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.)

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.

Excellent idea! With a T-shirt, we couldn't use the Ubuntu/Canonical logo, but maybe we can do a T-shirt with a message that says "Support pre-installed Ubuntu/Linux!" or something similar on it. Let me talk to our designer friend and see if we can put something together fairly quickly. The donation to EFF, etc sounds like a good idea too!

We'll discuss this and try to have some additional perks in there by early next week.

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.

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.

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.

Absolutely. But do remember that Dell and other vendors pre-install commercial operating systems (hint, hint!) on all their devices, and you are filling coffers for an anti-Linux company even if you overwrite it fully with Linux. There aren't really that many vendors selling pure Ubuntu/Linux machines out there.

Having said that, we're not aiming to become one such vendor. We are just trying what we can to ignite the pre-installed Linux computer market, not eke a profit out of this.

Yes. :) The prototype shown in the video is indeed built off a barebones device similar to the one you link to (not the exact same model).

So it is indeed not hard at all - most HN readers will be able to assemble a device similar to our campaign themselves.

But I want to clarify we are not running this to as a money-making campaign! We are doing this for two primary reasons: 1. Ignite pre-installed Ubuntu/Linux among PC makers by showing there is demand for it. 2. Try to put out a device at a lower price point than most Ubuntu vendors today and be price-competitive with the low-end models for Windows makers.

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.

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.

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

Oops! Thanks for catching that, will fix!

EDIT: This was NOT done on purpose, I assure you. ;)

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.

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

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.

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. ;)

Thanks for the feedback! Our motivation for this project was to accelerate the growth of PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed on them, particularly at a low price point.

We looked at the Raspberry Pi, but it provides too little CPU horsepower for most basic computing chores - its hard to run a decent GUI or browse the web on it. Not knocking the Pi one bit here (!), but we think a desktop computer would need a bit more firepower than the Pi.

Also, being a crowdfunded project, we're able to provide this at a price-point that System76, ZaReason and other pre-installed Linux providers aren't able to provide right now (they're great companies too, so do support them if you like Linux pre-installed on your desktops/laptops!)