And then I would buy this without a second thought.
With just Ubuntu, with very little games with mediocre Graphic card drivers and a painful interface like unity (try hiding/unhiding/switching between hidden windows for example) it's hard to convince myself to buy this..
Unity is probably the most intuitive system for somebody switching from Win7.
What else would you install by default?
Gnome2/MATE/Xfce are showing their age. Gnome3 is even stranger. The only other plausible choice would be KDE.
Unity is actually pretty good as an entertainment oriented interface. The ability to search games, apps, music and movies all from the main menu is very nice.
I have tried getting used to Unity, but I just can't.
It all comes down to the fact that the Unity launcher is forcibly placed on the right hand side and I always accidentally click on it when trying to click somewhere in the region. No other OS I use forces such a thing, which is why I will never get used to it.
I tried changing my mouse sensitivity to compensate for the bar, but it makes everything else harder. There used to be a hack that would let you move the bar to the bottom of the screen, but it has not worked in the 12.x versions.
I use KDE these days. The worse thing they force their users to look at is the Cashew, which can be made transparent by installing a third party widget.
"It all comes down to the fact that the Unity launcher is forcibly placed on the right hand side and I always accidentally click on it when trying to click somewhere in the region."
Just hide the thing and press the Windows key and type? I used dwm/dmenu for a year or so and never missed having a panel at all!
Very unscientific trials of my own suggest Win7 users relate to KDE slightly better than Unity.
I simply hand my thinkpad to students in class and get them to start a Web browser and log into the Moodle instance.
KDE mostly ok, Unity getting into browser easy, but most try to close the window by clicking on the System Settings icon on the right top ('cog wheel'). They also find the global menu strange at the start.
It only takes two minutes to explain how Unity works though...
I'm not saying it isn't, but first time I booted it up it took me a good 20 mins to figure out how basic things worked and I'm used to using weird Linux DEs.
I don't think it would leave a great first impression on your average ADHD alienware target customer.
You do need to learn a few keyboard shortcuts before you can work effectively with Gnome 3. I think these ones get you 80% of the way there, though (and they work the same as they do on Windows):
1. WinKey and type a name to open programs
2. WinKey + arrows to snap windows
3. Alt+Tab to switch between open windows
It's really a shame, because it really takes almost no time to learn. And basically the point is that the desktop disappears and the only thing left is your work.
Edit: Or entertainment ;). Point is application is whats important.
Keep in mind that these entertainment computers may be plugged in to living room TVs, which will often not be used with a keyboard and mouse, but perhaps with a game pad or remote.
1. I actually get comparable performance with the proprietary Nvidia driver in Windows and Linux. All of these systems seem to have Nvidia chipsets. If you can't even choose your driver (at the least with jockey), I wouldn't consider buying this.
2. What would stop you from installing your own OS pair? I'd think you could do it at the very least through a network boot, and probably USB.
3. As with 3, what would stop you? Even if you're stuck with Ubuntu, changing Xsessions shouldn't be a problem. The only way this should happen to be a problem is if there is no access to a shell with root privileges. And if it that's the case, almost no serious Linux user would consider buying such an un-free system.
4. With Steam an Humble now supporting Linux, there are quite a few more choices than there were just a couple of years ago, and I'm sure we'll see more in the years to come.
I'm too used to the 'one icon per window' paradigm which is why even on windows I do not combine icons. To open a program that has multiple windows on unity, one needs to click the relevant icon, and then select the window you want, which is two mouse clicks (well, one mouse click, mouse move, then click again) as compared to a single mouse click. And I somehow prefer a horizontal longer taskbar as compared to a vertical one even though a horizontal taskbar would rob be of vertical space.
Okay. But as a newbie, I still think I shouldn't need to Win+W then click on the window I need when the previous option was just clicking on the relevant icon in the taskbar directly. This is backward UI (just like the Android Jellybean which takes two taps to select an app to run just once).
It's a happy medium between user friendliness and a UI that gets out of your way like xmonad. You only need two shortcuts to use Unity effectively. Super+w to switch windows and Super+s to switch screens.
You can remove the painful Unity interface with great ease, once you have the machine in front of you. There is no requirement to use Unity as an interface shell by anyone other than Canonical. If you don't like it, switch to another interface when you log in; its that simple.
As for 'very little games', I have to say this: LOL! Linux has thousands and thousands of games, and this continues to grow day by day. Steam may not have everything (yet), but its only a matter of time before the floodgates open: on the other side of that "new thing called Steam on Liux" lays a massive horizon of gaming on Linux that is unrecognized, unseen, but will soon be utilized once the pipe is in place.
Linux has thousands of great games ready for the consumers; the veil of the 'mainstream groupthink' is just preventing a lot of smart people from seeing this fact, but I would wager that Steam and Alienware are indicators that in fact, some very smart people are entirely aware of the potential of whats to come once these lines of communication are open.
So this is nothing but positive. Even if you don't want to be an early-adopter for this line of communication, its the line of communication which has been deficient; not the lack of content. The content (Games for Linux) is well and truly out there, it is ripe for harvesting, and this is the beginning of that effort ..
As this device is aimed at the living room, i think Unity makes alot more sense than on the normal desktop. Video drivers have improved recently and Dual-booting is probably easy todo as its just a PC in a nice looking HTPC enclosure.
25 titles arent many but then again my Xbox360 had like 5 games available when it was released.
I can see the value to your other points, but which desktop environment would you suggest over Unity? I always thought it was a pretty good fit for these type of things but my experience with other Linux desktop environments is pretty limited.
I want:
1) Better video drivers.
2) An option to Dual-boot with another OS.
3) To remove the painful Unity interface.
4) More titles to play.
And then I would buy this without a second thought.
With just Ubuntu, with very little games with mediocre Graphic card drivers and a painful interface like unity (try hiding/unhiding/switching between hidden windows for example) it's hard to convince myself to buy this..