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.

Comments

FINALLY! But why still paying the MS-tax?

[fluffhead]

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

Re:FINALLY! But why still paying the MS-tax?

[sarcastro]

>However, the support calls should be way fewer with the stability of Linux....

MY GOD, MAN! have you ever worked tech support? how many of the calls to tech support do you think involve actual real problems? if the linuxcare support dell offers is free like their normal tech support, then people will abuse it just the same.

Where is the extra money going?

[EricWright]

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

Inspirion 7500 as VMware machine?

[rdl]

Thanks, Dell! Thanks, Linuxcare!

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 :) It's a lot less
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 :( 10 pounds
configured, and *big*.

Pricing

[EvlG]

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.

USB?

[sql*kitten]

Does anyone know what Dell are doing to address things like USB and IrDA support from Linux? Will they merge their drivers into commercial distributions? Will they subsequently only work on Dell equipment?

Thanks!

Hard to find the Linux boxes on Dell's web site

[ibis]

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

What extra $100

[twit]

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.

--

Re:What extra $100

[dillon_rinker]

I know Dell doesn't pay $100/machine for WinXX

They don't pay MS $100/machine for WinXX, but Win XX costs them more than they pay MS. When an OEM licenses WinXX from MS, the OEM assumes all support costs (at least, at the lowest pricing levels they do). Dell takes their support costs for WinXX and averages that over all the systems that have WinXX preloaded. The discount you saw reflected both the licensing cost and the average support cost.

Interesting tidbit - the profit margin on PCs is so slim that the average technical support incident for a consumer-level system will wipe out the profit for that system.

Supply and demand

[Smack]

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

Re:I'm not that impressed.

[Pike]

I'm in the market for a laptop right now, and I know it would sure reduce the effort I have to go to in researching which laptops use quality, linux-compatible hardware. If a company offers their laptop with Linux preinstalled, that gives me good assurance that the hardware works with Linux.

Most companies do not even tell you what network card, video chipset or sound chipset they use, so it's off to the Internet to see if there are any testimonials by other Linux'ers on that particular model. I'm glad Dell is making things easier for us and I hope other companies follow suit.

Slashdot folks don't want laptop Linux support?

[JoeBuck]

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.

$upport Co$ts

[Duxup]

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.

Dell preinstallation is not great

[pq]

As someone who just got a new Dell workstation(*) at the office with RH 6.0 on it, let me say that the preinstallation isn't great. Yes, its competent, but the partition sizes are all wrong (are they ever just right?), ethernet doesn't quite work right (hours with ifconfig) and its set to use NIS+, which won't play nice with the rest of our Solaris workshop.

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?

Re:I'm not that impressed.

[Alan Shutko]

How many laptops have you installed Linux on? I've done a bunch. There's always something which requires voodoo to get working, whether it's hacking out your own modelines (for the LCD screen!) because nothing else gets it right, starting in framebuffer mode because that's the only way to get X to work, hacking the install disks to move the location of th TCIC controller, or trying valiently (and eventually giving up) to get sound to work. Many laptops I've worked on have had built-in but unusable hardware in one way or another.

Maybe preinstalled desktops aren't very cool, but preinstalled laptops mean that you don't have to go scouring web sites and ftp sites for clues on how to get everything to work. It means that odds are, all the hardware will work! This _is_ a leap ahead.