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Is Dell Just Testing the Market?
sarig_magik asks: "It seems that Dell is testing the Linux desktop market worldwide, and their choice of desktop is Linspire 4.51. I wonder how Microsoft will view Dell, now? Could this be a real attempt to gain a foothold before any of the other distributors do? We know the hardware vendor, but can anyone comment on the choice of OS?" Although Dell is offering a system with a preloaded Linux Desktop, they aren't doing it here in the US, but through their Italian partner, Questar. While the choice of Linspire as a desktop may leave a few of you underwhelmed, this does seem to be a step in the right direction. Is Dell testing the market? Of course they are. How well do you think they will do?
Yes, the new option is different. What I see is not so much "testing" but something being there and then disappearing, and then something different being there and disappearing. I'm not going to count on Dell supporting any particular distro, but I think that it is nice to be able to buy a machine without a Microsoft tax.
... wrong news.
Signatures are for stupids.
I thought Dell said they had nothing to do with the VAR that was loading Linspire and selling the PCs in Europe other than selling them machines?
Story Here
"I'm a karate man. Karate mans bleed on the inside."
The writeup may be a little misleading; Dell isn't the entity behind installing Linspire on these machines, it's Questar:
A PC dealer in Europe has begun selling Dell desktops equipped with Linux, but Dell emphasized that the systems were customized by the dealer and that this isn't the first time this has happened.
That article can be read here at Cnet.
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
> Redhat (known and trusted)
I would like to emphasize that the poster most likely meant the distro rather than the company behind it.
Suse == Novell.
I would stick with Debian.
Back to the story:
Linspire is a great choice. What Dell is testing is not whether its computers work, but whether Linspire on its computers work.
If I were Dell (which I am not) I would test Linspire and entertain the thought of aquiring it. That way, I could put a useable OS in the machine without paying an OS tax.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Dell is not using Linspire. That is completely the doing of their reseller, and Dell has distanced themselves from Linspire.
See the article at C|Net from last week on the matter
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
According to this, Questar is just a reseller, not a partner. From the article:
Questar is simply buying Optiplex 170L desktops from Dell as might any other business or individual customer. Is there any thing more to their "agreement" than that? No, Dell told The Register today: "Questar is a direct Dell customer and that is the extent of the relationship."
I thought Dell distanced themselves from this last week, claiming that third parties can load whatever OS they want onto their hardware.
This WOULD be news if Dell was offering Linux support along their Windows support, but a third party that buys a Dimension/Optiplex and sells it with Linux really isn't ground breaking news.
[ Monday is a terrible way to spend one seventh of your life. ]
You can buy the machines without os (or rather, the DrDOS OS) from their website.
r e. aspx/desktops_n?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd)
/., instructions on how to buy Dells.
Dell.com | Small business | Destop | N-series Desktop
(http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compa
I have bought some, and they work great.
PS: I never though I would be posting, on
"Piter, too, is dead."
whats so great/new about this. You can get OS-less PowerEdge 400SC starting around $250(with instant and send-in rebates).
No they don't.
Dell pays Microsoft less than half of that $99 being bandied about here by the ever hpefull Liniux crazies, fr each copy of Windows installed on a PC.
Plus of course over 90% of Windows installed on PC's in their world countries including China, India and most of Africa is of course pirated, so the so-called Linx cost advantage simply doesn't exist.
I switched from Windows to Linspire and it is a good change for me. It works like Windows, but it seems to have a lot more features than Windows did.
I lost a lot though. No more unannounced updates by M$. No more virii attacks. No more trojans that take over my computer and trash my workday.
I am a writer, so I used Office, plus I used Photoshop and ran a website, cut CDs for my music, etc. - all the standard stuff most people use.
Linspire had a matching free app for all that I do, and it came loaded with the distro, which was a painless install. I could even access all my old data files.
I would never go back again, and why should I have to? All my documents are compatible with M$ files and the clients I work with cannot tell the difference. I can. I have a lot more free time since I don't continually have to muck with my computer because of Windows!
Linspire is my first encounter with Linux. I hear it isn't even the best version, but I am completely happy with it.
Roger Born
writing.borngraphics.com
I don't get any of this. Dell's been offering Linux on its servers and Precision Workstations for about three years, partnered with RedHat. Some time ago in the US they created an "N series" line which shipped with no OS, with Linux as an option. Dell has employed developers to work on improving Linux's stability and compatibility. Dell has been very good about Linux in general, even having agents for its Open Manage software that run on Red Hat.
