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Dell to sell laptops with Linux preinstalled
Now it's official. According to this story on C|Net, Dell is starting to sell notebooks with Linux preinstalled. The laptop models are the Inspiron 7500 and Latitude CPX models. The Latitude models will be available Feb. 4. Prices are the same as with Windows 9x preinstalled. Those models are certified by Linuxcare.
I think the price should be lower, after all they won't have to pay MS for licenses. Although they might have to fork over some dough to LinuxCare. However, the support calls should be way fewer with the stability of Linux....
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
it's *really* nice to see Linux getting recognition as a valid, at least quasi-mainstream operating system... it's about time! and it's great that it's coming from a big-name company like Dell instead of some small, obscure place...
I want to know what is happening to the "extra money" that is no longer a Microsoft tax? Is Dell keeping it as a surcharge for installing linux? Do I get a copy of Windows anyway? Do I get the RH package complete with 3(?) months of tech support?
In short, where is my "extra" $100 going?
Eric
Are they (we) still paying the Microsoft/Intel bundle tax? Can someone from Dell comment on this?
Speak truth to power.
Thanks, Dell! Thanks, Linuxcare!
:) It's a lot less
:( 10 pounds
I've been looking at getting a loaded Inspirion
7500 (512mb ram, 75gb disk, 650mhz pIII, 1400x1050
screen!) as a primary development machine. The
only thing I don't like is the pointing
device, but I suppose I can carry an IBM clicky
keyboard with trackpoint, too.
Has anyone had any luck running VMware 2.0 beta
on one of these beasts? I like to use vmware
to do kernel hacking without losing my
xmms and emacs buffers
annoying to lose a VMware machine than a desktop
to a kernel bug, and disks can be checkpointed.
VMware the company says laptops are a bad idea,
but the Inspirion 7500 is studlier than almost
any desktop!
Remember, these things are heavy
configured, and *big*.
A few /.ers have complained that the price is the same for Win9X installed. I think this makes a lot of sense, particularly if the computer is certified by Linuxcare.
As anyone who has dealt with Linux on laptops already knows well, hardware support isn't quite as easy as on a desktop machine. You're stuck with the hardware you have, unlike a desktop where you can always swap it out for something compatible. And unless another Linux user has the same hardware (or in some cases) the same exact model, you can be SOL.
Having a machine certified can't be cheap; with Windows you sort of get that by default when your license the OS. Microsoft has already taken the opportunity to certify hardware for use with Windows (think certified drivers). That, combined with the fact that Dell will be using a commercial distribution, would easily account for the cost of the OS for a Linux laptop.
Kudos to tell for taking steps; now if only we could get VA to bring back their models.
Thanks!
Ever see a laptop with an AMD chip? they use the same chip in laptops as whats used in desktops. Gets very HOT! very quick.
I really don't see the huge significance of having linux pre-installed. It is a step for the community to see some recognition, but to get it preinstalled you have to buy a specific model and choose to have linux put on it. Whereas if you just buy any laptop you want, you can just as easily make a choice later to put linux, or perhaps a multi-boot setup on your system. Both are choices. One just gets more publicity.
Plus, I personally would not want someone else to install linux on my machine for me. Installing it yourself is half the fun, and there's no way I would want a default installation. I don't think anyone else who would be informed enough to know which models to buy with linux installed on them would want a default installation either.
Linux has always been about customization, and the ability to do things for yourself. I do not see how this is such a leap ahead.
//Phizzy
"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing," -- Former CIA chief James Woolsey, referring to Echelon
I tried to check on the dell website and right now they are offering only Windows OS on any of their laptops.
Well, it was said that they will be offering Linux based laptops only starting with 4 Feb. However I would have expected to see at least a note or a preview or something...
Furthermore, as far as I can see for the Inspiron 7500 model the modem is not an Winmodem. So I guess that since the hardware is the same for both Linux and Windows based systems the price should be smaller for the Linux Laptop. Do I smell some fear that Microsoft will have something to say if they sell cheaper the Linux laptop ? Or perhaps they're just trying to make some extra bucks out of this ?
