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Michael Dell Sees Future In Linux Desktop
Robert McMillan writes: "Linux Magazine has just published a pretty interesting interview with Michael Dell -- not exactly widely considered to be a Linux booster. But he is keynoting at LinuxWorld in San Jose tomorrow and he does talk about why Dell is now interested in Linux. Interestingly, he also says he sees good things for Linux as a desktop OS."
Don't you just love the way he sidestepped trashing MicroSoft. Not that I blame him. He wants to sell computers, not fight a holy OS war. But couldn't you just tell by his tone that what he really wanted to say would go something like:
Q. And what about MicroSoft? How will Linux affect them?
A. I hope that piece of crap OS get's plowed under like last years chaff so that we don't have to support Gate's business model anymore. I'm so sick of supporting his closed source flotsam I could puke. Linux will let us cut our support staff in half, and with the source code we'll be able to push the envelope of what the PC can do. In a few years, you will see us shipping Dell computer that truly inovative and not just Wintel tag-alongs.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
"Interestingly, he also says he sees good things for Linux as a desktop OS."
Yet yesterday, 90% of slashdot readers berate AOL for providing their suite of access products for Linux
What's it to be ?
The other thing is -- by supporting Linux, they rather seem to be competing with SUN & al. then with Microsoft. A lot what he says remains unspoken (e.g. he says "Look at SUN and Microsoft", and then doesn't even mention the latter). Linux warriors may be more obsessed with Microsoft, but one conclusion I draw from that interview is that rather the big commercial Unix corporations can be the real competitor / enemy (however you state that) of Linux in the corporate market.
Best regards,
January
Can I use Linux as a verb?
... any noun can be verbed.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
It worries me slighhtly that so many companies these days are focusing on Linux as the only alternative. Sure, this is great for Linux, but is it good for computer users in general? Bear with me here...
Out of all the available Operating Systems out there, how many are based on just two standards? There is Win32 (Windows 9x/ME, WinNT), and POSIX (All *nix variants, most BSD's, BeOS, QNX etc). Only two standards? Where is the choice? Where is the inovation?
It seems to me that all anyone is interested in is twisting and squeezing Linux into ever more bizarre and improbable situations (Linux on palm tops, Linux for embedded devices, Linux for games consoles etc.) Is the market stagnating, where no one dares break away from the pack and try something new for a change?
Maybe it's envy on my part, but why can't we have an Open Source project that isn't based around some form of Linux or a POSIX kernel? Is there any room for innovation in OSS these days?
Just had to get that off my chest, sorry.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
osOpinion has an article by Tom Nadeau which gives a rather different take on Dell. http://www.osopinion.com/Opinions/TomNadeau/TomNad eau50.html
Mark Summerfield http://www.perlpress.com http://www.ourobourus.com
LM: Did you actually take a look at the technology?
Dell: Yeah. I have a little lab next to my office here, and I got a desktop PC and installed Red Hat Linux on it. I played around with it a little bit.
...and...
LM: OK, how much time do you personally spend thinking about or dealing with Linux these days?
Dell: I don't really have a number that comes to mind for you.
I bet he didn't even partition the hard drive himself. Granted Dell is a hardware supplier, I don't need its CEO to be a Linux efficianado, but some expressions of capability at the top sure would convincing.
His comments sound like many others these days: "We're going to support Linux because everybody else is and we don't want to be left out. But trust us, we know what we're doing."
Hardly "a new Linux evangelist" in my book. Our community needs companies that develop business units whose sole function is to support us (Linux), not just have us tacked on to rest of the OS support department. I think we'll see that the most successful companies five years from now will be those that got in to Linux with both feet today, provided dedicated service, knowledgable expertice, and serious committment from individuals that are compassionate of the cause. If anybody can spot an imposter, its going to be us.
Linux hasn't been easy until now, and we sure aren't doing this on a lark. How about showing some interest before you ask for our money? Sorry Michael, I'm not convinced.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
- Throw multiuser and files access permissions out of the system. have the user automatically login and work as 'root' just as in windows 95/98/me and in macos. sure, this creates a lot of security issues, but they could be tolerated on desktop machines with dialup-only internet access. by far more simple for unsophisticated users.
- Simplify the file system structure. If multiuser functionality has been removed, it is only longer necessary to have
/home, /sbin, /usr/sbin and to have both global and user-specific configuration files. Join /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, for example. Rename all system directories so that they are easily understandable in natural language: /usr/bin to /Programs, /etc to /Programs/Settings /lib to /Programs/Data. Create /Fonts, /Sounds, /Pictures, /Documents, and so on.
- Throw out X11 - since no desktop user needs its network functionality - and replace it with a framebuffer-based GUI.
- Create lightweight desktop applications not with configurability, but simplicity in mind. Avoid redundant functionality (i.e. button bars doubling menu entries). Most of these apps are already there, just port them to a common toolkit (fltk, for example).
- Reduce inter-application interfaces to classic Unix pipes, sockets and libraries. Avoid bloat and slowdown through Corba and similar interfaces.
