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Dell's Open Source Desktop Systems
An anonymous reader writes "An article at XYZComputing goes over Dell's open source line of desktop computers and workstations. The N line is something which Dell began to sell recently, but the situation is much more complex that it would seem. There is often little or no discount given if consumers opt to go with FreeDOS as their operating system. There is also a great link in the article showing how Dell is selling AMD processors in their Accessories section!" From the article: "A major hurdle preventing the growth of Linux with non-professional users has been installation the operating system and dealing with the resultant compatibility issues. An ideal solution to this would be a major manufacturer which is willing to sell computers with Linux preinstalled. This would not only make it easy for users to buy a computer and have Linux running after simply plugging it in, but it would theoretically allow the manufacturer to lower the cost of a computer because software licensing costs could be minimized."
Support is probably the primary issue why Dell cant realistically start flogging Linux boxes to the general populace. When your selling the cheapest hardware at the cheapest price with low profit margins you cant really afford to lose any money because you have to support every clueless newbie whose never used anything other than Windows and cant understand why his bloody activex banking sites will never load on his new pc.
Have you ever set up a brand new dell for someone? There's so much shitware installed, free trials of dvd players, etc, etc, that it's faster to format and reinstall straight away than to uninstall it all. Each of those bits of bundled wankware earns dell money, it more than offsets the XP bulk license cost.
What would be good is a way to buy a dell and immediately sell the license on to a reseller.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
I bought a PC recently. Part of the justification was that I would finally get round to setting up a Linux desktop and configure it just the way I want.
But all the distros I've tried so far have had hardware issues that I consider pretty fundamental to a desktop. RedHat - getting nvidia graphics installed to run Doom3. SuSE - intermittent sound and wifi issues. Ubuntu - screen resolution issues, sound issues, unremembered wifi config. (Knoppix is next, fingers crossed.)
I can solve all of these, by getting down and hacking the config files, but the fact that these mature and well-backed distros don't Just Work illustrates the fact that getting a Linux desktop distro to work is a non-trivial job, and I'm not surprised PC manufacturers aren't interested in doing it and supporting it.
I don't know what the answer is - some of these distros are backed by big companies. It's a shame IBM didn't do a distro when they had a hardware division, I think it'll takes someone who does software and hardware (like Apple) to really get it right, sell you a machine that just works.