Perens is still on-target with that one.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
> Do those things come with real modems or Winmodems?
I just bought one in November and saved significant money by buying all the extras (ethernet card, modem, carrying case) from 3rd parties.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Microsoft's licensing agreement appears to be per product line. If this is the case, all Dell has to do is re-label a line of their machines and sell them as Linux-only, thus exempting them from the Microsoft tax. Expect this as soon as another manufacturer gets into the arena, making it competitive.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
on the 7500 the integrated modem is a winmodem, and they offer various pcmcia modems, some win, some hardware, and as for the comment about the dongle, i believe they still offer a 3-com x-jack pc card modem.
Two thoughts:
Either way, this is a Good Thing for Dell and us.
Here's my copy of DeCSS. Where's yours?
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Mine works fine with Linux. It's not as bulky or heavy as the i7500 and the bright, beautiful, perfect display maxes out at 1024x768, but aside from some apmd suspend/standby/resume issues that I have not spent any time on, it is working just fine. The 433MHz Celery is plenty fast(blows the socks off of the 300MHz Gateway PII that I have at work, but then so does the 350MHz K6-2 at home!?!?). Under w98 I do Visual Cafe/Java applets and under RH6.1 I do the server/mysql side.
Plus, it's a great portable mp3 jukebox. The 12G drive has lots of space and I don't have to lug CDs over to my pal's house any more. I just plug in an adaptor cable to his aux inputs, bring up xmms and play random from ~70 CDs with plenty of room for more.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
It used to be that Dell had a single page with links to all for their systems that you can get with Linux, but when they redesigned their site, it disappeared.
If you would like an easier way to find Dell computers with Linux pre-installed, please visit MetaSystema.org, where they are all laid out on one page:
www.metasystema.org/dell.mhtml
Dell pays between fifteen and twenty dollars a pop for a Windows license (software only, not support). Don't confuse a license as sold to a hardware vendor and one sold as retail; they're entirely different, both in what they cost and what you get.
--
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
...was that it had an 'option' for no modem. I already had pcmcia ethernet and dialup modem cards so why pay for another, especially if it only will work under winXX? I traded the modem for more RAM.
The other was simply because the 3700 is smaller, and lighter. If I need a big screen that bad, I can hook it up to a monitor.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
...is the dual pointing device setup. It has both the trackpad and two buttons for it near the edge, and the eraserhead trackpointer in the keyboard with two buttons for it right below the spacebar. It's much better than the touchpad when typing. The only drawback is when emulating three buttons/center button with a double button click is pretty difficult and unreliable using the two small buttons under the spacebar.
/. discussions, I've been investigating VMWare although without much vigor. It is looking more and more interesting...
After some other
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Yes and no.
;-)
Linux has very low overhead of floating point ops. Windows does not.
As a result at same frequency, on equivalent mainboards it usually runs better with AMD than with Intel. I mean casual apps, not something like Seti@Home of course
So asking the question of AMD as long as they preload something different from Win is a valid question.
It is only slightly OT.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Geez, didn't any of you guys take economics?
You seem to be arguing that a given reduction in costs to a retailer should result in the same reduction in the price to the consumer. That doesn't really make sense though. What incentive do they have to reduce the costs that way? If the consumer is willing to pay for the product, Dell can charge whatever they wish for it. Especially since they are one of the only major brands that provide Linux laptops -- that's why this is NEWS in the first place. Since the supply of Linux laptops is low, and the demand is presumably high, the retail price should actually be higher than that of a windows laptop, where the supply is quite high, and the demand is lower.
Also here's a link to the Inspiron page at Dell:
http://commerce.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.asp? order_code=890139&customer_id=04&keycode=6W300
I'd love to have a laptop so I can hang out on the couch instead of at the desk, but it's not worth that kind of trouble.
