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HP To Sell PCs With Mandrake 9.1
theoddball writes "HP just announced a new PC model (HP Compaq d220) that's available preloaded with Windows or Mandrake 9.1. The machine appears to be targeted to business users, although it's on the lower-end of the scale - specs are here. Mandrake also has a press release announcing the deal, which will grow to include four other HP models. Is this a sign that top tier manufacturers are taking Linux more seriously, or at least seeing a profitable niche?" We commented on MandrakeSoft's status update yesterday.
This is also good news that Large companies see Distros other than Red Hat to be of excellent quality. It have many times seen ignorant IT managers telling me how the only way to go with Linux is RedHat. (which is good, but not the only one) :)
Maybe now i can propose the use of my favorite distro and have "managerial" evidence to back it.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
This news is about desktops
Previous HP linux computers were servers.
I think what it comes down to is not wanting to lose out sales to someone else. If their competetors are making at least 1 sale with something, most companies will want to try and steal away that sale... almost at any cost!
Of course, it looks like they're not going to put a huge effort behind it until there is some momentum... but then do expect them market the hell out of it.
--D
Looking to find out what retailers would be selling this, I did follow their product link.
It's not listed yet, but that's no surprise.
This is probably the ONLY way that people are going to buy this for their homes; a side by side comparison of an MS machine and a (GNU/)Linux machine.
The retail setting is absoluetely imperative. Buying a preloaded sysem online is well and good, but most people will stick to the devil they know, (MS).
Now, people will have the whole "touchy, feely," experience.
It's newsworthy because Mandrake only just recently climbed out of bankruptcy. The fact that a major computer manufacturer has decided to preload Mandrake on one of their business-line models as an alternative to Windows suggests that the company's future might be brighter than many expected.
Maybe it's news because Mandrake is seen as more of a desktop distro than RedHat (though it also forms a very capable server), and it shows that one of the biggest PC suppliers now thinks Linux is ready for the desktop.
It's also great news for Mandrake, and about time. Well done, Drakes.
This is a great move for promoting linux. Hopefully it'll lead to OS choice where it really matters: laptops. Nobody should have to pay the windows tax ever again! Even better, be able to buy laptop computers without an OS installed and let the consumer get the ultimate choice.
Seems like this little insignifcant OS is making inroads despite what Bill thinks. Once products like OpenOffice become more mature the game is over and real desktop penetration, coporate side at least, will happen.
Yes, it will, and eventually there is a real chance that linux will supplant Windows as the OS of choice for business...BUT... by the time that happens, MS will most likely have tied a great deal of digital rights restrictions technology into windows.
The upshot? One day, most 'new' media will only be playable on windows, and hence MS will control the consumer market.
It may be that this is exactly what they are planning for. They may have recognized that they're slowly losing corporate mindshare, and are now grasping at straws in that arena. Look at the suspicious influx of money that they gave to SCO, look at their new corporate licensing policies (subscription model) - are these desperation moves?
Of course, this is all just opinion and conjecture. Don't mind me.
This sounds to me like a case of paying for windows if you get it or not. The Classic Deal of the machine being priced the same if it ships with Windows, or ships with a bare drive (or linux in this case).
Ike
They won't until they figure out a way to not wipe out part of the memory whenever you switch systems in a dual-boot configuration. The iPaq actually has a pretty poor flash-management controller, from what I understand. (Not that CE cares. Hell, it doesn't even know when you install a different boot-loader.)
How do you expect them to make profits if they just keep giving their product away? Are you just going to label every distro that gets business-oriented a sell-out?
Either you want Linux to go bigtime and you deal with taking a back seat to the big boys, or you can have your little community of free support which will always be seen as too technical for the masses. Take your pick. You can't have both.
might be interesting to see what repercussions this has for Mandrake being recognized as a business Linux solution. Last I heard, Mandrake was just coming out of chapter 11. Was this the boost they need? Ximian says that as soon as your organization has 1000+ machines running some other flavor of Linux (besides SuSE and RedHat), they would consider an XD2 release for that distro. Well, HP's decision could move Ximian in that direction.
Then Microsoft puts its foot down and it's replaced with XP.
No major vendor seems keen to only sell Linux desktop boxes, so the Linux option won't happen until competition law smacks Microsoft on the hand.
It's only if and when Linux takes the lead over Windows on the desktop that you will see vendors confident to ditch Microsoft.
Competition is being offered a choice, Microsoft can cry all they like about recent governments coming up with Open Source legislation that only stipulates the use of Open Source, it's them who started all this silly anti-competitive rubbish and vendor lock-in in the first place.
Dell Flirted with Linux desktop machines and promptly withdrew them. Microsoft needs to stop bullying the OEMs.
Linux (OK, GNU/Linux) has been ready for the desktop for a long time. The question, though, is which distro? Which window manager? When running a business, this stuff matters far more than license fees, within reasonable limits. When you think about how technically inferior Windows 3.1 was compared to OS/2 and the Mac, let alone the *nix's back then, it would seem to be a wonder that it got anywhere at all. But, considering how cheap it was and the fact that it did its basic job well enough on a huge permutation of PC hardware, its success becomes easier to understand.
Technical superiority has never been the primary determinant of market success, at least in the commercial world.
Now we have you and others comparing Mandrake to RH and <name favorite disto> already, and I sense the same pattern of the OS battles in the early 90s. Sooner or later, /. will become a spectacular arena in which to watch the distro battle/FUD flingfest. How this will resolve itself, I have no idea. But it sure will be interesting to see which Linux distro prevails, and to what extent.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
Maybe it's time you actually try doing something real on Linux. I'd think you'd be suprised by how well it works.
