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Dell Opens Up About Desktop Linux

Posted by ryuzaki0 on

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."

3 of 517 comments (clear)

  1. The guy makes sense by inode_buddha · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The guy makes sense, IMHO. After all, how many times have you seen slashdotters whining about various installers and packages, etc? As far as standardizing the core system, that's what the LSB is for, and POSIX to some extent.

    --
    C|N>K
  2. Re:Funny by srussell · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.
    Agreed, and good point. Dell only has to make sure that everything on their (supported) laptop works under some version of Linux, and make things like the kernel config available on a support site. The people who care about which distribution they use will be able to tweak their own distribution for the laptop, and the people who don't care won't complain about Dell's choice of distribution.

    Besides; it'll be a cold day in hell when the Linux community converges on a single distribution. Distributions like Gentoo will always be popular with people like me who are sick of the dependency hell of Redhat, the crippled nature of Debian (which doesn't ship with mplayer or mp3 support, fer christsake), or whatever. And there are a ton of people who think compiling everything from scratch is obsessive and takes too long.

    In GoboLinux, binary and source packages are both first-class citizens, which is nice, but talk about diverging from the norm -- geez. *I* like Gobo, but there's about as much chance of it becoming The Linux Distribution as... well, as G.W. Bush has of being accepted by MENSA.

    I'm not surprised that Dell doesn't grok the Linux community; if he did, he'd understand the parent poster's point, but you have to understand the fact that the Linux community is largely comprised of DIYers.

    --- SER

  3. Re:Funny by The+Breeze · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Oh, give me a break.

    The PARENT is right.

    The Linux Community needs to listen to Dell, not the other way around.

    Are we "clients" of Dell? Yeah, sort of, but let's face it, if Linux disappeared overnight it would not make a bit of difference to Dell's bottom line. There is simply no profit motive for them to listen to a bunch of whiny, "gimmie gimmie gimme Micro$oft SUXORS!" idiots who can't even agree on a common desktop environment.

    On the other hand, if the Linux community listens to Dell - who, personally, is obvious sympathetic to Linux - and agrees on certain standards that would make it possible for Dell to ship a "generic" Linux distro and basic RPM & .DEB drivers that could theoretically work with any distro - well, then that would be a TRUE win for Linux.

    I've used Dell support for Linux Servers. They want RedHat Enterprise, and I can understand it, because from a support perspective, it is predictable. I called 'em up and said, "Hey, I'm running CentOS, a RHEL clonse, just treat me like I'm running RedHat, ok?" and the techs say "sure!" and eagerly get to helping me with my problems. The Dell Techs are smart enought (well, the business ones based in the US, the Indians have to stick to their scripts) to support a "baseline" linux. However, it would be an UNPROFITABLE support nightmare to support every - or even the 5 biggest - distros out there.

    Go ahead. Whine about how "Dell doesn't listen to the Linux community". You'll score points with the Linux zealots who find it easier to badmouth the 90% of the world that doesn't use Linux. But, if you want to make true Linux desktop adaption a reality - if you want to see Linux develop a true installed base that would prevent Microsoft from doing something wacky like develop proprietary extensions that "everyone must have" or enough of an installed base so that some big, coroporate lobbyists will DEFEND Linux when our braindead politicians are bought off by other big corporate lobbyists try to ban Linux form some ridiculous reason - and don't laugh, it's on the horizon, there are powerful interests - both corporate and governmental (RIAA, anyone) that think the idea of people being able to actually work their own computer hardware & software is a Bad Thing(tm) - well, if you want to see Linux groow, then listen to what people like Michael Dell say, and figure out wheat we can do to make their lives easier.

    Our numbers are not enough for Dell to listen. Be nice, and they will work with us on hardware, and slowly, we will gain more influence. Be rude and insulting, and they'll tune us out.