The default modem internal modem in the 7500 is a winmodem. I expect this to be ture of most of the Dell's as the 7500 is near the top of their line. Granted they told me this straight out when it was ordered and recommended the global modem for linux users. Works like a champ. The only easier laptop I've setup was the older Nec Versa's, but they weren't real reliable and the heat rash on my lap was never comfortable :-).
There's a marketing strategy that Red Hat figured out long ago and Dell and others are figuring out now. If something is available for free, people will still pay for it if it comes in a shiny box. How many people do you think download RedHat? Isn't it easier to just press a button and pay $40.00 for a CD already burned for you? It is. So, suppose I have to pay $1900 Big SuperCool Laptop 10000 Millennium Edition with Windows on it, and $2000 for a Big SuperCool Laptop 10000 Millennium Edition with Debian installed, some tech support time, perhaps some nifty Linux docs using that "paper" stuff, and a Big Shiny Box. I'd gladly pay the extra $100. Why? Because downloading entire distributions is a pain, and I'm on a 100Mb Ethernet with a T3 gateway. I'd rather have someone else do it for me, and that's what the free software market is about: Hardware and services.
</mindless rambling>
I'll be impressed when they allow you to pick Linux for the OS choice on ALL system configurations. We have been buying Dell 2300's with hot-swap RAID; now it's not on their product matrix- I have to take what they lame me with. Suffice it to say, we ended up picking a Penguin Computing HA server that does the work for about $1000-2000 less than the system that Dell does sell (sans Linux...)
When Dell offers Linux on everything, I'll be truly impressed.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The extra money is also going towards development of drivers. When dell starts supporting linux on laptops, they can't just expect hardware support to be added by the Linux community before they start supporting it. This means that they will have to hire some developers, to work on drivers for example for their freaking nice complicated video cards. I have a Dell, my only way to have X on it, is to buy a commerical X server, because it is not yet supported. I think alot of those people whining should shut duh hell up, The problem was that Dell was not supporting linux before on their laptops, now they support it, and you start whining? A lot of you have no idea how important this is, there are lots of companies that look up to Dell, if Dell is supporting linux on their laptop, more companies are bound to pick this up.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
why hasn't some Linux developer written a driver for them?
If you can convince the WinModem chip makers to release programming information and specs, then I am sure a Linux developer or three will be glad to do a driver.
This is one of the FAQ on winmodems; if you do a search on Deja.com, you'll find the answer. Or, check out this site or this one.
The interface to the winmodems are most often not documented. Thus it would be a great deal of work to write a driver for it -- you would have to reverse engineer it, probably starting with looking at the binary-distribution-only windows driver.
Some winmodems (Lucent I know, maybe others) have driver written by the manufacturer of the winmodem. But Lucent ( please correct me if I am wrong ) doesn't distribute the source to the driver, just a binary module that you can use with a particular kernel.
This traps you. This is the reason not to buy secret, undocumented crap in the first place. If you get a lucent winmodem, then you are always dependent on lucent deciding it is worth their time to compile up the module for the version of linux you want to use. You are probably out of luck runing the Herd or *BSD or BeOS or whatever. *You don't really own it, because you can't do whatever you want with it.*
When I plunk my money down and buy something, I want to *own* it. I don't want a pair of apron strings tying me back.
The problem with a lot of the capitalists in the world today is that they don't have the balls to be real capitalists. These loosers can't just fscking *sell* something. They want to rent the right to use it for only one purpose. They want to construe a meaningless EULA to be a contract between you and them, in which you somehow decide to pay them to restrict your behavior. Heck, even in real estate, all the developers are itching to slap on their deed restrictions or get their subdivisions under some zoning or neighborhood association.
Almost the only people doing real business any more are gun manufacturers. You have to respect someone who still has the balls to sell a piece of hardware and declare that whatever you do with it afterwards is your responsibilty.