- Adapt and simplify LinuxConf to act as the system configurator
- Standardize on one scripting language in your "distribution" (for example, Python). Avoid that several bloated scripting languages have to reside on the system just because system utilies (package managers etc.) need them.
I agree that the resulting system will have litte in common of what we know and appreciate in GNU/Linux. But it would be the perfect system for people who don't want to replace the complexity and impenetrability of Windows with yet another type of complexity and impenetrability. Hammering nice graphical interfaces on top of that complexity won't help.gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
Well, you should learn more about UNIX history. It was NOT designed for mainframes. The first versions ran on DEC PDP machines and they were the thing most closely matching today's PCs. And yes, it was meant as a desktop OS, serving the needs of the programmers of the Bell Labs.
I DO use Linux as my desktop OS (both at work and at home) and I am very happy with it while Win9x (the supposed REAL desktop OS) keeps constantly annoying me.
My mother (well, she is not exactly a hardcore computer geek) uses Linux as her desktop OS. She is quite happy with it.
And anyway, I just see no reason to NOT to use Linux as a desktop OS. Could you mention just ONE feature that shows that it should not be used for that?
(Remember, in the old DOS days people whined about having to shut down Linux as opposed to the 'just switch it off' method of DOS - and see, what happened in Win9x)
Real life is overrated.
Want to add obscure nifty features like ACLs and Roles? You can do that, kind of like the LIDS guys and the Linux ACL project.
Want to rip underlying kernel out but keep the rest of the look and feel? Kind if like Debian/HURD maybe?
Want to keep the underlying kernel and get rid of the look and feel? Like all the embedded Linux projects like the Tivo do? Go for it!
Want to do something else? You're free to.
This isn't so much a Linux phenominon as an Open Source one. People have said inventions don't happen until we're ready for them. The world wasn't ready for Open Source until everyone got wired via the Internet. Then it just exploded and companies started to realize that with the playing field level everyone can profit.
Something radically better than Linux may come along at some point (Though I rather doubt it'll come out of Redmond) and people will start switching at that point. Innovation will still happen, but now it'll be a lot more people controlling the direction we go.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
And then spaketh the lord, "Let there be unix companies galore, each different from the other, so that the standards can multiply and compete amongst each other."
And the companies thus arose, and they fought each other, with various wondrous types of software, none of which worked with the other. And everyone saw that there was competition, and it was good.
Thus began the ten years of drought, when application developers moaned, "Wherefore am I to write my software? None shall buy it, for each is on his own little island, each separate from the rest." And Gates said to them, "Come to me, ye fools! And ye shall be happy, for all my denizens live under one roof. It leaketh sometimes, but ye shall earn gold selling yer stuff." And the developers all flocked to Gates, and the unix companies continued to fling dung at each other, and it was all as it had always been.
w/m
Actually, you don't have to remake Linux to be a desktop OS. All you have to do is put a "desktop layer" on top of Linux. That has the following advantages over remaking or starting from scratch -
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
because OSs are layered things, and the lower levels (the kernel and drivers) are not anymore "designed to be a desktop OS" than designed to be anything else. The Linux kernel can be the foundation for a perfectly good destkop OS, it's just all the Unix command-line and /etc/configuration stuff that's historically tied to it. No-one's preventing YOU from making a desktop OS on top of the Linux kernel, that doesn't even use /bin/sh. For that matter, no one's preventing you from writing your own kernel either, but you'd better have some really good new ideas to put in it, to be worth the effort.
In the meantime, GNOME and KDE are moving forward, and doing the right thing: putting a pretty user interface on the whole system (which means that the average user ultimately doesn't have to touch the command line unless he actually wants to), while stayign reasonably close to the Unix way-of-doing-things, and keeping interoperability with more traditional Unix desktops (X11 + whichever wm).
manager: Gee, Michel, IBM is getting a lot of press for pushing this Linux thing.
Dell: Nah, Linux sux
manager: yes, but it gets a lot of coverage lately. We should really come up with something.
Dell: Nah, Linux sux.
manager: Michael, you will slashdoted.
Dell: Darn, you are convicing. Call our PR department...
This isn't to say that Linux is a bad OS. It's a terrific OS for servers, routers, and other non-end-user computers. But it doesn't make any sense to try to hack shiny, happy desktop features into it. Everything has its purpose right? Linux's purpose is to be the best server operating system available (whether or not it succeeds is your call), not to battle Microsoft.
Rather than that constantly remake Linux in order to compete with Windows, it would make a great deal more sense for the FSF to create a brand new operating system designed from the ground up to be a desktop OS. Not only would this OS include all the necessary components for a desktop OS (GUI support built in from the beginning, no CLI, journaling file system, plug-and-play devices, advanced multimedia support, etc.), it would eliminate all the problems seen in current desktops -- licensing problems with KDE; feature bloat with GNOME. And right now, there's simple no free OS that does this -- sure, there's BeOS, but it's only free as in beer, not as in speech.
Remember P.T. Barnum's famous quote "You can please all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time?" Right now, Linux is trying to please all of the people all of the time, and that just isn't working. It's time to divide and conquer. Leave Linux to the server market and design the efficient, stable, user-friendly, and most importantly, open-source desktop OS that the world has been waiting for.
