 dollar system with better specs with a few google
alerts and RSS feeds setup (good deals), and can easily get a much better
system sans the monitor on newegg, I realize I'm not the target market and
applaud the effort at least.

------
reirob
I do NOT need a desktop, but I would immediately support a startup building a
good Linux developers laptop with crucial criteria being:

* Excellent keyboard for fast typist and programmers, must be better than the Thinkpad keyboards

* Ability to chose the keyboard layout, i.e. being able to chose US International or whatever you like (Lenovo allows to chose US international independent from the country where you deliver to, this is one of the reasons why I use them)

* Having a great Trackpoint, at least as good as the one from Thinkpads

* Having a 3:4 screen ratio and great screen specs, colors, brightness, resolution, should be available from 12" to 15.6"

* Needless to say that Hard-Ware components MUST be fully supported by Linux

* Build quality must be rock-solid

* The option to order it withOUT paying for Windows

* Must be as light as possible with the given specs and material (e.g. I do NOT need a CD/DVD drive)

* Must provide an options to pay for at least 3 year worldwide warranty including coverage for accidental damage

I guess HN fellows will have some more criteria to add. But for me those are
the most important.

I am ready to pay a premium for this.

~~~
jclos
Out of curiosity, what do you think of the Dell XPS13 Developer Edition, which
seems to fill not all, but a lot of your conditions?

~~~
reirob
Thanks for pointing out. It is good to have the option with Linux. But except
of this detail this laptop does not fit any of my requirements:

* It has no trackpoint - the biggest deal breaker. But even if it would have one (I used Dell Latitudes in the past) it should be at least as good as the Thinkpad Trackpoints.

* I cannot judge about the keyboard experience on this Dell because I did not try it out, but I looked up and I could not order it in Europe with a US Keyboard Layout + € sign. As well I think the media would have picked it up if it had an excellent keyboard experience.

* The screen ratio is not 4:3 - I know nobody has 4:3 anymore, but I consider exactly this to be an industrial fail.

I could go on, but these 3 points are the most important to me. Currently I
have a Thinkpad X220 Tablet, that I can use as well in Tablet mode with
integrated stylus - it cost me more than twice the price of the Dell you
pointed me out, but this is not the problem. I am almost happy with this
device. The main nitpick is that some of the plastic quality is not good
enough - it broke twice already and I have plastic bits that are broken right
now (luckily I have the warranty). I would prefer a bigger screen, 12.5" is
too small for spending the whole day on it. And as well the screen ratio is
stupid for developer or people working on text. And I had to pay for Windows.

~~~
neltnerb
Ah, a 4:3 screen... the unicorn of laptops.

I suspect you're going to be disappointed for the remainder of your life with
those specs.

------
edtechdev
I admire the effort

I can't help mentioning though that the buildapc sub-reddit has had some
threads on PCs for under 350:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1khff2/we_need_to_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1khff2/we_need_to_go_cheaper_315_gaming_pc_sansos_that/)

But it would be nicer for more novice folks to be able to buy one pre-built.

~~~
networked
There's also [http://logicalincrements.com/](http://logicalincrements.com/).

------
ch4ch4
I don't see any value add... are you just reselling SFF PCs with Ubuntu
preinstalled?

What makes this Kickstarter special?

~~~
shanpc
We're pricing it at below what most of what System76's base models come at. We
were unable to find any systems with Ubuntu pre-installed at this price point,
which is what motivated us to do this.

~~~
davis_m
It is priced well below what System76 offers, but the specs aren't in any way
compareable. The cheapest System76 desktop comes with an i5 minimum. Your
machine is offering a celeron/atom. You are comparing apples to oranges.

~~~
shanpc
Definitely, agreed on that point. But we think there is a market for those
low-cost devices with Ubuntu pre-installed that System76 is not catering for,
and that's why we're trying to do this. But agreed on the apples to oranges
comparison, thanks for pointing that out.

We're totally _not_ knocking System76 here, we think those guys are doing a
great job! Apologies if we seemed to imply that in our replies.

------
hardwaresofton
So other than the price being wrong (whatever your price is, it should beat
the Intel NUC), I think that you need to add more pricing options for the
campaign. $5, or $350 is way too big of a jump.

I mean, you could offer a $20 level for a mention in the installer/release, as
a supporter, at the very least?

To be honest, I might approach Intel (at least send an email) about licensing
the NUC and maybe getting at least a cheaper price on it, and using it as the
base of your platform (if you're looking for something cheap & x86, with a
little bit of power.

Disclaimer - I work for Intel, but I do not speak on behalf of Intel the
corporation or of any of it's employees, rather I give this comment on my own
behalf.

