HP to Globally Launch Linux-Based PCs

Rade T. writes "Reuters UK reports that HP, the No. 1 personal computer and computer printer maker, said on Wednesday that its putting its weight behind personal computers that run the Linux operating system. I guess this is the first serious step towards solving the problems that Linux faces on the Desktop/Laptop."

Comments

Buy

[DrugCheese]

I'll probably try to buy a manufactored PC for the first time in 10 years simply to support the principle of having a choice.

It's about time...

[IO ERROR]

...that a major computer manufacturer started offering desktop PCs with Linux pre-installed. Even though I'm not terribly impressed with HP's hardware, this definitely makes me more likely to support HP in the future - but only so long as they don't back down when Microsoft and SCO come calling and tell them to quit it.

Re:Why is this going to be different than Dell

[GooberToo]

Because Dell's effort was completely half-assed, at best. Dell made as much effort to sale Linux as you wanna kiss your friend's date's ugly girlfriend. Simple fact is, if someone actually makes an attempt, they make actually be able to do something with it.

Dell's attempt was worthless and self defeating.

This is not as good as you might think

[Mentorix]

My experience with the Linux offerings from HP is that they don't really mean Linux, but just RedHat or SUSE. I spoke with one of their european account managers a few weeks ago concerning their blade server solutions and basicly, if I wasn't going to run RH or SUSE on their hardware they couldn't offer support or anything. Since both redhat and suse don't meet our needs (not without rebuilding the kernels that came with them - thus voiding support responsibility) there's no choice at all.

It's the vendor lockin story all over *again*. I have no doubt that they will try to approach the desktop market in the same way. At least until HP proves me wrong and announces support for the linux *kernel* and promises at least a best effort policy on the different distros.

Now this is just my experience with HP, a talk with IBM went much smoother and their bladeservers are already on their way, just have to install debian on them and I'm all set. (yay! got to mention debian afterall!)

No trolls please

[Dalcius]

Just to cut off some of the trolls at the pass:

Linux is not ready for "12 year old John gets a Linux CD and installs and is ready to go", nor is the support out there for Mom and Pop to click "DOWNLOAD ME" on a website and be up and going.

That said, for the corporate environment, Linux is perfect. It can be pre-configured and mirrored in a sysadmin's sleep, locked down to kill almost all support problems, and managed remotely with little effort. The applications, for the vast part, work almost exactly the same as their Windows counterparts and as such training costs are minimal.

Notice a pattern? The limitation of Linux is ease of administration and software/hardware support. Any place where Joe User is wanting to download and install a program from his favorite news website or Jane User wants to reinstall the OS, Linux is not 'ready' for casual use. But in a controlled environment, like a company where hardware and software falls under the umbrella of IT, these issues don't pose a problem.

As long as a company can find the applications they need to do their work (or start/join an OSS project and complete their own), Linux is pie on the desktop and has many benefits most companies would die for, once realized. Once you've got a Linux friendly IT department and have found the right apps, limitations are few and far between.

Once corporations adopt Linux, support problems will diminish, and once workers take it home, support problems will all but disappear. The snowball will feed itself.

Lack of lock-in, lack of security issues, lack of luser-stupidity-blew-everything-up scenarios and lack of licensing and upgrade costs are huge in the terms of $$$.

Cheers