Admittedly they don't heavily advertise what is really a niche product, but they have http://www.dell.com/linux plus a page that is dedicated to these alternative OS desktops; Their support pages typically have several variation of Linux listed for downloading drivers, etc.
Seriously, how much Linux support do you want from them? Are you waiting for the Dell guy to announce "Dude, you're getting a Gentoo Dell!"
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
It seemed obvious that something was wrong with this story the first time it was discussed on /. because there were no links to Dell.
u estar/
The Register confirms that this move has little to do with Dell:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/07/dell_vs_q
- Brian.
Or is it just a bundle with a zero priced OS. Thanks to the BSA, shipping an OS with a PC is mandatory in some parts of the world.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
You downgraded the news from "great" to "ok"... I am going to one up you and mark it "utterly meaningless".
Why? Because the news is flat out wrong, Dell is not doing anything of the sort, someone who happens to buy computers from Dell is doing it.
Real Story On It
I gotta wonder if the original poster on this wanted it to be misleading, or just lacked the ability to google before pushing it over to the slashdot editors.
It should be noted that Questar is loading Linux on these Dell "white boxes". Dell has nothing to do with this decision. FWIW, Dell offers a "white box" service to mom&pop shops that don't want to build their own PCs. Once you become a distributor, you simply roll your own packages and sell the PC as your own brand. Questar is simply a white box distributor.
ANYONE can go out and do this. It doesn't mean that Dell has anything to do with selling Linux. This is secondary.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
From a Business point of view, the Giants (IBM, Sun, Dell) seem to be sharpening their teeth to get ready to provide Linux Desktop solutions for big corporations and Government departments worldwide. IBM and Sun have actually been doing it, and actually deploying solutions, and Novell just jumped in. Intel IS lagging behind IMHO. Not that I care :-)
No, but you can be sure that Dell charges their customers at least that much for it. Have you ever seen how much Dell wants to add some memory to a system? I was looking at a Dell _once_ until I saw them try to charge me more then double the cost for an extra 256MB of RAM then what I could get it for on the net.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Actually, the original story is completely correct. Dell is installing the OS on the machines that it ships to Questar. I personally worked on imaging process of imaging Linspire to the hard drives for Dell. Dell is installing the OS and plans to roll out these systems to more countries in coming months.
OEM's (and anyone with an OEM windows xp CD) can purchase a certificate of authenticity/ serial number without the CD media/manual for less than $49 online.
for example:
Win XP Home COA [nt-micro.com]
There are plenty of other companies selling them as, well, this was just the cheapest one listed on pricewatch.
This shows that Dell most likely pays no more than $49 per copy of XP home, since that is the price available to the general public, or at least those who own an OEM install disc. I would venture to guess that DELL has a special deal with M$, where they get an even lower price because of the volume of business they do with M$.
Break the mindless monotony!
$50 is the cost to you for upgrading from Windows XP Home (included in the base price of the system) to Windows XP Professional, not the price for the entire OS.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Linux is essentially architected the same way a modern mainframe O/S are architected. You have a reasonable user interface that is connected to a terrible one via pushrods.
That is the biggest pile of misunderstanding and innaccuracy I've heard this week.
Do you have some crazy notion that graphical applications on Linux all manipulate commandline equivalents behind the scenes? That's just not the case. A graphical application on Linux is pushing all the same buttons and manipulating all the same data behind the scenes as the windows version, just with different APIs. There's no fundamental difference between the way a database application, a spreadsheet, or a word processor works between the two systems, and there's certainly no "work getting done by cruft underneath".
Perhaps you were only speaking of configuration? Well guess what. For the most part you're still wrong. Interface and application configuration differs between the two only in encapsulation and storage methods. Arguably, both methods have advantages, but neither of them are really "cruft".
From a pure architecture perspective the Windows approach is the right one, there is much less to go wrong.
Once again, bullshit. In fact there's so much *more* that can go wrong, since the registry model allows for the possiblilty of corruption of all system configuration data through one rogue application, and the essential lack of separation between administrative permissions and the default user in most installations allows for endless and easy methods of destroying your system... either by accident or through the introduction of malicious code.
but if something does go wrong you have a lot more visibility into the problem and it is more likely that you can fix it - if you know what you are doing.
Now you're just being funny... That was sarcasm, right? You have visibility into how windows works behind the scenes? There's detailed logs? You can debug individual components independant of the whole system? You can look at the source to see what's going on, were you so inclined?
I'd go on, but I've fed the trolls enough today.
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