~~~
shanpc
Thanks for the suggestions! Wow, it would be great if you could talk to Intel
about licensing the NUC at a lower price, we could indeed use it (and the
additional better hardware) and it would likely be better than what we've
spec'd out for the same price point.

Note that it may not be quite right to compare the price with the barebones
NUC though - we do include 4 GB RAM, an SSD hard drive (we're hoping for at
least 64 GB, if not more) and do some manual work in pre-installing Ubuntu on
this (no Windows tax!) so you have a fully-working system out of the box.

With the NUC, you would have to buy the components yourself and install Linux,
which would likely come to the same price point (again, we realize most HN
readers can do this with their eyes closed.)

EDIT: as for the $20 "supporter mention during the installer" suggestion - we
want to install stock Ubuntu, so this might be hard. We can probably put up a
perk that involves having the contributor's names on our website, etc.

~~~
hardwaresofton
yeah so maybe the NUC is not a good example (I had no idea it costs so close
to $300) -- but this is better: [http://liliputing.com/2012/10/more-small-pc-
boards-with-x86-...](http://liliputing.com/2012/10/more-small-pc-boards-
with-x86-processors-for-75-or-less.html)

You should have quite a bit of space after $80 -- the NUC is more expensive
than I expected it to be (I thought it was closer to 200 than 300). I do still
encourage reaching out and seeing if they would at least like to take a stab
at this. While I'm not the kind of mover-shaker that would be able to muscle
this through, I think you could get some serious consideration. I can look
into the proper channels next week also.

Oh and yeah, if you're installing stock Ubuntu you probably might not be able
to do that... but maybe changing something small like setting the default home
page to your distribution's thank you page? or something

Also, cool/catchy linux-themed T shirts will go a long way.

~~~
shanpc
The motherboard shown on lilliputing.com looks good - but at $80 for the
motherboard, and once you add $75 for the case and power supply and fan, plus
SSD ($80) and RAM ($40), the total's quickly going to close to what we've
already priced our unit at. :-/

We did quite a bit of research - this was really the lowest we could price it
at given our volume and the BOM (cost of raw materials.)

------
shanpc
Our apologies for not being able to respond or answer since 7 PM EDT on this
thread. We’ve been getting this message: “You’re submitting too fast. Please
slow down. Thanks.” whenever we try to submit anything on Hacker News.

We will keep trying to reply to any comments on Hacker News as soon as
possible. If this becomes hard to do, hopefully we can answer the questions as
updates/comments on the Indiegogo campaign itself.

------
vacri
Give better specs. My first thought was that it only had a VGA connector,
which was outdated fifteen years ago and is _bad_. Zooming in on the picture,
I think I can make out an HDMI connector. I would try to get a DVI connector
on the box as well - this is the level where the cheap monitors get their
digital input.

VGA should be thought of as an emergency, not a standard, due to it's analogue
crapness.

------
oscilloscope
You need to put a bit more care into filming to build confidence in the
offering. YouTube's auto-stabilization at 1:30 really puts me off. Especially
since you're featuring HD video. The screen is washed out and blue-shifted at
that point as well.

A few high-quality pictures of the PC in good light would help too. The video
features the monitor more than the PC itself.

~~~
shanpc
Good point, will see if we can do better with the video.

------
shanpc
Thanks for posting this on Hacker News! :) This is our first crowdfunding
project, and we're super excited to be putting together a low-cost desktop
system with Ubuntu pre-installed!

Feel free to ask us questions here or on the Indiegogo page, as well as
providing any feedback. We'll try our best to answer questions - even over the
weekend if possible. ;)

~~~
codelust
I had recently given up 4-years of living with OS X to get back to Linux -
elementaryOS, to be precise.

This is a product that has been long due, but for some reason never gets
built. 5-6 years ago, driver support etc was the main reason, but it is no
longer the case. If this has to work, it has to work exceedingly well for all
the possible use cases out-of-the-box.

If it can't do what it is meant to do at the first go, make sure you put up
simple and clear instructions as to how to go about it.

