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Dell Opens Up About Desktop Linux
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Dell explains his company's Linux desktop strategy in an interview at DesktopLinux.com. He says that it's not practical for Dell (the company) to support numerous distributions due to their incompatibilities, but that he doesn't want alienate large segements of the Linux community by selecting a favorite Linux distro to standardize on (Ubuntu appears to be his favorite, at the moment, by the way.) What he'd really like to see, is for the popular Linux distros to converge on a common core platform, according to the article."
Funny, thats what most haven't-quite-switched-yet Linux users want too...
Han shot first.
I don't need Dell to support linux in the traditional sense. And I don't even need them to sell me a PC that doesn't have windows.
All I want from Dell is a commmittment to ship hardware for which open source drivers are available -- for them to say, for example, we need open source audio drivers or we won't ue your soundcard/integrated chipset, or your graphics chipset, or whatever. If Dell leaned on vendors, they'd give open source developers the info they need to support their products.
The not having to pay for windows thing is tricky, and I know it bugs a lot of people. I understand why. But for me the bottom line is that I just want stuff to work, and a Dell with a windows license is still a good machine at a good price, even if you don't use the license.
It would be cool if Dell could make sure that dual boot people could reinstall windows in a differently sized partition, though -- if they could make sure that you get the installation CDs or whatever else you need to do that. I haven't really been following things, but I hear that some people get machines with ghost backups of windows instead of a real install CD. That sort of thing is a problem from a practical point of view for a linux guy who wants the ability to dual boot.
Thats good for you. But for the other 98% of the population want a PC that is already up and running with all the apps, drivers, and configuration set. So it's the much larger market that Dell will chase to sell too. The real money is in companies that buy 20,000 identical systems with a huge service contract. Not us computer geeks that tend to build our own anyways.
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Ultimately, all mainstream Linux distributions could derive from the same basic base (with the exception of those which try to fit Linux in tight places, for example). There is no reason that RedHat, SuSE, Debian, et al have to have so many differences beneath user-space software. (Consider the wildly different boot-time initialization scripts in each of those distributions. Ironically, there is a modular system in place.) Consolidate the similarities and expand by extensions which do not eliminate cross “distro” compatibility. There are already efforts to this effect. This is no magic bullet for any particular problem, but it will help eliminate the throat-cutting within the community and encourage computer manufacturers like Dell to offer Linux solutions.
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Mmm... maybe because there is no business case for this? They would not recover their investement?
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
Err, duh. RTFA instead of just the opening. Where Dell does offer a desktop computer with Linux is in its Dell Precision nSeries low-end workstation line. These come with RHEL WS 4 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux workstation 4) preinstalled.
...and...
However, he also said, "We've had number of communications with Ubuntu. Most of those have been about giving Ubuntu better driver support, but we're open to all those things."
So apologies for the KJR (knee jerk reaction), but still: the question is hardware driver support.
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I don't see what is incompatible between the various Linux disros at the hardware level.
As long as all the hardware in a computer has linux drivers (preferably open source, but
I'll live with things like Nvidia's drivers), then any version of linux with a suitably
recent kernel (i.e any current distro) will work with the hardware.
Any incompatibility between the distros is a result of different file structure etc.,
this isn't a Linux (i.e. kernel) issue.
When I buy a budget computer from Dell I feel that I am gambing on the hardware being
operable under Linux (and I've lucked out so far).
just provide the drivers... the community will deal with the rest...
Which drivers? I've seen WiFi drivers work on one distro and not another. I've seen them work in one version of say SuSE only to fail to work on upgraded versions. The kernel has a lot to do with what works. I'm all for Dell supporting the hardware but they would have to provide several versions of the same driver to make this happen. Like or not, he has a point. He might be using it as an excuse, which is another matter, but he makes a valid point. You can't bitch about Linux not being on the desktop when there are such varying varieties. I'm a huge Linux fan and have used it since about '99 or so. Yet, the Gnome/KDE wars along with the "this distro does X and this does Y" is both a great feature and a sticking point.
Common core platform for Linux will never happen. Developers and the core user community are too afraid of standardization - just see what's holding Linux desktop GUI back: there is no standard GUI (at least when it comes to widgets, menus, style and configuration) in the same way as on Mac. Why is there no standardized desktop? Because developers and the core user community abhor any idea of such a lockdown that limits their ability to tweak the system. Imagine a situation like this: "That's a fine application there, Mr. Developer, but its user interface doesn't conform to the distribution regulations and hence we cannot include it in the distro". It's exactly the same thing with distros.
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I think Michael Dell's, as well as other wannabe-Linux users desires to see Linux converge into one single platform are not going to happen anytime soon. In fact, I don't think it even matters at all too.
Linux and most open-source software are by nature a federated, bottom-up form of software development where multiple versions abound. This is because there is no one single entity(person or corporation) who knows which features are best for users, *and* the best way for those to be implemented. Hence forks abound which allows users, aka the free market, to decide which versions/software suit their own requirement. Compare this to proprietary software where the corporation decides which features you want, when you want them and in what form you want them.
Waiting for Linux to converge into a single platform with a market share >80% would imply that other versions have failed to see what users desire, and one company(or group of individuals) has been able to capitalize on that and advance its market share.