Try configuring one Dell Inspiron 7500 on their web site with Linux (Weee! I'd sure like to have Linux 6.1 like those k-rad Dell guys got!), and one with Win98. Make sure you get the same warranty, the same amount of memory, harddrive space, modems, network cards and whatnot, and that you pick Office 2000 small business instead of the full version.
You'll see that Dell will charge you $99 extra if you want Linux instead of Win98+Office2000 small business...
%japh = (
'name' => 'Niklas Nordebo', 'mail' => 'niklas@' . 'nordebo.com',
'work' => 'www.sonox.com', 'phone' => '+46-708-405095'
> But look around - there are AMD laptops out there...
Athlon? I got the machine because I needed one for running Dragon NaturallySpeaking which is optimized for a Pentium III or Athlon. I never saw an Athlon on a laptop.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Going to Linux, and they won't go with AMD chips? Tsk, tsk, tsk.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm starting to tire of the weird rallying behind anything that's not "mainstream." Any CPU thread is now filled with "Athlon rocks!" posts, because Intel is considered the bad guy. Any video card thread is flooded with "GeForce rocks!" posts, because 3dfx is evil.
The problem with both the Athlon and the Pentium II and III chips (and the GeForce, and anything else from 3dfx or Nvidia) is that they're huge suckers of power. Incremental improvements in speed are not nearly as useful to most anyone as would be drastically lower power consumption.
Lucent has released a binary only LTWinmodem module for x86 RH6.1 kernels(it appears to be RH specific last I heard, only tested/working with stock RH kernels) and PCTel is shipping a LinModem, ie: a variant of their HSP PCI winmodem chip with linux drivers to manufacturers only. go to http://www.linmodems.org for more info.
Let's say that I'm a company that sells laptops, and I'm considering supporting Linux. I hear that Dell's going down this road, so I check in to Slashdot to assess the community reaction. What would I conclude?
For one, it appears that the community expects the work to be done for no money. They scream because the machine isn't cheaper with Linux on it, even though the amount of work to be done to get Linux to work decently with laptops is considerable, far more than with desktops, and support costs can be expected to be higher (simply because there are far fewer experts on Linux-laptop issues than for Windows-laptop issues).
Second, the community screams because support for all platforms isn't instantly available, even though many laptop components don't have Linux drivers present.
So, it would appear that neither profit nor good will is available by doing Linux support for laptops. The users don't want to pay for it, and they'll hate you anyway.
I think something that us nerd type people forget every now and then is that the majority of people in the world are not nerds. Some of them are enourmously stupid. Since Linux has been moving more and more into the mainstream and more and more onto the Average Joe Desktop (where, IMO, I really think it will fail) more non-sysadmins -programmer, -kernel hackers, -experimenters will be using this stuff. Now ask yourself if someone who wants pretty Gnome apps with Enlightenment is going to want to sit around for three hours using apt-get to install his distro? For you and me, we would definately see advantages to this method, but remember, Dell's only concern is selling computers, and average folks will buy these because Dell has made it easy for them.
I once worked for a large PC manuf (gord help me) and I to am a bit shocked at people feel that the systems should be cheaper. You also have to consider support costs to the company. They either have to hire and train their own employees or outsource the support, either way that's very costly to start from scratch.
I once worked for a large PC manuf (gord help me) and I to am a bit shocked at people feel that the systems should be cheaper. You also have to consider support costs to the company. They either have to hire and train their own employees or outsource the support, either way that's very costly to start from scratch and goes into the price.
I witnessed about a year ago a discussion on Usenet, where someone from Lucent (at least he claimed so, and the email address said the same) made a strong point of the company's policy of *never* opening the specs on their Mars chipset, on which their winmodem is based, but rather guard it as a trade secret (hint: see the parallel to what happens in the DVD case? /hint), so that nobody gets to clone it; and that they don't care about the Linux users, who never were a "target market" for them. I once e-mailed their customer support, and got a very similar reply. The fact that they recently released a binary-only driver was a *big* surprise for me.
