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Dell to Ship Linux Desktops in Europe
Anglophile writes "Looks like Dell has launched a new line of desktop computers. The Dell Optiplexes will be sold in Europe, come with the Linspire operating system and include a one year free membership to their download warehouse. "
looks like this is a bit misleading - in fact, Dell is shipping them, but they are actually being sold by an Italian company called Questar. So while they are technically Dell machines and even shipped by Dell, this is not a big move by Dell onto the European linux market, it's a smaller company taking the initiative in partnership with Dell...
Didn't Dell ALREADY have Linux offerings here in the U.S. a few years agon, but then got throttled by MS?
I confirm that, I worked at a company that used Dell Optiplex computers and they _were_ shipped with RH at the time. However, they discontinued that because of the "lack of demand" (well, that's what they told us anyway)
I sense much beer in you. Beer leads to intoxication, intoxication leads to hangover. Hangover leads to sobering.
Linspire, previously known as LindowsOS (also Lin---s, pronounced as Lindash), is a Linux distribution based on Debian. It targets the consumer user - its distributors market it more intensively than all other Unix-based or Unix-like distributions except Mac OS X. As Lindows, it was the first Linux distribution to replace Windows in home consumer desktop systems at a substantially lower price than Microsoft Windows.
Michael Robertson, the founder and former CEO of MP3.com functions as the CEO of Lindows, Inc. It is still called "Lindows, Inc" even though the product is now Linspire.
Microsoft Corporation sued Lindows, Inc for its use of the term "Windows", which Microsoft claimed constituted a trademark infringement. In February 2004, a judge rejected two of Microsoft's central claims. Though Microsoft lost the core of its case, and says it will appeal the decision, for uncertain reasons it also called the decision "a victory". (See Microsoft vs Lindows for more information.) Lindows was renamed Linspire to avoid further legal action by Microsoft. Michael Robertson called the legal action "Sextuple Jeopardy", which is like "Double Jeopardy" but sextupled.
Lindows, Inc had the initial goal of developing a Linux-based operating system capable of running major Windows applications as well. It based its Windows compatibility on the development of WINE by the Linspire team. Lindows.com later abandoned its initial approach in favor of making Linux applications easy to download, install and use. They achieved this using an application called Click-N-Run, a program based on Debian's Advanced Packaging Tool, providing an easy-to-use interface and a slightly modified package system for an annual fee (apt-get costs no money, but has less user-friendliness). Click-N-Run has over 1,000 pieces of software for download.
Lindows, Inc sponsors many open-source projects and events, including the Gaim instant messaging client, the KDE-Apps.org (http://www.kde-apps.org/) and KDE-Look.org (http://www.kde-look.org/) websites, and the Nvu project, which has started to develop an open-source WYSIWYG website editor (based on the Mozilla composer code) to rival FrontPage. In the past, Linspire.com has contributed over $500,000 to the WINE project.
Editions
Several varieties of Linspire, known as editions, target different markets. Three main editions exist: Standard, Developer and Laptop.
External links
The distro wasn't banned, the courts just made the company change the name.
That retaliation is part of why MS was convicted of abusing their monopoly. Microsoft is prohibited from retaliatory OEM licensing fees in the settlement now.
"All Dell computers sold by Questar will be equipped with word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software and file compatibility with Microsoft Office."
Linspire comes with Open Office 1.1.
While there is a great deal of compatability between Open Office and MS Office, there are still issues
Sounds a little misleading to me.
Linspire is Debian. Debian based distributions are even more similiar than rpm based ones. Once installed, you can hardly tell Debian distros apart. In fact many people call these Debian based distros alternative installers
Things may have changed, but in the past, in the US at least, Dell's customers called Dell support for any issue. The Dell Tech determined if the call was a Linux issue or a Hardware issue. Then, if it was a hardware issue, the customer was handled by the Dell tech. If the issue was a Linux issue, the customer was forwarded to Red Hat's tech support.
That was a few years ago, and since then, Red Hat has had some big changes in their support model, and Dell has sent all its tech support to India, and brought parts of it back again, so YMMV.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
I thought that maybe the bad comments on Lindows were made by Linux zealots. I read a good article on it on osnews that gave a discount number that made you able to download it for free for 2 days.
:
I decided to try it... It is as bad as you heard.
First, you log as root by default. No attempt to tell you that you should create users. You must know it, find it in the menus and compared to the rest of the distribution the dialog box that let you finally add users looks cryptic (from a total newbie point of view).
Second and more important : this distribution is all about lock-in. They try to give you the impression that it is a different operating system than Windows and Linux. They rename everything to "make it easier for beginner". Other newbie-friendly distributions will write something as "Mozilla (Web Browser)" while Lindows will write "Web Browser". You can hardly switch for another application, you don't know what you are using to begin with.
The commands are renamed.
If you take a Knoppix CD and try to make a Lindows user use it, he will be confused.
apt-get doesn't work if you don't pay. You don't just pay for their Click-N-Run gui, you must pay to use apt-get itself.
And finally on a more philosophical point of view
They don't respect the GPL (they put a disclaimer that basically say : everything in there is copyrighted by us and us alone, don't steal !).
They also don't mention like Mandrake and Fedora (don't know for SuSE) that what you are using is the result of a communauty effort).
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