Everex’s TC2502 gPC is the first mass-market $200 desktop computer, featuring a custom distribution of Ubuntu Linux and headed for selected Wal-Mart stores.

“It’s $200, with no gimmicks or subsidies,” Everex spokesman David Liu said.

The gPC aims to joins a popular gang of low-end economy computers leading into the holiday season, such as Asus’ $300 EeePC Laptop and VIA’s $600 Nanobook. Unlike these machines, however, Everex’s latest model is a full-size desktop, and $100 cheaper than even the slightest models from Dell or HP.

Touted as a “green” machine, it has a 1.5 Ghz VIA C7 CPU embedded in a Mini-ITX motherboard, 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. Normally, this would simply mark it as unacceptably low-end for use with modern software. By using the fast Enlightenment desktop manager (instead of heavier-duty alternatives like Gnome or KDE), the makers say it’s more responsive than Vista is, even on more powerful computers.

“It’s almost like a Google PC,” Liu says, pointing to the desktop’s rack of pre-configured links to all of Google’s online applications. It is, he says, the mass-market Linux PC we’ve all been waiting for. “That’s our dream. … we go the final step to make it work out the box, to go the whole nine yards.”

The gPC also has a DVD burner and, for those not drinking the web-app cool-aid, OpenOffice and lots more local software. There’s free phone support and a regularly updated app called “Faqly” that contains the latest tech support info for folks stuck offline.

[Via Wired]