I once worked for a large PC manuf (gord help me) and I am a bit shocked that people feel that the systems should be cheaper. You also have to consider support costs to the company. They either have to hire and train their own employees or outsource the support, either way that's very costly to start from scratch and goes into the price. Support costs for PC manufs are massive. Just try teaching a pile of windows techs basics of Unix/Linux support, it's an UGLY undertaking, I've tried.
Support for such systems is a whole new world and companies accustomed to paying X amount of dollars for X amount of support may take some time to realize how they can't recycle most their current windows support staff resulting is some messes. I think this could be a stumbling block to many companies who's support may poor with windows (to say the least) and then attempt to do support for Linux/Unix. The alternative would be outsourcing, however with a limited # of such outsourcers the costs there will be prohibitive for some companies to start.
So even if you get it preinstalled, odds are you'll want to redo it yourself. At least you'll know that it can be made to work, and there's only you to blame if it doesn't... and if you're running Linux, that's the way its meant to be, right?
So think of it as "tested to run Linux."
(*) Ah, a dual Pentium III 550 box, with a GB of RAM - those FFTs really fly now.
Offtopic note: kernel 2.2.5-SMP15 doesn't do too well with the GB of RAM, and it seems to dribble the RAM away to rogue processes until it has a little over 170 MB left. Anyone interested in a remote diagnosis before I blow it away for a new kernel?
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
(see the subject)
;-)
And so do many other people. Now, I don't use it as my workstation -- it is primarily an IP masq gateway for LAN, and also a small-scale www/ftp/mail/samba server, running Debian. The hadrware is AMD 486dx4-100, 32MB RAM, 1.2 Gig HD. It does the job very nicely. In fact it is actually over-powered for what it does. I am not about to get rid of it as it is still a very nice machine.
Admittedly, my workstation is AMD k6/2-300 and I am running Mandrake on it which does appear to be noticeably faster then any other distro I tried. Although most of the performance gain comes from GUI stuff which is quite bloated (*ghm* KDE) -- pentium optimizations sure make a difference there. The majority of the daemons though are rather light weight so the pentium optimization would not make that much of a difference.
So, what I'm saying is that pentium optimizations are indeed very nice, but
1) you cannot just obsolete 486 and 386 -- they are still being used and they might even live for the next 10 years in embedded devices -- who knows?
2) I don't believe the difference in performance of the majority of the daemons would be anywhere near as dramatic as that of KDE. And besides, when it comes to servers you want to make 100% sure they are reliable. 99% is not good enough (ok, now I'm being paranoid, but hey -- only the paranoid survive
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Hmmmm - I'm undecided about whether OSS products are going to automatically mean "greater support costs" - Certainly to an experienced *nix hack it is EASIER to maintain an open system than being responsible for the behavior of black-binaries from some dasterdly company that wants hundreds of $$ for support incidents. I've tried out many OSS products where the vendor makes it clear they come with limited support, and for some strange reason I haven't NEEDED any.
However I've another machine we're trying to get Outlook on and it repeated says "There's been a problem that requires you to reboot your PC" - reboot and it says the same thing - which to me says, uh-oh, both the registry AND it's backup are corrupted. Now THATS a support cost in that I'm going to have to spend hours fumbling around in the undocumented bowels of msft, perhaps reinstall everything, to fix. Those are the guys who regularly get dinged for all the "hidden cost of ownership" once you take the bait, at least to those of us who aren't blinded by BS.
Zen Master Jack
Not Responsible for Errors in Other Companies Property
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
That link shows that a DVD drive is available with the laptop that ships with Linux. I wonder if it ships with DeCCS? :-)
"You have to order over the phone. The web
site doesn't support choosing Linux."
If you go in through the "Small Business" area, you can order it via the web. At least, I can configure it and get a price. I havn't hit the "purchase" button yet.
"2. They won't do a dual boot setup. "
That is a bummer, but at least the fact that they support Linux gives me confidence that I could install a dual-boot system without too much grief.
Jonathan