Space for rent, inquire within
If you just want to play with Linux, Mandrake should be your only choice.
If you need to test or develop on Linux, Mandrake will have you up and running in less than an hour.
If you need a SERIOUS Linux box, Mandrake can be customized to suit aswell, but here it has few advantages over other distributions time wise. Although you get to work in reverse to say Debian.
I personally can not recommend it over say Suse or Debian for a life-or-death server, but for everyone else, it's just plain awesome. Give it time and Mandrake will give us a brilliant server installation as well.
Simply put, Mandrake ROX, and all the best to them.
This seems to be the most controversial argument when people talking about linux taking over the desktop.
I predict that linux will come become a mainstream OS in the same way that windiows did. People will use it at work first (corporations will implement it beacuse it is cheaper and has the advantages of being open source), then it will trickle on to people's desktops at home. To think that it will happen any other way seems a bit naive considering how much M$ can afford to spend on making sure home desktops stay windows. In fact I think that we may see both OS's co existing, could be worng tho.
Your kidding, right?
I installed Mandrake 9.0, and I think I had to reboot it once. Longest part was the actual copying of data. Once it started up and booted into KDE, like magic my sound, video, network, modem, etc. just worked. Just about every program I need already installed and ready to go. Just add Opera and Seti@Home. Time spent 60 minutes max.
Windows 2000: Install it. Takes like 45-60 minutes. And I am presented with a 640x480 screen with 16 colors, no sound, no network. Couple of hours later, countless reboots. Drivers in. Now Windows update. Many 100's of MB later, and dozens of reboots later, that's done. Now install programs. Several hours later that's done. Also throw in a couple of hours to install video codecs, and getting all the different ones to work with each other without conflict and crashes (UGH!) Time spent: 1 day atleast.
Linux is lightyears ahead of Windows in the install the OS department. I will admit though, installing programs in Windows is easy, so easy that they install all by themselves at times! (heh). Installing software in Linux is tedious and confusing at times.
What I find most amazing is Knoppix. Throw a CD in the drive, reboot the computer, and in 5 minutes I'm sitting in front of a fully functional Linux desktop with all my sound/video/network all working, OpenOffice, Mozilla, and countless applications already installed and ready to go - and it's all running off the CD and ramdisk! Utterly amazing.
OK, I haven't used mdk since 8.1, and I'm perfectly happy with Slackware's text-based installer...
But in installed XP on a friend's computer the other day, and it is not always a piece of cake. Given the "closed" nature of the installer, you are fucked if it just doesn't happen to like your hardware, and I'm talking brand-name stuff here, not the no-name crud. But an installer that formats a HDD for you, goes through a few more steps and then decides the drive is no good any more does not qualify as a good one. Especially if when it tries to load the appropriate drivers from CD-ROM it suddenly decides that the drive doesn't exist. I had thought MS would have fixed that bug in win98, but apparently not.
By comparison, my past experience with mdk's installer was that it was very simple and intuitive, and I rather doubt if it has got worse since then.
There's also the bonus that you don't have to keep putting in driver CDs for every single piece of hardware and re-boot every time; unless your hardware is outlandish, it's usually supported out of the box.
It's not just the Linux people. The Windows support people around here have similar troubles. They don't even like Linux. Building a Windows machine from scratch, installing all the drivers, loading the "company apps"; that can all take the better part of a day for these guys. I don't know much about Windows but they don't look like they're stuffing around or being lazy. It simply looks like a lot of hard work. Of course, they then use imaging software (Ghost?) to quickly make other machines using the same hardware.
However the real reason I replied was to warn you about your current method of reinstallation. It's a disaster waiting to happen. Especially as you're also loading the "company apps" by hand. You are better off automating the build process; even Win2k can do this. Lower risk of mistakes, less work involved, doesn't require expertise or knowledge for each build, self-documenting and repeatable process, etc. Imagine a programmer who retyped compilation commands instead of using makefiles. It's not a good idea.
Mmmm, let's see:
..."
$ date
Wed Jul 2 23:39:11 EDT 2003
And in the Press release says:
"..., available beginning July 7,
So far, nothing wrong. IF they are not available on the 7th, then we can all scream and yell in dispair.
But not just yet.
Peace.
For a clerk in a cube, that's still more machine than they need. Hardware has far outstripped common business needs, and I'm expecting that in two years, the machines I'm purchasing for the office will be better than that for less than $300.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Linux preloaded *anything* could make a dramatic difference. The ability to buy a PC designed for your favorite distro (meaning no compatibility issues, of course), and have it work right out of the box can have a big impact on the O/S and software business. How many people do you know who are quite capable of running Linux but gave up due to their inability to install succesfully. How many distros have you given up on out of frustration with the installation process. Once the install is included with the hardware, we may just see some real competition.
Linux is lightyears ahead of Windows in the install the OS department. I will admit though, installing programs in Windows is easy, so easy that they install all by themselves at times! (heh). Installing software in Linux is tedious and confusing at times
I've recently upgraded to Mandrake 9.1 and installing any of the ( hundreds ) of applications on the DVD is a piece of cake using the Mandrake URPMI system. Most of the applications any average user could possibly want are on the DVD so it generaly Linux installation hassles shouldn't effect most basic users.
I do think Linux needs more support from major applications, the likes of Autoroute and other stuff your Mum and Dad use the PC for but this is a gradual thing and HP selling Linux PC's is a definate step toward major vendors considering Linux support.