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Dell's New Linux Blog
comforteagle writes "I've just written up an interesting find: Linux engineers at Dell have started their own Linux site and weblog about Linux at Dell. From the announcement: "Welcome to the Dell Linux Community Web. This site is dedicated to providing any information that may be useful regarding your usage of Linux on your Dell equipment. While Dell primarily works with and officially supports Red Hat Linux, many of our customers choose to run other distributions." And perhaps more importantly it appears that the new site and weblog is run and maintained by the engineers themselves. It certainly has that 'made with vi' look." And kudyadi points to this PC Magazine interview with Michael Dell, in which Dell talks "about Dell's expanding product line, the company's late entrance into the Media Center space, and where the PC giant and the industry go from here." He touches on Linux just a bit, too.
Linux people typically prefer blog-type sites than flash-enabled marketroid zero-content stuff that pointy-eared bosses prefer.
:-(
Given that it uses a comments section, it'll probably turn into a useful technical resource as well... Could do with a decent search though
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Why not? It's not as if they like MS in particular... because of MS, they have to charge their customers money for Windows, Office, Encarta, etc., when selling with a free system like GNU/Linux+GNOME||KDE would lower the price point and attact more sales. Unfortunately, this is counterbalanced by a stigma (not true, but there nonetheless) that "my apps don't run under Linux," as well as the percieved usability issues. Thus, Dell needs MS and their monopoly to survive in the consumer market. If Linux became a powerful force in the home, as well as for servers, then Dell would most likely love to sell Linux pre-loaded systems.
#define DRM chmod 000
I only saw the first page, but thats one of the nicest web pages i've seen done by engineers...
Plus who says you cant created good webpages with nothing except a text editor of your choice?
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
The blog should last about as long as it takes Michael Dell to take his tongue out of Bill Gate's bunghole.
From the interview:
In other news, I love Texas businessmen. :) Check this out:
Not that I love Dell, or Michael Dell specifically, just that I really like the way Texas businessmen talk about their competition from time to time. There isn't any of this "we're gonna rule the world" crap. Usually just "as much as I can get, and I can get a lot". ;) (Only New Mexicans want to rule the world, and then they move to Seattle and find the drones to do it with :( )
Like what I said? You might like my music
EDD Disk Signature patch accepted into kernel 2.6.2-rc1-mm1
Dell engineers have submitted a kernel patch which allows Linux to determine which disk the BIOS believes is the system boot disk. Without this patch, Linux must guess which disk BIOS believes is the boot disk, which is pretty easy in a simple system configuration, but impossible in a system with multiple disks attached to multiple controllers.
Yep. It's great to see people from companies like Intel,IBM, SGI, HP, Dell all contributing.
I would imagine that these guys *really* want linux to succeed so they can stopping sucking up to redmond.
[/zealotry]
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Why would a consumer have to go through a kernel recompile? what a ridiculous world view -- linux support for consumers can't happen because of the handholding needed for a kernel recompile. If I buy a supported laptop/PC, with a dell supported OS, there is no need at all for me as a consumer to even know that i could recompile the kernel, let alone do it. Your definition of an enterprise effort is likewise clueless, as is your absolutely nonsensical notion of what dell can and cannot do with Linux. If you would have bothered to visit the site, you would note that dell does indeed ship desktop machines with linux preinstalled. Kernel recompile not required.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Funny you should mention the fact that the notion is untrue - I used a Linux operating system once. The following software I had already invested in didn't work with it:
Microsoft Office Student Edition
Dreamweaver
Fireworks
Photoshop
Champi onship Manager worked most of the time after a lot of tweaking, and even then I wouldn't have classed it as reliable.
I think if you actually look at real world figures and software, you'll see that the opnion of "my apps don't run under Linux" is actually quite true.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
These pages are a much better advertisement for Dell than the complicated nightmares some pages are!
I can well believe that these have been done by the engineers there and have had little or no input from sales staff, graphic designers, clueless PHBs and other people whose job description boils down to "wears a suit".
My place of employment (a hospital) used a lot of Dell kit and I hope that the rest of the site learns a lot from this bit.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
As someone who has been working with Dell to evaluate Dell notebooks regarding a possible 4000+ unit purchase, I can tell you that Dell has no official support for Linux, Redhat or otherwise on anything other than Servers.
Our RFQ specified that Linux support on the laptops they provided was required, and yet they provided a model with the Intel 855GM video chip, which is not released as a driver in recent distros such as Suse 9 and Xandros 2. They are following up with a shipment of an alternate model with a Radeon chipset and this should have no problem working. But if Dell were any different than the other guys with regards to Linux support, we would be seeing recognition of the details in our RFQ saying that hardware support under Linux is required. However on quizzing them on which Linux distro they used to verify it worked with Linux, they would not say anything. Dell=HP=Compaq=Gateway, etc., when it comes to their awareness of Linux and hardware support.
All of the blah blah blah you read about their support for Linux is only on the server line.
Someone at one of these companies has to get off their ass, call up their hardware vendors and DEMAND that all components provided come with Windows AND Linux driver support. If it doesn't, REJECT the component and switch to another hardware vendor. That is the only way the hardware vendors are going to get the message. It isn't a hard concept. It isn't impossible, it just takes a shift in priorities for the hardware vendor which they will be very happy to do once their bottom line is threatened.
Personally, I let Intel directly know that they could be out of sales of 4000+ of their Centrino chipset if they don't release supported drivers under Linux for our timeline.
Six years ago, if you put your head to the ground, you could hear a rumble.
The largest seller of corporate desktops openly embracing and encouraging Linux and free software is about as subtle as a passing freight train. So much for the careful dance Dell was supposed to do to avoid the wrath of Microsoft. Do you think for one instant that Dell wants Microsoft's DRM future to happen and leave them even more in Microsoft's grip? No one does and they are all breaking free. Everyone will follow Dells lead and it's going to go everywhere, the desktop, portables the works.
This leaves Microsoft with very little. With the acceptance of an alternate platform, Microsoft's hardware and software incompatibility extortion is over. As that alternate platform is technically superior, there is little reason to shell out big bucks for legacy software. Why would any company trust it's record keeping to Microsoft formats when free alternatives have widespread comercial support? There is competition in the future and everyone knows it. Standardizing into the upgrade cycle will soon be a thing of the past. Microsoft will compete by improving their code and EULAs or die. Let's see how long it takes them to figure out that their current business model is dead.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.