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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."
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.
http://www.leadmagnet.50megs.com
Funny, thats what most haven't-quite-switched-yet Linux users want too...
No they don't - they want hardware that works out of the box on the distro they chose.
I'd be happy if Dell supported one distro (or hell, even netBSD). It would mean that other distro's could look at the drivers used & have an easy time supporting Dell.
Its not rocket science Michael, don't try to make it harder then it really is. Support one distro (my suggestion is Debian, as you get a nice slow moving target, or Ubuntu, for predictable release cycles) but it doesn't really matter which one you support
My pics.
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.
If Dell starts shipping every box with some Linux distro, that distro will immediately become the "common core platform".
Paid Q&A/Research
The key to Linux is diversity and who cares if we alienate Mr AOL etc. Everyone everywhere seems to be trying to tell the community what to do atm yet we are still here plodding on in our own directions some totally contrary to others and yet still making great things happen our own ways.
Thats what made Linux and OSS what it is in the first place by not conforming to someone in a suit who probably types with one finger and assumes to know what is best for us.
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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