Charging money for *buntu install?

I just thought I'd check here on the community's and Canonical's view on this.

I have a computer service shop. I'm thinking of selling a service to install some *buntu on clients' machines and charging (a small fee) for the service. To my understanding this is legal, but I thought I'd check here just incase what other people think of this :)

I think it would be good for *buntu and Linux since I'd be getting more users for them (people who don't know much about computers, and can't install themselves), and also show them the basic use etc.

I'll probably change some settings etc to make it as fast possible (on older machines) and maybe also some changes to make it very easy to use for people who have never used computers etc. I'd be sharing these changes with the community, ofcourse.

you can charge the service of the installation/ configuration and support. why not. Red hat does that all the time . What i suggets you to do is to get speccifi hardware that are compatible eith linux/ubuntu 100% otherwise you will have costumers asking the wirdest requests.

Yes this is totally fine, you are after all charging for your services and labour rather than the product so legally you can do this.

Some words of wisdom from someone with experience in this: I've found installing Linux on peoples computers is fine for them as long as they are not expecting it to be the same as windows, if you just tell them that "It can do everything a Windows PC can do" which to you and me is true, the customer might get cheesed off when they cant double click the itunes.exe they downloaded and get their familiar music player. It all depends on what the customer is used to in the past. I would recommend using an OEM install so the customers can set their own user data and password https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ubuntu_OEM_Installer_Overview and don't forget about the patented codecs and formats, your customers will expect their *.mp3 files to play without any hassle, and they will expect to be able to watch youtube videos without using the command line or install extra software, this is where it gets sticky, installing for a friend is fine but as a retailer you can you safely install patented software for profit, I don't know I'm afraid, I've only installed for friends and family as non profit. If you go ahead then I recommend the Linux Mint OEM install http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=112 , it works out of the box with codecs and flash and is easy to setup, its only available in 64 bit though and has no lightweight version so not ideal for very old hardware

EDIT: I just checked and installing patented software for other people is legal in certain countries, so depends where you live, in the UK its legal, also in Europe but not in USA or many Asian countries, see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent

All software on the Ubuntu CD is under the GPL or more permissive licenses. You can sell Ubuntu if you want. If anybody asks for the source code, you must provide it or show the person how to apt-source.

*Thread moved to The Community Cafe.*

ksatta1 said: I'm thinking of selling a service to install some *buntu on clients' machines and charging (a small fee) for the service.

The installation is so easy a monkey could do it. You should charge for troubleshooting and maintenance. ;)

CaptainMark said: Yes this is totally fine, you are after all charging for your services and labour rather than the product so legally you can do this.

Some words of wisdom from someone with experience in this: I've found installing Linux on peoples computers is fine for them as long as they are not expecting it to be the same as windows, if you just tell them that "It can do everything a Windows PC can do" which to you and me is true, the customer might get cheesed off when they cant double click the itunes.exe they downloaded and get their familiar music player. It all depends on what the customer is used to in the past. I would recommend using an OEM install so the customers can set their own user data and password https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ubuntu_OEM_Installer_Overview and don't forget about the patented codecs and formats, your customers will expect their *.mp3 files to play without any hassle, and they will expect to be able to watch youtube videos without using the command line or install extra software, this is where it gets sticky, installing for a friend is fine but as a retailer you can you safely install patented software for profit, I don't know I'm afraid, I've only installed for friends and family as non profit. If you go ahead then I recommend the Linux Mint OEM install http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=112 , it works out of the box with codecs and flash and is easy to setup, its only available in 64 bit though and has no lightweight version so not ideal for very old hardware

EDIT: I just checked and installing patented software for other people is legal in certain countries, so depends where you live, in the UK its legal, also in Europe but not in USA or many Asian countries, see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent +1 Linux Mint OEM install is a good choice. An alternative is a standard Linux Mint version with no codecs, that you find at this page

http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

You can deliver it without codecs, but at the welcome screen, the customer will find a *button to install multimedia codecs*, an easy one-click solution :-) See the attached file.

Unfortunately it is a little more difficult to get started with Ubuntu, but it is certainly also possible. The small company where I bought an Ubuntu computer sold it without codecs, but attached a *paper with instructions* how to install what is necessary to play video clips and DVD disks. It worked for me. At that time I had no Ubuntu Forum beans ;-)

ksatta1 said: To my understanding this is legal

Absolutely. There's nothing about open source that makes it illegal to trade on your skills. In fact that's the way open source usually makes money, by selling a service around the product. Just look at the way massive companies pay big wads of money for things like MySQL. They could just download it and install it themselves, but what they really want is to hire someone who knows how it works.

Thank you all for the feedback :)

ksatta1 said: I just thought I'd check here on the community's and Canonical's view on this.