Now Ubuntu(I use that myself) has to an extent been reading what lay users desire from a distro and implementing many of their needs well. But as Ubuntu becomes more popular are other distros going to sit still watching it reap all the laurels? I don't think so. They will evolve too. If you think that isn't possible then ask yourself how the hell Ubuntu managed to gain so much in the last couple of years? Do you think such innovation will stop after Ubuntu?
Finally, imho lay-users are not going to want to switch to Linux in the near-term. Because switching an OS for them represents a huge task which they will undertake only if:
1. They are thouroughly dissatisfied with Windows, or
2. They are thouroughly enamoured by the benefits that Linux offers
Unlike what we may all think, on the whole most people are not thouroughly dissatisfied with Windows. Sure they may have to deal with patchy security and those occasional crashes but hey, who says Linux doesn't have issues? I've had Ubuntu lock up on me more than a few times. I've spent a better part of the first month trying to get streaming videos to play on Firefox. Did I quit? No...so why would a Windows user?
To sum up, expecting Linux to converge into a super-distro isn't going to happen. Simply because open-source by nature is designed against the formation of monopolies. Since code upto a certain point is freely available to all, a new fork can be established by a brighter, more innovative, more responsive group in much lesser time than in the prop. s/w market. So an 80%+ distro would mean that nobody else read the market and changed course.
A few months down the road I've managed to get everything (including SPDIF out, TV-out, WLAN, suspend to ram) working.
And that's the core of the problem. 99% of users don't care enough to spend a "few months" just to get digital sound and wireless access. I just bought a mac Mini, and I had my wireless and digital sound working right out of the box (it might not be a fair comparison driver-wise but it at least shows that Unix can be an excellent desktop OS). It's those 99% of users you are targeting when you go after the desktop market. When I got FC1, (I know it's been a while), it took me 8 hours to get my wireless card working and I learned 20 different things in the process. I didn't mind it, but most users shouldn't have to care about such things. And just based on that, I don't think i'd be able to recommend Linux to anyone non-geeky for a while. (I've used Ubuntu as recently as last year and was pretty impressed, but still is nowhere near where it has to be.)
I've had one harddrive completely die (replaced next day), but now I have bad sectors and htey won't help me because I'm running an unsupported OS.
And that is perfectly acceptable. Why should they have to waste their time diagnosing something unless they are absolutely 100% sure that some driver in some Linux distro that they don't know about could've caused your hard drive to overwork itself and get corrupted... (it's a possibility.) It would be unfair to other users who are running "supported" software. That's why you're a Linux geek, you are probably fine with spending 20 hours diagnosing hard drive sectors.
I have never understood this attitude. Out of the hundreds of distros out there, most of them can be traced back to four bloodlines. Debian, Red Hat, Gentoo, and Slackware. The first two of those making up at least 80% of distributions out there. Most distributions are specialized for a specific task. i.e. embedded, scientific, education, data recovery, gaming, firewall, etc. etc. They are _really_ good at one task. However, for most people, they can ignore 99% of them because what they want is a general purpose distro. For an average consumer, that choice can be narrowed down to 3 or 4 of the best. Suse, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mandriva. It's not unreasonable to say to the consumer "here are your choices". All four are very high quality distributions and are really only going to differ in eye candy (all of which have very good eye candy anyway). Your choice for Linux as an average consumer isn't as scary as people make it out to be.
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Like it or not, the reason Microsoft has a foothold on the desktop market is because of its relative ease of use. A worker or home user can by taught the basics of checking their e-mail, writing documents, etc. in Windows and Office via memorization. They learned Office 95 back in the day, that training investment carries over to the latest version with just a few add-ons. If you really want to see how seriously important backward-compatible trainng is, turn on the "blue screen, white text" feature in Word as well as the WordPerfect compatible function key layouts. Or the "slash" menu in Excel for hardcore Lotus 1-2-3 users. Microsoft knows they have the lock because of this. Mac OS X, for example, is much easier to control centrally than Windows is, but no one switches to it because their staff is used to Windows. Even if Office si a work-alike, relearning keyboard shortcuts and other tricks is time-consuming.
Companies do not want to invest money retraining their staff. It was hard enough getting them to learn MS Office or WordPerfect the first time. There are a few things that need to happen before Linux makes a big push for the corporate desktop:
-- Make it "just work." Windows' big strength is that I can go to CompUSA, buy any old crappy piece of hardware, plug it in, and have it work without having to load kernel modules, edit config files, etc.
-- Standardize it. Pick an office suite. Pick a window manager. Pick _a few_ of the hundreds of obscure GNU applications and bundle them as a standard tool set. Wrap in some administration and deployment tools that are brain-dead simple to use. No normal user wants three office suites, four window managers, etc.
-- Completely hide the guts from the end user unless they want to see it. Mac OS does a great job of this. I have the command line and access to the config files if I want it, but the GUI is more than adequate to tweak most items.
Dell's other big market is home users. The same rules apply, just more so. Home users do not have the patience to learn Linux internals. My advice would be to start with an Ubuntu-like base, and go to work making the OS just work for normal users.
If Dell starts shipping every box with some Linux distro, that distro will immediately become the "common core platform".
Paid Q&A/Research
RPM is non interactive which means an RPM can't ask any question about how to resolve an issue APT is interactive
APT is a program which was originally designed to handle the Debian packaging format.
RPM is a packaging format.
There is APT-RPM out there, which lets you use APT to handle RPM files.
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