The moment you hit the legendary "show me your lspci output" point you would
have lost the game, no matter how good the specs are.

That said, a week of fiddling and my dev platform is the same as the one that
I had on OS X. So, it is not like it can't be done.

Good luck :)

------
muyuu
I don't quite see the point of having a desktop PC so underpowered. Unless you
aim to be the cheapest of the cheap... but this isn't anywhere close to that
cheap.

Pre-installed Linux is a promising niche, but I think not too many people
would benefit of this particular model at this price.

------
megantic
After failing to fund an ubuntu phone, now they're trying their luck again
with a not so cheap, not so good hardware (who wants an intel atom instead of
arm?).

I use linux but I have come to really dislike ubuntu over time, so this is
pointless to me, but I wish them luck.

------
billybob255
So it's a barebones PC running Ubuntu. Sorry but I'm going to join the "big
deal" crowd. What I'd gladly pay money for is a cheap Chromebook knockoff that
runs linux natively without messing around with developer mode or whatever.

------
pascalo
I'm using an intel NUC i3 at the moment, which worked with 13.04 out of the
box, takes 16gb ram and drives a 2560x1440 screen via thunderbolt. Sure, not
as cheap, but the specs are more serious and the form factor similar.

------
vonseel
I think the below sentence is missing an adjective (e.g. "most affordable").

The Shan PC is meant to be THE affordable, small and portable desktop with
Ubuntu pre-installed that you would ever want or use.

------
bobdvb
I have an Acer Revo that has served me very well for many years, I recently
put an SSD in it and gave it a new lease of life. Not sure how innovative this
is.

------
bluedino
We had $299 Windows computers from eMachines over 10 years ago. About that
same time, Wal-mart sold a $199 Lindows machine.

------
Aaronn
Why does the video say "If you get funded on Kickstarter" this is indiegogo...
am I missing something?

~~~
shanpc
Sorry, we made one video for both and forgot that detail. :-/ (We opted for
Indiegogo in the end.) Will try to get that updated.

------
icn2
I love linux and this idea. Could you record video in a better environment?

------
nate_martin
This is kind of underwhelming given that we already have the Raspberry Pi.

~~~
georgemcbay
I love the 3 Raspberry Pis I have, but this thing would eat them for breakfast
for general computing tasks where size and power consumption aren't huge
issues.

Having said that, Acer, ASUS, Lenovo and others make "nettop" devices that are
very similar to this one. Generally theirs are cheaper but with 2GB RAM
standard and no SSD... for about the same price as this one you could get one
of those others plus the extra RAM and a (small) SSD today at the advertised
price... just with slightly more work in upgrading the RAM, swapping out the
drive and installing Ubuntu yourself.

The extra work seems like a small price to pay though for getting a system
right now instead of putting down money and getting a system in 2014. That
sort of long lag time to delivery without any sort of associated price break
is what killed the Ubuntu Edge phone for me, and I can't see myself investing
in this thing either (sorry @shanpc).

~~~
shawn-furyan
In my experience, Ubuntu doesn't run well on Atom. Perceived performance is
far inferior to, say a $260 Nexus 7. Even if I knew someone who wanted a low-
end desktop, I would not recommend they support this project because of the
enormous performance disparity between the two possible processor families
(Atom vs. Celeron). If the project were to come to fruition, and you ended up
with an Atom, it would be enormously disappointing.

And let's face it, these days, if you're not willing to put together a desktop
(which you can trivially do at this price point assuming you're willing to
make the same price/performance tradeoffs), you're probably not in the market
for a desktop, but rather a laptop or a tablet. That's just where the market
is at these days.

------
elnate
Their pricing model just seems to be regular retail plus donations.

------
devanti
pretty expensive given the specs..

~~~
shanpc
We wanted to price it below $300, but were a bit nervous since
Indiegogo/Kickstarter take about 10% including the payments system
(Amazon/PayPal), so we're pricing it safe.

We'll certainly try to provide the best hardware we can at the price we can
get it - who knows, maybe we can throw in an i3 processor or 128 GB SSD!

Also, we are pricing it below most of System76/ZaReason offerings - I think if
you look at Dell/HP offerings at the same price range, they provide similar
specs. But if we get the volume we need, we should be able to get much better
hardware.

~~~
eropple
Exactly how much research have you done to buttress that "should"?