I have a computer service shop. I'm thinking of selling a service to install some *buntu on clients' machines and charging (a small fee) for the service. To my understanding this is legal, but I thought I'd check here just incase what other people think of this :)

I think it would be good for *buntu and Linux since I'd be getting more users for them (people who don't know much about computers, and can't install themselves), and also show them the basic use etc.

I'll probably change some settings etc to make it as fast possible (on older machines) and maybe also some changes to make it very easy to use for people who have never used computers etc. I'd be sharing these changes with the community, ofcourse.

Completely legit and a great idea, Windows 8 sales are hurting and people are looking for something else. My Dad just got a Alienware running Windows 8 and I am waiting for him to through in the towel and ask for the Ubuntu install. I have been doing install for years now for people and have had pretty good success with it, now my question is what are you going to charge for your service and what support are you going to provide for your service.

prodigy_ said: The installation is so easy a monkey could do it. You should charge for troubleshooting and maintenance. ;)

Allow me to disagree here: I've installed two 'Buntu distros recently and none of them were easy. I first installed Ubuntu 12.10 from a USB stick, but it would not boot. I've eventually found out after much reading of specialised forums that it was because of the format of the stick, which I was only able to change using a very obscure software.

The second installation (Xubuntu 12.04) from a CD would have been easy had I not wanted to keep Win7 on it. By default, all the primary partitions were used, and so I had to modify the partitioning of my computer to keep going.

All of this might seem easy issues for most people here to deal with, but I am pretty sure that many, if not most, "regular" MS users would/could not deal with them.

There are big differences between different computers. If you are reasonably lucky, your computer will let you install Ubuntu without any problems, but there are many exceptions. Often there is some hardware, that cannot co-operate with linux (no suitable linux driver). Sometimes the configuration the computer (UEFI, partittion table etc) makes it hard if you want dual boot, and many newbies (including me) want to keep Windows for at least a year.

But if you can select the hardware (sell computer plus installation or help the customer specify what hardware to buy) it will be easy to install. And you can charge money for the knowledge how to select the hardware.

I'd just like to re-emphasize the issue of redistributing patented codecs and software that violates the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, libdvdcss2 in particular. If you are in the US, you cannot legally distribute any of these items to another party even if you give them away. That's why Ubuntu has restricted-extras and shifts the responsibility to the user to decide whether to obtain software that is legally restricted.

I think you also should consider which desktop environment to ship. KDE often feels more similar to someone coming from Windows, for instance. Or you could have a few demo machines in your shop and let people choose which flavor they prefer.

I'd also consider "full-boat" installations from the DVDs rather than the more restricted offerings on CD. Kubuntu, for instance, does not include things like GIMP, Firefox or Thunderbird by default. You might want to build a customized machine then use something like Remastersys to create a standard DVD with all the customizations to use on future installations.

Some things to include would be a media player like VLC or, my preference, smplayer. DeVeDe might be a nice addition as well. If you're building the hardware as well as installing Ubuntu, I'd definitely choose NVIDIA over ATI as a graphics adapter. I've pretty much given up trying to get Linux to work with the Radeon 6870M in one HP laptop we own.

One other product you might consider is a home server. That's an area where you can provide a lot more value compared to simply installing Ubuntu on desktops. Something like XBMC or MythTV to provide a "media center" box might also be appealing. These are products you could sell even to people who use Windows.

SeijiSensei said:

One other product you might consider is a home server. That's an area where you can provide a lot more value compared to simply installing Ubuntu on desktops. Something like XBMC or MythTV to provide a "media center" box might also be appealing. These are products you could sell even to people who use Windows. I would pay for these and the Shop-built hardware.

I am sure others' are like me, who find it better to spend time working at what I do best (OT if needed), than taking too much time doing this.

Anyone in Saskatoon listening?

;p

Some food for thought: I kind of do this, except it's putting Ubuntu/XFCE on old systems and re-donating them to people who can use them... particularly people with kids at the school district I work at that I know could use a computer at home to type up documents, etc. I spent a lot of time customizing one Ubuntu/XFCE image exactly as I wanted. Then I fired up Clonezilla Live and mounted a share from my Samba server on my LAN to back the image up. Now each time I get a new system (after I DBan the HDD for a day or two), I simply hook it up to the LAN and pull the image over. It makes deploying a tailored image crazy easy. Since Linux doesn't handle hardware is a less-than-logical manner like Windows does, I've been able to dump the same image on a laptop as a desktop with wildly different hardware. You may or may not want to do any sort of tailored image for people, but even if you keep it a vanilla instance it might be quicker to pull the image across a gigabit LAN than installing from CD or even USB in some cases.

Just offering up that insight. I always try to make things as automated as possible. :)