Tell HN: We are selling Ubuntu Laptops in Europe

[revorad]

At my new shopping startup, Giniji, we are soon going to start selling pre-installed Ubuntu laptops.

System76 sells their own linux laptops in the US. But we have always struggled to find alternatives in Europe.

So, we've ourselves decided to offer reasonably-priced second-hand laptops, that come pre-installed with Ubuntu. Most of you are perfectly capable of installing OS's on your own, but it's to save you time and effort, and also make Ubuntu laptops more easily available to the wider public.

We're starting off with Europe only, but maybe if there's demand we'll consider the US too.

If you're interested, please sign up here - http://www.giniji.com/ubuntu_laptops.html.

[loevborg]

For me, the important selling point would not be that I save the time required for installing the distro - that only takes a half hour anyway. What would make me buy your laptop (even with shipping from the UK to Germany) would be the assurance that everything, including suspend-to-ram, works 100% on the laptops you sell. Ideally you would also investigate and take back the laptop if it doesn't. That would be really awesome.

[revorad → loevborg]

Noted, and this is very much on our list. Thanks for chiming in.

[stfu]

It is a difficult market. I remember when Netbooks started out many were running on some Linux distribution, but most people were willing to pay a premium for windows. So the challenge for you is going to find a market. I suspect that most Ubuntu Users are able to format a standard OS and install Ubuntu on it. One idea might be to import some extremely cheap system and offer that one with Ubuntu pre-installed. Good luck!

[revorad → stfu]

Well, it's certainly not aimed at mainstream users. For them, we've got plenty of Windows laptops and Macbooks to choose from :-)

We're aiming to sell these primarily to existing Ubuntu users. Imagine if you just received your laptop in the mail and could start using it right away instead of installing an OS and fiddling with packages. If you especially enjoy doing that, then you're not our target customer anyway.

[gerggerg]

More power too you. Do you plan on offering Ubuntu support as well?

[revorad → gerggerg]

Not planned at the moment, but if it's something a lot of people ask for, we might consider it.

[gerggerg → gerggerg]

a week later, reading through my comments, i realized i wrote too... too you... this is most embarrassing.

[revorad]

Clickable link - http://www.giniji.com/ubuntu_laptops.html

I'll be happy to address any questions or suggestions.

[dgunn]

What desktop are you going to use? Gnome? Unity?

[revorad → dgunn]

We prefer defaulting to Gnome, but we may offer a choice.

[dgunn → revorad]

Just curious. I know if I was a long time windows user and you showed me unity, I would probably run in the other direction.

What is your business model? You said on the page that you don't collected payment info. Do your sellers pay to list?

[revorad → dgunn]

I agree about Unity. It was the first thing I changed when I upgraded my personal machine to 11.04.

Sorry about the confusion regarding the business model. We don't sell most of the products on our site, which is more of a shopping search engine. But, we will sell the Ubuntu laptops ourselves directly. I'll update the FAQ accordingly. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Edit: FAQ updated; more details will be added in due course.