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Why Won't Dell Promote Its Linux Desktops?
Brian McCoy writes "In this article, Steven Vaughn-Nichols proclaims "Last Thursday, when I wrote about Dell's new Linux desktop, was one of the most frustrating days of my professional life. My eWEEK colleague John Spooner and I tried our best to get Dell to confess that they really had released an honest-to-God Linux desktop.""
Is there a Majority Shareholder keeping Linux support at the lip service level?
Or, do Dell's executives own Massive Stacks of certain stock?
Maybe Somebody would be Mighty Sore at Mr. Dell if he Mustered Sufficient courage to Make Significant choice available to people.
Ah, Monopolistic Speculation: gotta love it.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
It's very simple. Support will be an absolute nightmare. The few hundred bucks per machine that they're charging over Windows doesn't come close to paying the bill of the support that the "average" computer users would need if they actually bought these things. They want to make sure that people who buy them REALLY want them and know how to use them, already.
I don't respond to AC's.
Just for fun and to see if it existed, I tried http://www.dell.com/linux/ and it brought up a page full of information about Dell Linux products and information.
But it is interesting to note that on the http://www.dell.com/ page, there is nothing about Linux.
Maybe Dell could add a link to Linux on their root page? Just a thought.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Everyone knows you can't try to make logical conjectures from anything Dell does.
Why doesn't someone tell me why Dell screws my company out of hundreds of thousands of dollars each year selling them overpriced server equipment? Or why the Dell reps attempt to bribe our IT department with cash and free laptops if they'll continue to purchase only Dell equipment.
Or howabout why our Dell contract reads that installing any non-dell equipment on our network violates our warranties? Or how we can't put non-dell ram into our desktop machines, even when Dell has no ram available to sell us.
Dell can go fuck itself. It makes all its money by ripping off companies, bribing those that do know better and lying to those that don't. Not to mention the shit hardware they deliver...
Go ahead and order 10 identical desktops from Dell. You'll get 10 boxes that look identical on the outside, but you'll be pleasantly surprised to find they've got 10 different motherboards and ram configurations in them. This is AWESOME for imaging disks! fuck dell.
To make it more personal I'll mention that my company is one of the largest fast food chains in America, so depending on how you look at it, Dell is directly responsible for high priced fast food. Revolt!
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
They are a company. They can do the hell they want with their products.
Damned straight.
And we are customers, and we have demands. We have the right to demand what we want, just as they have the right to refuse us. That doesn't mean we can't write articles detailing how coy Dell is being with their Linux desktops. We can write whatever the hell we like, especially if it's the truth.
They are a company. One would hope they listen to their customers, try to keep their customers satisfied. I would further hope that people with money to spend would demand the things they want, as loudly and publicly as possible.
His right to do what he wants with his company supercedes your right to see the word "linux" on the front page of dell.com.
That doesn't mean we don't have a right to demand it.
You seem to advocate quiet, sheep-like customers. I advocate just the opposite: demanding, loud, annoying customers. Demand Linux on the first page! Demand we don't pay a Microsoft tax! Demand we get what we want to get!
Let Mike Dell do whatever he wants with those demands. That's his company's right. But don't try to silence the customer. It's not called "supply and demand" for nothing.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
This is all way too reminiscent of the whole Massachusetts-forcing-Walmart-to-carry-Plan-B, most slashdotters tend to oppose the government mindset and yet when it comes to linux they fall right into that mindset.
Where in the post or the thread did someone ask for a government bill demanding Linux marketing from Dell?