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Dell to Offer More Linux PCs
head_dunce writes "According to this article, Mark Shuttleworth from the Ubuntu camp says Dell is seeing a demand for the Linux-based PC and, "There are additional offerings in the pipeline." I'm starting to see flashbacks of the days when Microsoft partnered up with IBM to gain control of the desktop market. Will other Linux flavors find their way to the likes of Lenovo or HP, etc, or will Ubuntu claim the desktop market working with other PC manufacturers?"
Much as I love Ubuntu, I've not heard of any small or even medium sized OEM looking to market to the everyday PC consumer "switching to Ubuntu as their OS of choice".
This is awesome. I haven't felt so happy about the computer world since I was trying to get my commodore64 to flash the boarder colors as quickly as possible. We have Dell selling Linux, (and apparently it's selling well), we have Macintosh sales up 33% from the same quarter last year (and that's even WITH people waiting for Leopard to come out), and Vista adoption is slow. Suddenly it looks as though finally the innovation stranglehold that Microsoft has held over us for many years is coming to an end. I'm not saying Microsoft will go away, but cross-platform compatibility will become the rule, not the exception. It will be easy to choose whichever platform you like, without worrying about not being able to run half your applications. Freedom will be a realistic choice.
I suppose it was really inevitable in the long run, but I am happy to see the walls finally cracking.
Qxe4
Major vendor preinstalls Linux.. people are buying it.. all you have to contribute is negative doom-saying.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I've been mucking with Linux before 1.0. Love the way it evolved, but DROP THE FUCKING RHETORICAL QUESTION. You think everyone's a moron like you?
If Dell produced a Linux Ubuntu PC configured to run with multiple monitors from the get-go, I'd buy it just to save myself the trouble.
I'm so fed up of messing up xorg.conf and having to reconfigure it every time I reboot just to get video...
Dell's got to be hating this.
That massive discount Microsoft gives them over smaller OEMs is Dell's biggest competitive advantage. Now they'll have to compete more directly with local whitebox builders.
They don't have much choice though. The local box builders have already switched to Ubuntu as their OS of choice. Dell has to match them or be swamped.
And there was me thinking that Dell's biggest competitive advantages were its huge purchasing power on all components, not just operating systems, and its brand-name recognition.
I guess I was wrong. Who knew that Dell was paying the same price for CPUs, RAM, hard drives, etc that outfits run out of the owners' garages were paying?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
If by "others" you mean a name randomly chosen from the Yellow Pages, yes. But if it's a local vendor who you can talk to and check his references, it becomes a much safer proposition, and a lot less hassle than dealing with an enormous company that makes you press a dozen buttons on your phone before you can speak to anyone, who is never the same person who you talked with before and so you have to explain your problem over and over again.
How many use it just to dodge the license cost, and just install their pirated windows copy? Any guesses? Is linux becoming the "no OS" choice available at other whitebox builders?
The margin on hardware is much smaller than it is on software, MS can give maybe a 70% discount whereas they might be able to get 10% on hardware.
Dell might be able to get 10 percent on hardware?
If you think that the difference between the price that Dell pays for the average piece of hardware and the price that a one-man operation would pay for the same hardware is 10 percent then you're nuts.
Dell undoubtably buys directly from manufacturers. When it buys Intel CPUs, it buys them directly from Intel. When it buys Belkin accessories, it buys them directly from Belkin. When Dell buys, there's no middleman.
When a one-man operation buys Intel CPUs or Belkin accessories then it buys them from a distributor. There might be one, two or maybe even three such middlemen between it and Intel or Belkin. Each middleman takes a cut, which drives the price that the one-man operation pays for the products higher and higher. How much is that cut? Well, 10 percent per distributor would be a fair figure.
(If you want to get a fairer idea of distribution costs, take the cost per 1,000 units that is typically quoted regarding CPUs and compare that to the typical single unit street price. Allow a small (maybe 5-10 percent) profit for the vendor and you'll see that the distribution chain takes a fair chunk along the way.)
And all that's before you talk about how much of each product is bought by Dell. There's a big difference between maybe buying 5 CPUs a week through the channel and buying almost 200,000 a week directly from the manufacturer.
In 2006, Dell accounted for 16.1 percent of the 59 million PCs shipped worldwide. Last year, Dell shipped 950 million PCs.
Are you really telling me that you think that, with that sort of buying power, you don't think that Dell gets deals that give it a more than 10 percent hardware cost price advantage?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The one advantage of Bob and Jimbos is that you can get "exactly" what you want. And all you have to do is ask for it. With Dell and others, it's often very hard to configure a computer that has everything you want, and only what you want. They insist on shipping every computer with a keyboard and mouse. Even if I never plan on using them. Then they go and install a bunch of crapware. I still buy my computers from Bob and Jimbo, because it means I can get a clean computer, with just windows, an actual windows install CD, and no crapware included. The crapware that they do include (DVD burning etc.) come on separate CDs, and can be uninstalled, or if you do a system format when you get the machine, not installed at all if you like.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It isn't about the cost, it's about the software or in particular the desktop software and how easy it is to install and get running, although perhaps of more importance is the availability and range of software (ne: programs) available, and how reliable they are.
As soon as Unix/Linux people realise this and look beyond their own nose (ne: favourite flavour of GNU/Linux), they will realise that the API is the real jewel. The reason that Microsoft beat IBM at its own game with the OS2/Windows war was because it won the API war. They convinced, or scammed (depending upon your point of view) programmers to write to the Win31 API and OS/2 was killed. Providing development tools such as Visual Basic and Access which removed the whole API schema just made their task a whole lot easier.
Forget the fancy esoteric languages and "scripted" (ne: interpreted) tools, because they are not what is needed to wrestle the end user away from Windows. What is required is a common platform (display, communications, and file API's to name just a few). Sure, let the system level person choose between a Gnome or KDE desktop. Let them run either RedHat, Suse, or Ubuntu (insert flavour of the week) but provide a common interface to of them all via a simple and straight-forward API. Then provide the killer application development tools like Visual Basic and/or Access which will let newbie programmers write their killer app with no knowledge of computers or programming and then GNU/Linux may just stand a chance.