Yeah, the chicken+egg problem gets solved when a major vendor gets behind the software, but what I find odd is how it happens. I mean, linux has >20 million users, which is about 10% of the Windows installed base. Now, if you were a CEO, wouldn't you push your company to support it, thereby gaining 10% more customers and getting an edge over your slower competitors?
From the interview:
Then I started going out on the Net and searching for "Dell and Linux," "Optiplex and Linux" "Dimension and Linux," "Inspiron and Linux," "Precision and Linux," and Boom! You'd see hundreds of thousands of user who had figured out how to use our products with Linux, and we hadn't done anything to help those people either.
In reality, though, (and this is something I find very, very surprising) many/most hardware companies are far slower than Michael Dell at catching on. Recently, I bought a logitech cordless mouse, but only after a frustrating search to find out if it works for linux. Now, logitech could hire a couple of web developers to put that info on their site, and maybe get a couple of their programmers to test stuff for linux. Bingo. You're helping out 20+ million customers you weren't before. Why don't CEOs see this?
My guess is that Michael Dell is probably way ahead of the curve, since he actually bothered looking at the search queries, installing linux himself, etc. Maybe most CEOs wait for a Gartner analyst to draw pie charts and wait for their underlings to draft a business plan before they get the point. Any idea how this works?
(As an aside, it's very revealing that Michael Dell actually saw *hundreds of thousands* of customers helping each other out before the company even realised there were all these customers using Dell on linux. Is it any surprise people prefer looking for product info from other users instead of the "official" company site? )
w/m
- OEM licences for Windows are much cheaper than the licences you buy in a store, probably very close to the cost of an OEM licence from Red Hat (which is not exactly the cheapest distro anyways)
- It takes more time (and hence money) to set up Linux than it does to set up Windows. Flame away, my brethern, if you must, but 't is a fact, that is to say, 't is fact if you want to set up Linux as a desktop OS (which it was not exactly meant to be).
Having said that, I'd of course much prefer them not to install anything, be it Windows or Linux, because I'm one of those control freaks who'd rather keep everything in their own hands. I'd much rather put stuff on my harddisk in a way that makes sense to *me* (and probably no one else) than to dig through an entire 13.7 Gig HD trying to find out where Dell has put the sources to the kernel.News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Reading the interview, they say they want to take the server market over from sun, imply they want the desktop market from MS, etc. What they really see, imho, is selling computers and making as much as possible, they're a business, after all. So they say linux can do desktops, partner for support or provide their own support, and the chicken and egg problem half solves itself, with linux desktops in shiny TV commericals. Poof, linux has major vendor backing, and their vison works. I'd really not be suprised if it works out this way.
Myself, I'd not mind as long as they charge less for a linux install than for a win98 install, and have options like order 1 year phone support plan or just a cheapbytes cd shipped with the box. Myself, I don't want or need linux support that way, i can get any info I need from the net. So please make it an option, Dell.
bash: ispell: command not found
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The real trouble with pushing Linux onto the desktop market as quickly as possible is that the infrastructure required to develop games easily is still in the process of development. Why games? Because games are where mindshare is in the eyes of Joe Sixpack buying a PC for his kids. Sure, he may claim that it's for "educational purposes", but if it doesn't run games as well then he's not going to buy it.
Whilst the latest versions of XFree86 attempt to go further in what hardware is supported and what features can be used, there is still no unified framework for the kind of features required for games and other multimedia applications. Sure, there's OpenGL and now OpenAL, but these are very much a work in progress under Linux, and even then rely on the goodwill of manufacturers in making driver code available for a system where they won't be making any kind of return.
The reason that there are so many games under Windows is that it is, relatively speaking, easy to create them. DirectX provides a unified framework for integrating graphics, sound, music, input devices, network play and more in a single package, allowing designers to concentrate on what matters - the game itself. The difference is very real, and can be seen in the amount of time it takes for Loki to port a game to Linux.
It is safe to say that the importance of games cannot be stressed enough in the public's view of how desirable a desktop system is. And until Linux delivers a unified framework for creating games a la DirectX, it's success on the desktop will always be limited.
- the introduced the story with a big Linux logo,
- they pronounced it right^w the way I do,
- they were apparently filming at the show, though they actually focused on content rather than on the event,
- they used the de rigeur "scrappy upstart" description,
- they said it was popular because of its "amazing reliability" (sorry; forgot the exact words),
- they showed barricades labeled "Windows Free Zone",
- they showed systems running GUIs, while voice-over talking about Linux,
- they had a bite from an Eazel guy, mentioned their Appleness, and showed a bit of Nautilus,
- they said Linux was was used on 10% of servers and 4% of desktops,
- they showed an xterm (or the like) with an "uptime" display of 41 days (though I doubt that the uninitiated viewer would have been able to figure that out),
- they showed part of MD's speech (see, I really am on topic!).
CNN repeats some of these spots several times a day, so you may be able to catch it if you're inclined to.The most interesting thing about this is that it puts Linux in front of a very large audience, and they portrayed it in a very good light while doing so. You may have people asking about that Linux thingy you run, if they saw this.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade