Dell's Linux, IT Re-Invention

jcatcw writes "An IDG analysis of Dell's attempts to reinvent itself concludes that there are some positive results, but there are problems with the company's supply-chain management and support. One area analysts want to see more improvement: the company's Linux business. 'Jeremy Cole, owner of Proven Scaling, a small consulting firm with offices in the US and UK ... is satisfied with Dell equipment, but said the company needs to show more support for open-source applications and the Linux OS. "It's clear that Dell cares about Linux, in that all their server-class hardware is well-supported by the Linux kernel and they have many people dedicated to making sure that's the case. However, it's not good enough just to boot," Cole said.'"

Comments

Consistency

[pickapeppa]

I buy a lot of computers for work. I work at a charity that has a nifty agreement with Dell that could save me a ton of money. But I stopped buying Dell computers a few years back because I could not get a consistent product from them. I would buy 10 identical computers, open them up and find a zillion different parts from a zillion manufacturers in them. This drives me crazy. I heard tell that Dell was addressing this, but haven't followed up. I switched to Acer a few years back. If Dell wants to sell me computers again they need A. a guarantee that the sub-contracted bits inside are of a consistent quality, and B. a non-Vista option.

Re:Consistency

[h4rr4r]

You will need to buy the Optiplex line. Just like all the big vendors the consumer grade model varies from batch to batch, only the business line is locked for any real amount of time.

They do sell XP.

Re:Consistency

[mr_mischief]

...and Linux, which TFA is about. I'd call that a "non-Vista option".

Also, if someone has an OS preference and is the IT department or has purchasing power in the IT department, one should be able to install the preferred OS. Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Suse, OpenSuse, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, RedHat, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Knoppix, eComStation, QNX, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and probably a hundred other non-Vista OS distributions will install on most Dell server and desktop systems.

If world-class OS support is necessary, it's probably best to sign a contract with an OS vendor or a third party specializing in supporting the OS. Depending on a hardware vendor to support the OS is kind of risky anyway.

I've had RedHat and Mandriva on lots of PowerEdge and Optiplex systems, and I've never gotten Dell's permission or asked them for support. The only companies that make hardware that should be your final stop for supporting software are companies like IBM, Sun, SGI, or Apple that make the hardware and software both.

Re:Consistency

[blhack]

In addition to a non-vista option, they need to offer MS office 2003. A few months ago I logged into dell's website to order a batch of computers and noticed that the option for 2003 had was gone, and they were only offering 2007.

This is absurd.
In my experience, there is almost no demand for 2007. What I ended up having to do was sign up for a site licensing agreement with microsoft to get my hands on 2003. In the mean time, I installed OpenOffice on the computers that I had ordered. This prompted my boss to go "Why are we spending 350 bucks a hit on something that we can get for free?".

So now we use OO exclusively.

THANKS DELL/MICROSOFT!

Re:Consistency

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, there is almost no demand for 2007. Which is why Microsoft decided that they're simply not going to sell Office 2003 anymore unless you have a preexisting contract. Dell has very little choice in this matter. (And in Vista as well, Microsoft made the rather intense discount it gives the big OEMs on windows dependent on them pushing Vista).

Re:Consistency

[Ephemeriis]

I would buy 10 identical computers, open them up and find a zillion different parts from a zillion manufacturers in them. This drives me crazy. I heard tell that Dell was addressing this, but haven't followed up. I switched to Acer a few years back. If Dell wants to sell me computers again they need A. a guarantee that the sub-contracted bits inside are of a consistent quality, and B. a non-Vista option.

It depends on what model line you're buying. The business-grade stuff like the Optiplexes are very consistent. You've got identical parts in all of them, nice and predictable. I don't think I've ever ordered in a pile of Optiplexes and found different parts in them. Their servers, also, are very consistent. The Vostro line is still a little new, so I haven't seen a whole ton of them, but so far they're turning out to be consistent as well. Out of the half-dozen or so I've seen there haven't been any surprises. The home level stuff, like their Inspirons, is very inconsistent. They basically throw in whatever parts they can get cheapest.

As for a non-Vista option, there are plenty. You can order the business stuff with XP loaded on it instead of Vista. They offer machines pre-loaded with Ubuntu as well. All of their server hardware comes with a disc full of Red Hat drivers. And last time I checked you could still order a machine without any OS at all.

Re:Consistency

[TheLinuxSRC]

I agree with you to a point, however I ran into a *hardware* problem a few years ago with a Dell Dimension (it was a P3 to give you the timeframe). The Dell representative refused support after learning that Linux had been run on the system. For the record, this was a power supply and the machine would not even powerup. I am still not sure how that had anything to do with Linux.

As a side note, I am in charge of IT purchasing and I was very happy with Dell up until that point. My company buys 8-12 servers a year and they were always Dell (pre-installed with Redhat). After that incident I moved to SuperMicro servers and I have never looked back. I don't even consider Dell anymore.

Re:Consistency

[mr_mischief]

That's the kind of boneheaded support that makes me doubt them even as a hardware company. Supporting the hardware they sell under the warranty they offer is a requisite part of their agreement with their customers. This was either an "out", or shows a serious lack of understanding aboutcomputer hardware vs.software. Now, if there was some fancy APM or APCI-style stuff that required a particular driver to keep frombeing cycled incorrectly, they should state that in the documentation. If they can't even get that right, then software support is moot.

Re:Consistency

[skarphace]

I agree with you to a point, however I ran into a *hardware* problem a few years ago with a Dell Dimension (it was a P3 to give you the timeframe). The Dell representative refused support after learning that Linux had been run on the system. For the record, this was a power supply and the machine would not even powerup. I am still not sure how that had anything to do with Linux. There is one thing you could do if you have a whole set of these machines that need supporting. Once you receive the machines, snag one disk out of one of the machines and stuff it away. Replace it with some other disk of your choice. If you ever have to go to support and they won't deal with you, slap the stock hdd into it and go to work.

However, the problem you describe shouldn't have been a problem with business-level support.

Re:Consistency

[zeromerk]

For hardware vendors to "care about Linux", means to me, they should open source their drivers/utilities.

Anything short of that seems fairly inconsistent.

Re:Consistency

[solarce]

What you need to do is contact your Dell Small Business account rep (I'm assuming you have one) and talk to him about Open Business Licensing. All you need to do is purchase 5 MS licenses in one chunk (it can be Office, Project, Visio, XP, Vista, 2003, SQL Server, whatever, but it must be 5 licenses in one order) and you can get Open Business licenses.

What happens after that is that you are given an authorization number and an agreement number (for each license or block of like licenses, say you purchase 3 copies of Office Standard) and you go to eopen.microsoft.com (Live account required :/ ) and login, plugin all your info and BAM! you are given keys for Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007. I've been doing this for two years and it is great because I was able to stick with 2003, but now that we are switching to 2007, 2/3rds of my organization (approx 55 people) already have licenses for both (obviously you can only use one license at a time). You can still purchase Office 2003 install media, afaik. Overall, you will find your licenses are cheaper than retail, but not OEM, but then they aren't tied to a single machine. There is also less headache in tracking because you can view all your agreements/keys on MS's site.

Email me if you want more information, if you don't have an account representative, I can point you at mine.

Re:Consistency

[Hucko]

In addition to a non-vista option, they need to offer MS office 2003.

Windows Office has caught up to Emacs? We really only need one office operating system.

Re:Consistency

[Hucko]

I'm not sure I follow your logic. How does this get the machine fixed?

Re:Consistency

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh, and I thought the only reason macs existed was to run Microsoft Office.

Re:Consistency

[cbiltcliffe]

I've had the exact same problem in the Optiplex line. I was forced to buy Dell due to a lab equipment manufacturer's contract, and the three systems with the exact same model number, delivered at the same time, didn't have a single internal component that matched.
Their excuse for me needing to buy Dell to begin with is that "their I/O card didn't work in anything but Dells. Anybody who's used anything else has had nothing but problems." Their special I/O card was essentially a Startech 4-port 16550 serial card.
My only conclusion is that most of their customers are morons, and their tech support are morons, too.

Complaining about the quality of the hardware, though, resulted in claims of "This is the only hardware we certify for." They had no idea what hardware I actually had, but trying to get that point across was like slamming my head repeatedly in a car door.

Re:Consistency

[marcello_dl]

What you need to do is contact your Dell Small Business account rep (I'm assuming you have one) and talk to him about Open Business Licensing. All you need to do is purchase 5 MS licenses in one chunk (it can be Office, Project, Visio, XP, Vista, 2003, SQL Server, whatever, but it must be 5 licenses in one order) and you can get Open Business licenses.

What happens after that is that you are given an authorization number and an agreement number (for each license or block of like licenses, say you purchase 3 copies of Office Standard) and you go to eopen.microsoft.com (Live account required :/ ) and login, plugin all your info and BAM! you are given keys for Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007.

OT: From the biased perspective of a linux user, I am sad for the human resouce waste of the whole procedure. You make a kernel recompile look like fun. :)

Re:Consistency

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Their excuse for me needing to buy Dell to begin with is that "their I/O card didn't work in anything but Dells. Anybody who's used anything else has had nothing but problems." Their special I/O card was essentially a Startech 4-port 16550 serial card.
My only conclusion is that most of their customers are morons, and their tech support are morons, too.

You know nothing about the lab equipment manufacturer's other customers, or their other customer's tech support. You nailed it in the first sentence; what the lab equipment vendor told you was an excuse. It may or may not have had any original or ongoing basis in fact.

Re:Consistency

[Doc Lazarus]

Agreed. I'm typing this from a business Optiplex right now and despite some use-related issues, they've been good as gold.

Re:Consistency

[skarphace]

I'm not sure I follow your logic. How does this get the machine fixed? It doesn't directly but it forces the uncooperative support folks to assist you.

Meh.

[SatanicPuppy]

Mediocre quality, slow delivery, piss poor service and support...What's not to like?

If you buy a lot of computers and deal with multiple retailers, the contrast can't help but leap out at you. HP, from being craptacular last decade, has done a much better job of "reinventing" themselves than Dell has. Middleman retailers like CDW are fricking lightning fast, and they're really easy to deal with, especially when buying volume.

Contrast this with Dell...I work for a national corporation that does millions of dollars a year in business with Dell...Or used to. We had representatives in corporate who were in direct contact with high-powered Dell salespeople. Did it expedite anything? No. We have top tier support, does it stop them from sending out techs who know less than non-experts on our local staff? I had to help some dumbass fix a printer once, and my printer repair technique is normally limited to bft.

I was a big Dell fan...once. I've yet to see any sign that they've done anything but continue their slide toward the low end of the market.

Re:Meh.

[h4rr4r]

Dell has one single advantage: Price. CDW is a giant ripoff. Perhaps if you are in a huge corporation this is not a concern, but everywhere else getting a good price is a concern. The same equipment from anyone but CDW even vs another middle man can be 25% cheaper on average.

Re:Meh.

[SatanicPuppy]

If all I cared about was price, I'd buy from HP. And we have a big honkin corporate contract with CDW, so the prices are actually pretty nice.

We still buy some Dell stuff...Just bought a pair of Poweredge 2950's I'm pretty pleased with, though god help us if we ever need support.

By and large though, I'd rather buy a more expensive machine with better service and support than a cheaper machine with crappy service and support. We got a shipment of optiplexes not that long ago with a batch of bad capacitors on their motherboards, and for the amount of time we wasted on the phone with dell support getting them to send replacement parts for a fricking known problem...They should have looked at the service tag said, "Is it not booting?" and sent us a new motherboard with no further questions....Not made us jump through the goddamn hoops every single time. We got a guy who's Dell certified on staff, which usually means they'll take your word for it, but noooooo.

I'm just sick of 'em. It's beyond the pale. We bought 70 new pcs this year at my location, and I think 5 were Dell, and the rest were Macs and HPs.

Re:Meh.

[CastrTroy]

Or maybe you get what you pay for. I'm not going to comment on the quality of either of their offerings since I've only bought 2 computers in my life, and neither from these companies. However, if one company gives you a consistent quality product, an the other does not, then maybe the 25% markup is worth it. It really depends on how important the computers are to your business.

Re:Meh.

[SatanicPuppy]

The markup isn't anywhere near that high. We bought 20 Mac mini's from them for about 30 bucks a pop more than it would have cost us to buy 'em from Apple...That's not even 10%.

Re:Meh.

[h4rr4r]

This is true, and in the corporate world they are not that important. They will be tossed out in 3 years, so they need to be cheap, and quality is not a real concern.

Re:Meh.

[masdog]

On the flip side of things, the division of a national corporation that i work for is almost exclusively Dell, and our account reps are trying to get the entire company. We get our orders very quickly with huge discounts. The plants I oversee are sort of the odd ones out because I still buy Lenovo Thinkpads over the Dell Latitudes.

Re:Meh.

[gallwapa]

Which optiplexes? We have just purchased about 300...?

Re:Meh.

[blindd0t]

What we've found at the company I work for (which is a small business) is that Dell's price is right if you're willing to wait a little more. So Dell is attractive for our small number of workstations and other small office equipment (computers, monitors, etc...), as we can use backups and spares to get by if the wait is a long one. However, when you have mission critical equipment that must be up 24/7, our experience is that it pays to go through CDW to ensure any replacement items/units are shipped very quickly. The cost of downtime from waiting on Dell can easily cost us much more than the difference in purchase price when we order from CDW. So we use a fairly balanced mix -- we look for bargains (within reason -- we understand quality is important, of course) for anything at our main office, and we generally only use CDW for any mission critical equipment at the data center.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/advantages/index.html/ are definately better service and support although more expensive. And, yes, it runs Linux.

Re:Meh.

[masdog]

Price-wise, CDW might not be the best deal for some items if you're not under a JBA or corporate contract. But if you are, or you absolutely must have it tomorrow (or today in the Chicagoland-area), then you really can't beat them.

Re:Meh.

[daenris]

Odd. I've had the opposite experience with them. I was heartily anti-Dell because of personal experiences with them and their support. However, once I started working for a large institution that used them as the primary computer supplier, I found myself pleasantly surprised. Every time we had to contact them about problems it was a quick response and extremely quick shipping/service on needed replacement parts. We actually had a bunch of Optiplexes go bad. I opened them up and saw that there were bad capacitors, so I called up our support and told them we had about 8 machines with bad capacitors and about 3 days later our local support guy showed up with new motherboards for the 8 machines, no hassle.

I would never buy from Dell as an individual, but buying/working with them through my company hasn't given me any problems.

Re:Meh.

[rmm4pi8]

Interestingly enough, while I have concerns about Dell's build quality (had server issues that were 'known upfront' like the Optiplex capacitor issue you mention), in my experience they're waay cheaper than HP (>30% on the 4 and 8 core servers we typically buy) and I've been really impressed by their speed of support and delivery.

No, the delivery speed is nothing like CDW, but you're paying (literally) 50% of what the comparable HP from CDW would be (the 30% figure above is based on quotes from HP direct), and the delivery speed is much faster than what we get from Lenovo Direct on laptops, for instance. On support, I've found that they have competent Linux admins, are aggressive about sending out replacement parts, and even though they only officially support Red Hat and SuSE are in fact completely ok with doing troubleshooting on CentOS and Mandriva systems. Also, when I have had problems the "email my manager at" links that go out on the bottom of every email from a Dell employee are monitored religiously. I've had to complain twice to a manager about something, and both times I got both problem remediation and a nice discount for my time and trouble.

This is on about $50,000 a year volume, so I can't speak to what a smaller business might experience, though obviously we're no Fortune500. Also, and this is I think the real Dell advantage, they actually sell totally configurable systems--you might get the impression from their websites that HP and Lenovo do this, but my experience has been that they will only offer decent discounts and lead times (both pretty expected in a corporate situation) if you're buying a stock or mostly stock SKU.

Re:Meh.

[blhack]

HP, from being craptacular last decade, has done a much better job of "reinventing" themselves than Dell has. Amen to this.

HP/Compaq have moved their level 2 tech support to British Columbia. I have had 2 laptops in the last two years that have needed replacements and have actually had their tech support staff CALL ME BACK a few days after the warranty claim to check in with me.

That absolutely blew me away. IT wasn't an automated email, or phone message or anything. it was:
"Ryan?...he this is Heather from HP....I talked to you earlier this week?"
"oh hey!"
"Yeah, i just wanted to make sure that you got the box to put your computer in and that everything was okay!"

awesome :)
and no, i don't work for HP....
Everybody needs to model their tech support after THAT!

Re:Meh.

[ISoldat53]

Interestingly, that used to be the Dell model.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the bad cap problem isn't just isolated to Dell. HP, Macs, and even my clone at home were hit with this problem. While I can't say Dell was better or worse than anybody else, whenever I called them on this problem, all I had to say is "I opened the case on this Optiplex, and the caps are leaking". All of our machines have on-site same-day or next-day service, and they were always repaired in that time frame.

Re:Meh.

[g2devi]

I've just bought a pair of Dell Laptops and these seem to be fairly good quality and everything works flawlessly with Ubuntu (if you apt-get the backports).

As far as Linux goes, I'd recommend them. The main issue I see with Dell's isn't the the features, it's the anti-features like Media-Direct.

For those that don't know why this is an anti-feature, a brief explanation, if you press the Media Direct button when the laptop is *off*, it normally runs the Media player for Dell in the Media Direct partition. Sounds good, except if you reformat your drive to reclaim the 40-60GB Vista-mirror+Media-Direct+Dell Utility partitions and put Ubuntu or anything else there. If you do that, Media Direct dumbly messes up your partition table and randomly writes over your disk. Essentially, Media Direct is should be called Media Destruct if you don't follow the Gospel according to Dell. This wouldn't be so bad, except that there isn't even a BIOS feature to turn it off. The only "solutions" I've seen is to write 0s on the entire hard disk (so that the media direct button can't do anything other than display a splash screen) or manually disable the button by opening the case.

I'm not sure if other vendors have similar anti-features, but it is a big reason I won't even consider doing a BIOS upgrade for my Laptop or keep the Utility partition. The last thing I need is one of these anti-features reverting my machine back to "the button of death" configuration.

Re:Meh.

[ISoldat53]

Or if you live on an island with a chimp.

Re:Meh.

[Ephemeriis]

and for the amount of time we wasted on the phone with dell support getting them to send replacement parts for a fricking known problem...They should have looked at the service tag said, "Is it not booting?" and sent us a new motherboard with no further questions....Not made us jump through the goddamn hoops every single time. We got a guy who's Dell certified on staff, which usually means they'll take your word for it, but noooooo.

Dell's technical support is infuriatingly inconsistent... Doesn't seem to matter if you've got the ultra-deluxe business support or the default warranty they throw on new hardware... Doesn't seem to matter if you're Dell certified or not... Doesn't seem to matter if it's a critical server down or a stuck key in a home computer...

Half the time you get some idiot on the phone who wastes literally hours troubleshooting a problem that should be fairly obvious. Then they'll send out a clueless tech to replace the part, even if you don't need the help. And that's assuming it's the right part and it actually works.

The other half the time you'll get someone who listens intently to what you say, asks a couple relevant questions, and gets the part in your hands within hours.

I wish I knew how to consistently get that second guy on the phone...

Re:Meh.

[QuantumRiff]

The 270's were horrible for the capacitors on the motherboards. They even extended the warranty for the mobo only for another year. We lost something like 20% of ours. I've also had several power supplies fail in the GX620 lines. Not nearly as bad as the 270's problems, but still about 3 times our normal average.

Re:Meh.

[ryanov]

What's interesting is that I have about 75 GX270's and I don't know about more than a couple that have had motherboards fail. I have had trouble with the USB ports on mine twice now, though... is that the problem we're talking about, or are we talking no-boot?

Contrast that with the M782 monitors, though, where we had damn near every single one we ordered fail. The "new" ones that come back are clearly not new, either, as they arrive with inconsistent displays (bad convergence on only one side, etc).

Re:Meh.

[Nushio]

It still is. I got a call from Dell a while ago asking if I had received my Palmrest (mouse buttons were buggy after a year of (ab)use).

It got kinda annoying considering that I got the palmrest about 2 weeks ago, and it was 8am and I was still asleep :P

Re:Meh.

[R_Dorothy]

I bought a Dell laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed and haven't had the issue you describe. Sound, modem, graphics all worked out of the box - no backports required.

Re:Meh.

[MrResistor]

I've never had an issue with Dell's quality, but then my only real experience for comparison is to Gateway, who's hardware I've found to be pretty unstable. What's killing Dell is their service.

I used to work in customer service repair at a company that sold PowerEdges as part of a high-end video production suite. We had a premium service contract with Dell, which explicitly stated that they would provide a technician on-site for any service call. We paid a lot for that contract, on top of the millions of dollars a year we spent on buying their hardware.

Since I was the tech on the product line that these were a part of, part of my job was to call up Dell and give them the trouble info so they could send a guy with the right parts (not required by our contract, BTW, but I try to be helpful). Every single time I called it turned into a fight with the phone guys just to get them to send a tech. I always kept it polite, since I was representing the company, but I got hung up on several times. Every time I ended up having to get purchasing involved to "politely remind" them of their contractual obligations.

It probably would have been much cheaper for the company to just have me do the repairs, especially since Dell chassis are really well designed for servicability.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to let you know, there is a "secret" warranty on both GX270 and GX260s. As long as they have leaking or bulging capacitors on the MB, your can get the MB and Power Supply replaced. But it ends sometime early next year...so do it fast!

AC

Re:Meh.

[Descalzo]

Our support from Dell is awesome! We have our own guy and Dell reimburses us for his time.

Re:Meh.

[GaryOlson]

We are talking no power to even get to a BIOS screen. Depending on your purchase cycle depends on what GX270 you received -- bad capacitors or not. I purchased GX270s in small batches over the life of the model; I had a 50/50 failure rate on the motherboard capacitors. (which usually took out the P/S also)

M782 monitors? OH THE HORRORS! The 17" LCDs are really affordable now. Best just to forget about those monitors; they had bad juju beans.

Re:Meh.

[epp_b]

HP/Compaq have moved their level 2 tech support to British Columbia.

Really? Why is it then, that whenever I call HP tech support for my HP/Compaq business notebook, I'm always talking to Santosh or Vijay?

Re:Meh.

[ryanov]

Well, we just got a shipment of 1708's and 1908's, so we're not looking back.

I personally got a 198WFP, I think is the model number. Something like that. Not very happy with it.

Single-page (printing) URL

[Lord of Hyphens]

The whole article on one page.

I've always heard Dell suck, but now I know why

[Joebert]

I've heard about how much Dell sucks for years, rarely have I ever heard anything good about them. I think I've met two people who were happy with their Dell experience.


Ironicly enough, I was just on my way here to submit a story about a guy who can't even use his own Dell credit line, even though he's already purchased laptops for his kids Christmas presents. Then I saw this story, sad.

Re:I've always heard Dell suck, but now I know why

[Grinch2171]

We use Dell servers and workstation here at work exclusively and never had an issue with them. We have their Gold support and if something goes wrong, within 4 hours a replacement is here. Tech support for the servers has been top notch. But when it comes to home products they are seriously flawed as my little blog post states. How a company can ship over two thousand dollars worth of hardware to me but won't send me a 200 dollar camcorder because they can't verify who I am is beyond comprehension.

Re:I've always heard Dell suck, but now I know why

[wikid_one]

I am extremely happy with Dell. Without their computers my repair/troubleshooting workload would be cut in half and I'd still be washing dishes somewhere.

I don't get it

[$RANDOMLUSER]

"it's not good enough just to boot"

What do you expect from a commodity server manufacturer? If you want premium (server) hand-holding, buy from a premium (server) manufacturer (HP, IBM, etc.). I have to say, my expectations of OS support from the likes of Dell or MicroCenter or CDW are exactly ZERO. I shop with those guys when I care about price, and maybe a decent hardware warranty.

Re:I don't get it

[jswinth]

Expectations have definately gotten out of hand. For years people made the argument that Dell should offer Linux pre-installed. Dell didn't want to do it because of the support problems. To which the typical Slashdotter replied, "don't worry, we just want to escape the MS tax and will likely re-install from scratch again anyway." Now that Dell actually does provide Linux installed on more and more machines they are taken to task because of support issues. This isn't going to make other manufacturers want to follow Dell's lead. It is kind of like when your child says, "if you get me the puppy then I will feed and pickup after him, pleeeaaase!" Maybe the "Linux Community" needs to pickup after themselves and stop complaining.

Re:I don't get it

[farkus888]

those with the initiative to pick up after the puppy, to follow your analogy, probably were willing to work to pay for the puppy. [stretching here] that is to say they probably built a custom server. I know that is a big task for a fortune 500 type enterprise server, but most of dells server market is smaller servers than that from what I have seen. if they really wanted to just duck the "ms tax" they would have been asking for clean HDs out of the box. less work for dell and gives them a clean slate to install their own linux. it seems pretty clear the "please preinstall linux" crowd was planning to snowball it to "please support linux" when you look at it that way.

Re:I don't get it

[jedidiah]

One has NOTHING to do with the other.

Consistency and quality and support aren't suddenly non-issues just because you are running Redmond's flavor of the month.

Re:I don't get it

[Kjella]

it seems pretty clear the "please preinstall linux" crowd was planning to snowball it to "please support linux" when you look at it that way. So you got the hardware inside the box working, now how about the hardware outside the box? I wouldn't mind if Dell became a hardliner on this, maybe even made some kind of whitelist/blacklist for compatibility so you could get properly branded "Linux-ready" hardware. Or even just let them scream at whatever third party manufacturer which made the linux-incompatible device. Of course they'd *like* to snowball it into support for everything under the sun, I just don't think Dell should let them.

I mean, do you get that on a Windows PC? If I buy a Dell Windows PC, can I call them with any problems I have with my printer / scanner / digicam / monitor / whatever? Somehow, I don't think so. Or rather, they'd tell me it's not their problem real quick.

Re:I don't get it

[farkus888]

the thing is, are we talking about the $10k to $25k servers here again? because I don't see how getting peripheral support for that is ever going to help improve the 50 meg driver for my hp color laserjet. even linux on their vostro line is going to be using very different peripherals that a home user. unless I am mistaken the support for those business class peripherals is already better than home user parts and peripherals. I don't care to argue which one of those is most important to increase linux's foothold, or even if that is what is best for the community. I just wanted to point out that I don't think that dell's small number of linux offerings is enough to make a dent in the linux hardware support issue, especially across all real world applications.

Re:I don't get it

[EdelFactor19]

theres a larger problem that you are missing; a. they should offer a NO os system and let you put on it what you will.
b. the largest problems they encounter from the linux world is the fact that they put system features that not just don't work under linux but break it.
If you offer linux on a product it should work on the product; that means the wireless cards should be supported by the Linux OS that Dell offers; and that dell should steer towards using components that are linux friendly..

its no different probably from a lot of the heat they will get in regards to vista/xp up and downgrades. You try to change and you can't find the drivers you need for the version because they only gave a CD for one version; and they don't provide a quality list of the named components in YOUR machine and which driver you should be getting.. i remember doing a search with my express tag back in the day and was offered a large amount of different video drivers for many different cards that even seemingly had the same name. sigh.

the problem seems to be more a tip toeing issue; if you say one word to them that indicates anything (software inclusive) is non-stock (which aside from music, data files, and emails is pretty much everything) they will likely try to say "we dont support that app" and they try to persuade you to think that it has anything to do with anything or that it alleviates them from supporting the stuff THEY put there. case in point: they advertise lots of room for expansion in the pci bays... except they wont support anything there; if are slapping in something simple like a regular sound card, or network card you are usually ok... but when you have a network card, a wireless card, and a sound card there... and you need to add a new card that cant share an IRQ you might run into problems becuase the merry go round game doesnt work; the slots (at least back in 2000-2002) werent hard coded to an irq and reserving didnt quite work; and random things get bounced around and leave some unused or will share an irq with your new device instead of with someother device you could care less about... this is problematic when you try to add something to say take advantage of the hard drive bays, or specialized sound card for digital audio or video capturing / activities... its funny because on an older machine with an older bios you actually could do some of these things... like turn off the LPT and com ports you waste irqs on becuase your printer mouse and keyboard are usb... sad that there are still only 16 irqs still, several never available to user at all. And this was all under WindowsME in the pre XP days; (me did better on this and the audio drivers needed than 98sr2... tho XP fixed a whole lot of it and it all worked properly and better than it ever had; the only irony being that in order to install the software and drivers for the hardware you had to copy the setup cd to a local folder so that you could have the machine lie to the executable and say that it wasnt XP because they decided to hardcode not letting it work normally on XP whcih didnt exist when it was made..

The other key problem with parent is that there are two different crowds of people saying this. The guy who says he will reinstall from scratch probably isn't the one calling with the stupid support issue; they are the ones who discover things like the directMedia/destroyer problem.

If they added some notes to the configurator like "this card or option is problematic or lacks open source drivers under linux" etc they might be minimally better off.

Re:I don't get it

[bondjamesbond]

Microcenter and CDW simply re-sell equipment. How can you possibly have "expectations of OS support" from them?? Geez!

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Riiight... I guess it just couldn't be that the people who said they didn't want support then, and the people who want support now, are different people?

I mean, that would be just totally impossible right? All Linux users are always the same. There's no variety at all.

Re:I don't get it

[GaryOlson]

The picture I just imagined with a horde of pasty white, skulking geeks in badly laundered t-shirts following along behind their penguins with Starbucks in one hand and a bag/shovel in the other.....priceless.

Yes, the Linux community could use some self-discipline and maturity.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

No, sorry, Dell was already selling no-OS options on their computers with the FreeDOS install. The purpose of the Ubuntu install was to provide a installed and supportable Linux, but the support would be purchased from Canonical. You can see the Canonical support option when you put together a Dell+Ubuntu computer on Dell's website. Of course, the Canonical support is $250 a year, and, so, no one buys it. Even still, I have not seen many people complaining about the lack of Ubuntu support from Dell, just these armchair captains from Computer World and the like.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

>I care about price, and maybe a decent hardware warranty.

yeah exactly! Your buying hardware and you want it cheap with a decent warranty. If you need software support - and that is a big if - you go to a vendor specialising in this.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the pre-installed linux system any cheaper than the same Hw with billy bathgates PROTECTionWare system? If so I agree completely. If not, than your comment about 'escaping the MS tax' does not apply. This is not rhetorical, I don't know the answer.

I readed the aurticle

[PolarBearFire]

I'm on the cusp of installing Linux on my spare computer and play around with it and I read the article to see what problems the typical user might have from a distro that's "supported" by a major company. Instead I feel this four page article wasted my time, it didn't say what programs or areas in general are not supported or need better support by Dell in Linux. There's just a blanket statement that more programs should be better supported, duh my friends, duhh. I also expected to see the usual "Dell sold me hardware that's not supported in Linux" type problems but instead I got a vague issue regarding LCDs. I'm seriously racking my brain on what that could be, I use Dell LCDs and I've seen people run Linux on multiple LCDs with no problems at all. This is a very poorly written article which reads like an article middle schoolers would read to learn vocabulary words. It's basically a backhanded compliment to Dell for integrating Linux into its business. Support issues will alwas linger, no company has a perfect support issue.

How about fixing the quality of the laptops.

[schwit1]

10% of our D520s have had to have motherboards replaced because the onboard Ethernet goes tango uniform.

Re:How about fixing the quality of the laptops.

[Anonymous Coward]

because the onboard Ethernet goes tango uniform.

Obviously because uniform foxtrotted them up.

Article is old news and....

[iknownuttin]

makes Dell's strategy as some sort of new thing. It's just Dell's never ending quest to make his computers cheaper and cheaper to keep the margins not as thin. In other words, ditch Windows and its tax and put Linux on and save, what, $30 per PC in costs.

Nothing to see here...

[Frosty Piss]

Johnny Nobody, owner of , a small consulting firm with offices in the US and UK ... is satisfied with Dell equipment, but said the company needs to show more support for open-source applications and the Linux OS.

Dell thanks you for your input.

What is clear is that people are not happy will Dell's support for desktop deployments and smaller customers. But these are not the area that Dell is interested in. The article and many others show that Dell support for their Linux SERVER products is good. Why would a reasonable person expect Dell to support uses like Desktop and small business when that is not their Linux focus? Dell does not sell Linux for the hobby or home user, it's not realistic to expect them to support these segments of customer.

Re:Nothing to see here...

[PolarBearFire]

I don't really get it. Dell provides computers that run Linux. Shouldn't most Linux programs run on them? If they don't, doesn't that really show the state of Linux than a reflection of the support by Dell?

Re:Nothing to see here...

[dfiguero]

Exactly! Same goes for HP and any other OEM. The real business is not on the desktop.

Re:Nothing to see here...

[jimicus]

HP and IBM have contributed things other than hardware support to Linux.

Big things, like LVM and JFS. Generally, these items have been ported across from some other system which offered such facilities.

Dell, OTOH, has done little beyond basic hardware support. But they don't have some huge legacy midrange Unix OS which they could port features from. It would be nice to see them add some real value rather than "added the PCI ID for our latest rebranded LSI SAS card to the kernel", but I don't think it'll happen.

Re:Nothing to see here...

[Dan Ost]

You've got it all wrong. We don't need Dell wasting effort to create features for Linux. We're good at creating features for Linux. What we're bad at, and Dell is good at, is convincing hardware manufactures to open up so that we can properly support their hardware.

Re:Nothing to see here...

[mr_mischief]

Wait... did I miss something about the software flat out not running? Or was TFA about Dell not offering support? "Not supporting" when talking about a vendor doesn't mean it won't work, just that they won't help you with it when you need help. It's not saying that Linux on Dell machines "doesn't support" TuxRacer.

Everyone with any illusions about what Dell is please repeat after me, "Dell is a hardware vendor. Dell is not a systems integrator or a consulting firm. Dell wants to sell me a box. What I do with the box is beyond Dell's control. If I want expert advice and hand-holding for my software, I need to go somewhere other than Dell to get it. Dell is a hardware vendor..."

You can say the same little mantra over and over, replacing "Dell" with "Gateway", "Acer", "Asus", "Lenovo", "Toshiba", "Sony", or lots of other companies. IBM, Microway, HP, Sun, Apple, SGI, and Tadpole are not the same sort of company as Dell. They're just not. Some companies write software. Some companies make hardware. Some integrate the software with the hardware. Some do it all. If you want OS support, use a company that develops an OS, does actual integration, or has a consulting arm. IBM, for example, does all of these. Microway and Tadpole build hardware specifically for certain in-depth software needs. Apple writes its own OS and some of the applications besides designing and contracting out the hardware. HP, Sun, and SGI are all platform companies, too.

Even when the OS is from Microsoft, you're going to get better OS support from a consulting firm or integrator than a hardware vendor that happens to preload the OS. Dell is not an integrator or consulting firm. They sell hardware.

Re:Nothing to see here...

[Wodin]

LVM was written by Sistina. You're thinking of EVMS.

Re:Nothing to see here...

[jedidiah]

You would have the same exact problem with any Unix or any OS for
that matter. 3rd party software is supported (by well) 3rd parties.
You don't go to Dell for support of some random bit of app software
you do to whomever wrote it or whomever is providing 3rd party
support.

Re:Nothing to see here...

[Anonymous Coward]

My problem with Dell is finding the Linux computers for the home user or hobbyist you talk about. I had to fiddle around and finally do a search on the Dell site to find the Linux computers. You would think that if Dell were truly supportive of Linux they would have a place to select on the main screen. Once you get there they do have some good stuff and it does work well but I ended up getting a computer elsewhere and installing the Linux distro myself.

Re:Nothing to see here...

[Frosty Piss]

My problem with Dell is finding the Linux computers for the home user or hobbyist you talk about...

Do you expect to find links to retail Linux PC sales at IBM? Sun? Of course not. They don't sell to that segment. Neither does Dell, so why would you expect links to products and services they don't sell? Dell sells Linux products targeted at commercial applications. If you want consumer Linux, go someplace else.

Does anybody see the irony in this situation?

[macurmudgeon]

We have a company that was successful when the founder was running then foundered under his replacement. Now the founder returns and is righting the ship. Who would have thought that Dell would follow Apple's business model?

Re:Does anybody see the irony in this situation?

[krazytekn0]

This happens everywhere every day. I've been involved in the small business community in my area for most of my life (my dad has several complimentary businesses) and it's always the same story. Guy builds business from nothing, tries to retire and let someone else handle matters, business gets screwed over, founder comes back to fix things. It happens all the time.

Re:Does anybody see the irony in this situation?

[ElBeano]

I've been wondering about investing in Dell again after dropping them in the late 90's. I sure wish I'd done so with Apple circa 2002.

It's not irony.

[SatanicPuppy]

It's just that the interim weenie was out for profit at all costs. Profit at all costs makes you a lot of money, initially, but one of the costs is your customer base.

It's going to take them a long time to win back the people who they alienated.

Dell support and Linux

[btm]

We've used Dell gear in my last couple of jobs. We had some stupid level of support on our Latitudes at my last job and they'd send people out to replace the hard drives and little rubber feet and everything, which was sort of nice but still annoying to take care of. We use a ton of Dell servers at my new job and at least on the hard drive failures I've seen so far Dell support has been really good at overnighting new drive right out. However, I've always been frustrated by the support levels in the same way as Microsoft licensing. There are too many options, and these options all have different numbers you have to call. Sometimes when I use the online chat support, which is much nicer than sitting on the phone, they kick me away to phone support if I start asking two many Poweredge questions. For Poweredge and linux support I highly recommend their linux-poweredge mailing list. They've got at least a few of their dedicated linux engineers on there but there's good community support as well. Sometimes searching here directly with Google brings back results that you wouldn't have found using the entire intarweb. I'm really pushing for more debian and 64bit support as are many others. OMSA is a beast though. Mebbe IPMI will save the day.

Server side linux support is a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

It's clear that Dell cares about Linux, in that all their server-class hardware is well-supported by the Linux kernel and they have many people dedicated to making sure that's the case. However, it's not good enough just to boot,

Ding! On the server side:

• OpenManager (the all-seeing, all-encompassing web-based management tool) does not work on 64 bit OS's because it is compiled for 32 bit, and needs 32 bit libraries. The RPM dependencies are not properly set, which they claim they're "working on", but they can't even be bothered to provide a list of the packages we need to install
• Redhat AS / Centos 5.1 are not supported. Various drivers either don't load, or segfault after spewing error messages on the console.
• All the parameter conventions for their utilities are DOS-style. Example: "-?" to get help. Usage help returned by binaries sucks.
• There are no man pages....for ANYTHING.
• Basic unix filesystem conventions, much less the FHS, is/are ignored. Example: OpenManager installs loads of binaries into /etc/openmanager
• The various update utilities are compiled against older versions of libstdc++. The RPM dependencies don't account for this.
• The "driver update" DVD contains a "figure out what needs to be updated for firmware/bios", but is also compiled against a specific version of libstdc++. Installing the specific version it demands does nothing- it still refuses to work, claiming it needs the version you just installed. Did I mention that the first time you run suu, it spends several minutes copying itself into /tmp, and that the entire thing is a giant ugly clusterfuck of Java?

Don't get me started on what pieces of shit the "PERC" raid controllers (made by LSI) are...

Re:Server side linux support is a joke

[FreeUser]

OpenManager (the all-seeing, all-encompassing web-based management tool) does not work on 64 bit OS's because it is compiled for 32 bit, and needs 32 bit libraries. The RPM dependencies are not properly set, which they claim they're "working on", but they can't even be bothered to provide a list of the packages we need to install

Openmanager works fine on CentOS 4.x (x86_64) and Fedora7 (x86_64). We use it where I work with no problems at all.

(You are perhaps not aware that 64-bit Linux has no trouble running 32-bit apps, as long as you install 32-bit libraries in parallel with 64-bit ones?)

Redhat AS / Centos 5.1 are not supported. Various drivers either don't load, or segfault after spewing error messages on the console.

I have not had this problem on any of the Optiplex or Poweredge boxes I've run CentOS 5.x on

Your other criticisms I agree with for the most part. I could not have said it better with regard to Java, and am not a fan of the PERC controllers either.

Re:Server side linux support is a joke

[pboyd2004]

FYI OpenManage installs to /opt/dell/srvadmin by default and creates a link in /etc called openmange, it doesn't install there.

Re:Server side linux support is a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a bunch of Poweredge servers in my basement running CentOS, including a nicely loaded 6850 with an external Dell SCSI array (I had to use a 30A dryer outlet to get the required 240V but that's another story). In addition to the parent comments my gripe is that their DRAC4 cards are behind feature-wise compared to HP iLO cards, especially when compared to the iLO2 advanced cards. For the amount of money I spent I expected better from Dell. As a result of this and the above parent comments I haven't touched any of the 9th gen systems (1950/2950/etc) and the associated DRAC5 cards. I've shifted to buying HP Proliants (DL and ML) now.

Re:Server side linux support is a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

(You are perhaps not aware that 64-bit Linux has no trouble running 32-bit apps, as long as you install 32-bit libraries in parallel with 64-bit ones?)

Too bad (as my post mentions) that Dell doesn't set the dependencies properly, or even tell you which libraries you need to install. I'm not going to chase my fucking tail when they claim they support 64-bit Redhat AS. Manually trying to figure out what libraries are needed != "supported platform."

Overall, they just can't seem to be bothered about much.

Re:Server side linux support is a joke

[El_Oscuro]

This is pretty similar to the driver experience I have for Dell Windows PCs:

1. Goto to support.dell.com
2. Enter service tag for PC
3. Click on the drivers link
4. Get a list of about 50 drivers. Attempt to guess which one works for your PC.
5. Reboot and repeat. Apparently providing the service tag is not enough for them to show you the relevant drivers for your PC.

If you want to install Windows on one of their servers, you have to use their server configuration CDs which are Linux, as the Windows CDs don't recognize the PERC controllers

I am writing this from a Dell Ubuntu PC, which I don't need to download drivers for, as all of the hardware is natively supported by Ubuntu. It is the sweetest PC I have ever owned.

Re:Server side linux support is a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for the Openmanage team so I'll post AC
Some documentation is available at http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps2q07-20070309-Senthil-OE.pdf
Openmanage -The RPM dependencies are not properly set, which they claim they're "working on"
The dependencies are set correctly - The problem is that Redhat names their 32 and 64 bit packages with the same name, so "rpm -qa" will show that the package you need is installed while the 32 bit package will fail to install. Solution is usually to install both 32 & 64 bit.
Another complication is the CD size - Dell wants to support 3 flavors of Redhat and 3 of Suse on the same CD image - Having packages that meet these dependencies is a pain.
I am not sure if anyone is working on "fixing" this problem, but are certainly workarounds like using the yum repository at http://linux.dell.com/repo/software/. The users guide (on the documentation CD), the website also list it.
Redhat AS / Centos 5.1 are not supported.
The rpms support it, but the installation script fails.the main reason is because the package rarely gets tested on openipmi packages that CentOS provides. Openipmi is not controlled by Dell, so it is difficult to fix issues on centos stream
Dos Style & man page
Valid, this is a kludgey leftover from trying to support both windows and linux with same CLI
Libstdc++ Again because of need to support 3 versions of redhat. All required library rpms are in supportrpms folder.
Driver Update
This again is because of the same firmware package being designed for 3 OSes. Your point is valid - it is messy.
Since I am no longer at Dell, I cannot fix this issue, but could you please email a note to omi@dell.com / support.dell.com links or post on Dell Linux Mailing list with your exact issues - Make sure to highlight that you want those emails to be forwarded to OpenManaage Marketing...

Not sure on their linux side

[ducomputergeek]

Ironically, they are the same issues that drove me from recommending Gateway and go with Dell about a decade ago. Really this hit one of my clients about this time last year. (For the record I mostly do my Consulting business in video production arena, which is mostly dominated by Apple at the small/medium level and BOXX for those deploying none-custom Linux boxen) I was doing some work at a small medical supply company who were still running their inventory and billing software on 15 year old DOS based systems.

However, over the past few years I've been seeing an increase in the number of quality control issues on their PC boxes. Probably from cutting corners in the cost. Something similar happened to Gateway and Packard Bell back in the day. Also, the fact when people called tech support they got someone who barely spoke english and answered questions from a script further served to alienate users.

This time last year I was working on a project for a small mom & pop medical supply company. It was coming time for a new round of Medicare and state certifications, plus the owners were getting ready to sell the company and retire after running it for 25 years and their 15 year old computers running DOS wasn't going to make the cut. Especially when trying to sell the company. (Hey if you buy it, the first thing you have to do is buy $25k in hardware and software (mostly software).

Their software vendor was still in business. They recommended going with Dell (They had some sort of deal with them plus had stated they were able to get support from Dell as opposed to HP or other vendors with their product lines). However, the company was also very upfront with the fact that their software WOULD NOT work on Vista.

I kept telling the business owners they needed to purchase their workstations last January before the switchover to Vista happened. I kept telling them that as soon as Vista was released, they would not be able to get a Dell PC shipped with XP Pro. And I kept getting the: "We have 30k of public aid money coming. We'll buy them when it comes in." Now this was more of a small business owner problem than a Dell problem, but nothing happened for a couple months and I got a phone call at the end of Feb (may have been early March). "We called Dell, and they said they can't(won't) ship a PC workstation with XP pro on it. It's all vista and the software won't work on Vista and probably won't for another year or more!". I was originally hired to back up their data from the DOS box and for my advise on what to do next. (Going to a hosted solution, vs. storing the data locally, which basically meant listen to the sales folks, and then tell the owners of the business my opinion.)

I was nice and checked around and Gateway was the only somewhat major vendor, ironically, that still offered machines you could order with XP pro installed. Well, they ended up buying Dell's with Vista. and eventually spending another $500 downgrading to XP Pro. And that was after 3 months of being the software vendors Vista beta test bitch (And the software vendor still charged the medical supply company $15k with no discount for the honor)

And this wasn't the first time. I also remember this happening in the transition from Windows 2k pro to XP. A lot of my clients at the time liked Windows 2K Pro and saw no major need to upgrade right away. (And I still don't blame them.)

Re:Not sure on their linux side

[rmm4pi8]

You know, I've seen a lot of people complaining about not being able to get XP on new machines, but while Dell's "SOHO" store seems to make that difficult/impossible, the "Small Business" store (which does not require a volume floor, dedicated rep, or anything else) has always made XP fully available. Same goes for the Lenovo website. I fully anticipate both with continue holding out as long as Microsoft lets them in response to market demand from companies like mine which just have no incentive to make the plunge (especially as because XP's been out so long, all of our machines are on it, which is nice, and in addition to the expense anyone who's ever tried to upgrade Windows on 100 laptops knows that's pretty much a non-starter). Also, Dell only offers the better-quality Latitude notebooks through the small business store. Why does anyone even bother with the SOHO store? Is their marketing just that good?

Re:Not sure on their linux side

[initdeep]

1. They buy from SOHO because they have some sort of "deal" or "coupon" they found on a deal website or ebay.

2. You can still, as of last week, order a DELL Vostro Small Business Computer with Windows XP preloaded on it. I have five of them sitting here.

3. It's not really about accuracy on slashdot, it's about bitching and whining because the "rest of the world" hasn't seen the light and moved away from "M$" and their partners to the "wonderful world of Linux" which of course is completely perfect for every bit of hardware and software out there currently.

oh wait......

Re:Not sure on their linux side

[Anonymous Coward]

"Is their marketing just that good?"

No, it is just many consumers are that stupid. Dell was never anything but hyped up marketing dude.

Re:Not sure on their linux side

[atomic-penguin]

While that is an interesting anecdote. One, I am sure, which many others can relate. However, your complaint has very little to do with Linux and Dell hardware.

Re:Not sure on their linux side

[Tuross]

Why does anyone even bother with the SOHO store? Is their marketing just that good? I've never seen the point in having more than one store. The prices are identical on identical products, it just usually means you have to jump through hoops to get to the good products (hidden behind registrations and customer codes and so forth).

Last time I dealt with Dell their support was excellent - calling back when they said they would, actually putting on a knowledgeable expert and not just bouncing around to other clueless morons, sending a tech out next business day on the 3-day plan. I don't even recall having to ask any of their (Indian) call centre staff to repeat what they said (or put on the Indian cow-orker to talk to them in Hindi ;)

That being said right now they are really being let down by their hardware. I have an almost 4-year-old laptop that needs replacing. It's replacement? A model with an identical base - just a slightly faster CPU. The connections are still mostly at the rear, there's no Blu-ray option, no firewire, no DVI or HDMI output, just 4 USB ports paired up so its hard to be able to use all 4 simultaneously. No card readers, no fingerprint scanner (which I think is a bit of a wank, but still...) and it wants to be able to use something called a "floppy drive" - I remember seeing one of those in a museum ;) Oh and the touchpad is mounted higher than the keys so things go spaz when you accidentally thumb it while typing. I don't think its possible to get a 7400rpm drive either. The base, with lid closed, is about 5cm tall (very bulky!) and it weighs about 3 times as much.

HP, Asus and Toshiba do not have any of these problems. There is no possible way I can recommend a laptop that come the end of its 3-yr refresh period will be 10 years old.

Re:Not sure on their linux side

[Anonymous Coward]

2. You can still, as of last week, order a DELL Vostro Small Business Computer with Windows XP preloaded on it. I have five of them sitting here.

Except the 17" Vostro laptops - no WinXP for them. IIRC, no XP for any of the Dell 17" laptops. However, if you search the Dell forums, you can find instructions on how to get WinXP SP2 reliably installed onto some of the Dell laptops where XP isn't offered, including the Vostro 1700.

- T

Re:Not sure on their linux side

[ducomputergeek]

They offered XP again after MS allowed OEM's to go back and install XP Pro. But at the time back in Feb/March it was Vista or nothing. That's due to their arrangements with Microsoft for volume licensing. And we were working from their Small/Medium business store, not the SOHO. But Dell did the same thing when XP was released over 2K Pro.

Poor service, bad field engineers, poor quality

[olivercromwell]

I work for a large maker of an enterprise wide healthcare application. We sell a complete turnkey system including the hardware (servers and workstations). We used to sell Dell pro-actively as an alternative to Copmpaq/HP. We no longer do so, as we would continually run into problems with poor support, and horrible field engineers (contracted out to Unisys). In one instance, a customer lost a terabyte of data that needed to then be retrieved from tape (the filed engineer started swapping disks between cages in a RAID 0+1 enclosure). After several years of grief, we dropped Dell. If a customer insists on Dell, which som do, we no longer act on their behalf for hardware issues, as we would for an HP shop. Their support contracts cover our software only, and they are on their own as regards hardware support (including negotiating the support agreement itself). As far as I am concerned, Dell sucks, and it will take a WHOLE lot to convince me otherwise.

Re:Poor service, bad field engineers, poor quality

[aquatone282]

I work for a large maker of an enterprise wide healthcare application.

Is that better or worse than being Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland?

Re:Poor service, bad field engineers, poor quality

[WarlockD]

I hate to say it, Unisys contractors are basically "Hands of Dell" Your supposed to immediately call Dell and have them walk you though what your supposed to do. The problem I have seen, is that most of the guys we have just do what they are told. If they are told that a KVM module in a 1655MC is hot-swappable then it gets swapped. If ANOTHER day they are told it isn't, its not swapped and tells the customer they have to turn off the blade chassis to swap it.

Its kind of sad. I just got into the habit of replacing all parts on the off chance there is a short then diagnosing before I call Dell. If there is "data" involved I DON'T call dell unless there is a 90% chance of loss of data. (Say what you will about the PERC4 and 5, your data is not lost unless you do something stupid like click the "initialize" option or force online within the operating system) Its not that Dell doesn't care, its just there is a 1/3 chance I will get an inexperienced tech.

To be honest, I really have no problem with the hardware aspect of the equipment. But its making me think of what HP support (and pay) is like:P

Re:Poor service, bad field engineers, poor quality

[olivercromwell]

Well, let's just say we still sell HP pro-actively (over 98% of our systems sold are HP, with the remainder now largely being IBM). That's not to say we have not had problems with HP, as they let go of the Compaq field engineers a few years back, and contract out to Northrup Grumman. However, I have noticed that service is typically a lot more reliable when dealing with HP, than with Dell. For instance, the aforementioned instance when a Dell tech started moving drives between the sets in the 0+1 array. He was there to replace one failed drive, yet took it on himself to move drives around between the two mirrors. No one advised him to. He seemed to think it was possible, and would "speed" rebuild. I have never had that problem with the original Compaq FSE's, or the contracted FSE's that you get when dealing with HP. With over 1000 customers, and an install base of literally hundreds of severs, and 1000's of workstations, we get a good view as to just how good a company's support system is. That we no longer recommend Dell, and make the customer assume responsibility for all hardware if they do choose Dell speaks volumes. Oh, and Cromwell was a great man who preserved the primacy of Parliament over the Crown!

Re:Poor service, bad field engineers, poor quality

[WarlockD]

God I am sorry. He was an idiot in that case. Sigh. I used to think it was just the computer techs that have this kind of inconsistency with repairs. Discovered recently its the same with auto mechanics. Knowing that, it does make me wonder if its ever posable to have good consistent service:P

Interivewed because of Dell IdeaStorm post

[jeremycole]

Since I got interviewed for the article and then quoted in the Slashdot summary, I thought I'd pipe in... I was interviewed by Agam because of my post to Dell's IdeaStorm site about the PERC 5/i RAID controller:

Leverate LSI to Open Source MegaCli — Dell is using LSI's chipset (LSI MegaRAID SAS) in the PERC 5/i controller, but the tools to manage it are closed source and really suck. Vote on it NOW! :)

Re:Interivewed because of Dell IdeaStorm post

[Soko]

PERC 5/i controller

You know what PERC stands for, don't you?

Pray
Everything
Rebuilds
Correctly

That's true to a point

[ISoldat53]

But the hardware vendor has to support management and control software in it's hardware. The hard separation between hardware and software is much more fuzzy now. They must cooperate with the software vendors to make sure their hardware works with software. (If for no other reason than to sell to the software company.) BTW. Dell does do consulting and integration. The fact that you don't know about it is evidence of the poor job they have done marketing the fact. Or perhaps it reflects the poor job they have done in executing the task.

Re:That's true to a point

[mr_mischief]

Yeah, Dell does some consulting and integration. Mitsubishi makes canned Mandarin oranges, too. I still don't think of Mitsubishi when I think of oranges. In the US at least, that's not what they're (widely) known for doing. I've had Mitsubishi (under the name of Three Diamond, which is a subsidiary) canned Mandarin oranges, and they're tasty. I still don't think of them first when I think of oranges. I think of Sunkist or maybe Indian River. I think of Tropicana, Coca-Cola (Minute Maid), Prairie Farms, or Dean's for orange juice (Dean's and Prairie Farms both being primarily dairy brands, even). I don't think of Dell as a systems integrator or a consulting company. I think of them as a hardware vendor. I think of Mitsubishi as a car, TV, and PC drive manufacturer. I think of Hitachi, which is another company with hundreds of product lines, as a power tool, consumer electronics, and PC parts manufacturer. I know they make cranes, earth movers, medical equipment, and more. They might be very good at it, and may be known as well as Hil-Rom in the medical field and as well as Caterpillar in the construction field. These companies don't promote themselves as doing these things the way the big names do in the US. I imagine in Japan and possibly elsewhere they are the big names.

I'm in the computer field, and although I'm no longer in hardware and general IT, I think I have a pretty good idea of a difference between companies who "do consulting and integration" and companies who have consulting and integration as a core part of their business. Dell's general support has always felt tacked on to me. The fact that they employ some people to do integration or consulting makes little difference to me in what kind of company they are. It's not necessarily the marketing, but that might be part of it. Dell has yet to produce an OS (like IBM, HP, Sun, and SGI have). They have yet to, as far as I know, land an order for a four-rack cluster preconfigured for MPI, Beowulf, or LVS (like Microway does). They don't sell specialty laptops built around support for hardware and an OS noone else supports on laptops (like Tadpole does). They haven't designed or modernized whole processor families (like Sun, IBM, HP, SGI (well, MIPS, which SGI bought), Toshiba, Sony, Motorola, and Mitsubishi have). They haven't made significant contributions to the OSes they support (like IBM, HP, Sun, VA, SGI, and Linuxcare have done). They don't, as far as I'm aware, offer expert on-site or remote contract workers to actively manage your systems for you full-time (as IBM, Linuxcare, and lots of smaller consulting companies will do).

So, yeah, Dell offers some consulting and support. General Motors is one of the world's leading vendors of upholstered seating. I'm certainly not going to call GM to get a couch for my living room. I'm not going to call Dell to offer me consulting services when I tell them the drive in their Optiplex business desktop has a controller so dead that WD Diag won't find the drive, and they want to know the error code WD Diag gives before I can get an RMA. I feel like I'm in a Monty Python sketch whenever I have to call Dell's basic hardware support (including when I was working in a Dell authorized service center, and they still gave us the run-around about RMAs). This hard drive is no more. It wouldn't "voom" if you shot four thousand volts through it. This hard drive has ceased to be...

Here's a nickel kid get yourself a better computer

[wsanders]

It's not for lack of talent in the Dell Linux team. I've been following the Dell Linux server list for years, having been responsible for all-Dell Linux server farms in the past, and Matt Domsch and the team there has been doing great work, considering the obstacles thrown in their way by the randomness of the hardware.

This is constantly-morphing commodity hardware, with light-outs support, RAID, and other details optimized for Windows, and a new interface randomly tossed out the door in each new server model. The hardware lands in the the Linux support group's laps after the fact, and they do they best they can, bound by the proprietariness and sometimes just plain weirdness of the hardware features.

We'll start buying Dells again when they have standalone lights-out management like Sun and HP. They are making slow progress. It's unfair to say their stuff is junk. You can get good support, if you follow their rules.

Linux Scam to Sell Dell Windows

[Doc Ruby]

I tried to buy my cousin an Ubuntu Dell PC last week. The only desktop model with Linux preinstalled that they "sell" is the Inspiron Desktop 530N, with no support ("No OS" model, but you can choose them to preinstall either Ubuntu or FreeDOS) - though you can buy support from Canonical, like anyone else, for $275:year.

I tried to buy it. First I found that the $500 price depended on an "instant rebate". Sure, buying the Ubuntu version offered a rebate of $100, but the otherwise identical Windows version rebated $150 . And the Windows version included Dell OS support. I would be nearly crazy to buy the Ubuntu version instead of the Windows version, when Windows would give me an additional 10% off, I could download and burn an Ubuntu installer for $free, install dual-boot in 30 minutes, and have both - plus Windows support.

Then I tried to actually do that. And found that though that page is up, there are all kinds of order numbers attached (with even a few slightly variant models offering either Ubuntu or Windows preinstalled), "that offer is no longer available". In fact there are versions of that PC HW sold for as little as $369 starting (minus the monitor), but that HW starts at something like $800, against which Dell starts discounting. But none of them are Ubuntu preinstalled. And though the phone guy was friendly, sympathetic, experienced and working to help solve my problems, he hadn't even heard there was an Ubuntu version, and it turned out there wasn't.

So Dell doesn't really "sell" Linux desktops. But when they pretend to, it's a way to sell more Windows desktops, even to people who want Ubuntu instead.

Re:Linux Scam to Sell Dell Windows

[SpammersAreScum]

Curious. Just a few days ago I ordered an Inspiron 530N with Ubuntu for $350. Should be on my doorstep tomorrow (I missed the delivery guy today). Granted, that's without monitor, but it includes a bump up to 250G drive and DVD R/W...

Re:Linux Scam to Sell Dell Windows

[Doc Ruby]

Goddamn it. The entire point of buying a Dell rather than building it myself is to pay for their support, especially when specifying the machine features.

Well, at least my cousin still believes that's true, so she won't be calling me for help, even if Dell jerks her around some more.

Re:Here's a nickel kid get yourself a better compu

[Anonymous Coward]

The DRAC is completely stand alone, it has it's own NIC, you can ssh to it, etc

http://support2.jp.dell.com/docs/software/smdrac3/drac5/1.00/en/UG/html/racugc8.htm

Customer support

[D H NG]

I bought a Dell Linux laptop in July. A month later, my laptop ran into a problem (the wireless card stopped working). I called the Linux-only customer support line and was extremely satisfied with the result. The guy sounded like a knowledgeable Linux geek and walked me through the steps to diagnose my problem. We found the problem just before deciding to replace the card.

Two months later, I called again about a video card issue. It seemed that their customer support have deteriorated considerably. It sounded like they outsourced support to India, and the support drone was reading from a script. I tried explaining what I have tried but he still insists that I try those steps again. In the end, I gave up, and the issue is still unresolved.

Four years Sucking and Counting

[ballmerfud]

There is no turn around in Dell. And there was better Linux/BSD support for Linux *before* Dell supported Linux.

We've been a Dell customer for 10 years. The first five years were pretty good. The old PowerEdge servers were pretty nice. But I've never met a Perc card I liked.

What is a Perc card? Well, it is generic term for the card that Dell happens to be rebranding at the moment.

What is rebranding? Well, take a perhaps decent card, screw with it for the sake of vendor lock-in, so that the original vendor's drivers and utilities no longer work with it, degrade its performance beyond measure without any hope of cure, and you have a Dell rebrand.

The new MD1000, while pretty nice arrays, are only officially supported if you use a Perc 5e card. This card is a true Dell rebrand of an LSI MegraRAID. It's a thousand dollar turd. There are no decent utilities (in fact all LSI megaraid utils will NOT work). They even took away some of the simple command line utilities for Linux like lsiutil, and replaced it with a huge, bloated Java application. Can you imagine that piece of bloatware as your only means of talking to your drive array? And FreeBSD support, while the FreeBSD community has made a valiant effort trying to support this piece of shit, still is not worth it. It's lackluster performance at best.

But here's the real kicker about the Perc 5e: It does not allow direct pass through. Yeah, that's right, if you get fed up with it's lame RAID 10 performance (and it is lame we've confirmed that software RAID on Linux and FreeBSD is significantly faster), you can't directly reach your drives. So if you want to implement software RAID, you have to configure independent RAID0 virtual disks in the Perc 5e BIOS. Why? so Dell can lock you in to their proprietary, rebranded, turd card. This is a wonderful new feature unique to the Perc 5 that wasn't there with Perc 4.

But, as we found out, the Perc 4 was an even bigger piece of crap. It was a rebranded Adaptec that had over a year-long history of locking up under heavy loads on Linux systems. They were selling this so-called Linux supported PowerEdge 2650 (boat anchor) for over a year knowing that it locked up under stress:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=92129

We got burned by this and it took us weeks to resolve (went through 3 Perc 4 cards with same result, and ended up putting in a LSI card).

If you need anything with real RAID support, run from Dell. We've been pretty pleased with the MD1000, but that Perc 5 card sums up Dell. Buy a 3ware or Areca instead. Who cares if Dell won't support the MD1000 if you use it, they don't support it anyway. Of all our calls to Dell enterprise support, we've talked to one person who seems to have half of a clue.

There is no such thing as Dell support. And their lame attempt at vendor lock-in only makes it worse. And that is why Dell is drowning.

We've moved to HP. And we've been really happy with our HP servers. Is HP support any better? I can't say. But we don't have near the vendor lock-in and rebranded voodoo we get from Dell.

Re:Four years Sucking and Counting

[happyhangone]

Well... you can connect the MD1000 to a SASE controller if you need passthrough performance on that disk array. And the PERC 4 were also LSI. The PERC 3 was the real mess... some of them were LSI... some of them were adaptec..

Re:Here's a nickel kid get yourself a better compu

[wsanders]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think even DRAC 5 requires OS support. To be honest, I have not taken a look at this in a couple of years, so it's worth revisiting.

Re:Here's a nickel kid get yourself a better compu

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, to do some of the fancy stuff remote ISO upload, etc it does sure, but that's just basic USB CDROM and USB HDD support.

Dell vs HP

[MTinCT]

We normally order desktops in bulk of 500+ at a time. We changed over to HP from Dell due to a cost savings in addition to better hardware. We had around 400 Dell Optiplex 270's and 280's ordered. 80% of them are goign on the third round of motherboards due to 1. popped capaciters, 2. leaking capaciters or 3. racing cpu fans due to bad motherboards.

Re:Here's a nickel kid get yourself a better compu

[zarqman]

drac 5's web interface works in firefox on both mac and linux, although the virtual console (and probably virtual media, haven't tried) only works on i386 linux.

the drac cli is basically com2 virtualized, so will need os support. telling linux to display the console and getty on ttyS1 does the trick.

that said, it is more work and isn't nearly as nice as ibm's rsa card.

Dell complaining about low uptake of Linux PCs

[OwlWhacker]

Dell recently moaned about the low uptake on its Linux PCs. I'm not surprised, considering what they were offering.

I have bought several machines from Dell over the past few years, the latest being an Inspiron 550, and have installed Linux on all of them.

Fedora 8 runs beautifully on the Inspiron 550, which is a very inexpensive machine, for which there is no option to buy with Linux installed.

So, really, Dell shouldn't complain about the low uptake on its Linux PCs but should offer more diversity of machines that come with Linux!

Dell: Offer Ubuntu on more hardware if committed

[bkoehler]

I'm reposting my comment from Dell's IdeaStorm site.

In late October 2007 I wanted to purchase a Core 2 Duo desktop to run Ubuntu and had decided on the Dell XPS 410n.

When I went to purchase the machine I discovered that not only had it been pulled from the scarce three machine lineup that Dell offers with Ubuntu but that I could find no news or information when a replacement (e.g. XPS 420n) would be offered.

I emailed Lionel Menchaca regarding how Direct2Dell would be the ideal place to announce changes of this nature, and subscribed to the Dell Linux-Desktops mailing list to watch for announcements. Nearly two months have passed and yet Dell's Ubuntu lineup hasn't changed. If Dell's marketing is to be believed and Ubuntu has arrived by popular demand I suspect Dell would be more successful if they offered it on more than just two pieces of hardware (currently the Inspiron Desktop 530N and Inspiron Notebook 1420N).

Time to adjust your meds, nutjob.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you're so fucking desperate for attention that you're calling out utterly random dada-ist shit that has nothing to do with Linux, Microsoft, or IT in general as anti-Linux, pro-Vista astroturfery.

I think its about time you considered a new psychiatrist. The one you're seeing now isn't getting the job done.

Great!

[softdevs]

I'll try to have one... software company

Poor prices from Dell, sorta

[Kickstart70]

We buy a ton of computers from Dell and HP and the one thing that really bugs me about Dell is that they give price breaks on the same models to consumers first, and then we 'premium' buyers basically have to beg them to match that price. Same models, crappier prices for their business customers. I just don't understand....do they think we can't see their banner ads all over the internet?

And then

[Anonymous Coward]

you can read the Windows EULA, disagree to it and then, as per EULA, request a refund for Windows.

Install Ubuntu.

????

Profit.

my bad Dell experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought 3 Dells in the past year, to be fair, I think their PCs are well priced and work all right. I just couldn't be bothered going to buy all the parts myself and put them together. Anyway one of the PCs took like 3-4 weeks to arrive (their excuse was that the monitor was out of stock), when they said they would deliver, they asked me for a time slot during the day. I was actually surprised they could deliver after hours. So I told them something like 7pm. Anyway, noone turned up. So I called them back and when I spoke to their sale rep. She kept on going "ahuh, ahuh" coupled with the fact that I was already annoyed when I didn't get my PC.

Just give us a decent search form!

[CarpetShark]

Also, if someone has an OS preference and is the IT department or has purchasing power in the IT department, one should be able to install the preferred OS. Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Suse, OpenSuse, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, RedHat, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Knoppix, eComStation, QNX, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003

You forgot BeOS and AROS ;)

Seriously... I could care less about getting machines with ANY of these these installed. I just want to know that they'll work on it, and that I'm not paying for some OS I don't plan to use (either directly, through a hidden tax, or through balancing of costs for other customers who DO want that OS).

Just give me search form, with options like "Windows 32-bit drivers: Certified", "Windows 64-bit drivers: direct from manufacturer", "Linux 64-bit drivers: in kernel tree (mainline/mm/etc)", "Linux 32-bit drivers: open source", and, importantly even for windows, "manufacturer guarantees to support new OS versions and bit-widths for these drivers until ___ years from now". Then, I just need an option to complain (bitterly) if the search comes back with no results.

Re:Prooootchlll

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, there's no way trolls like you can stink up the rise of linux

Not when you're already doing such a masterful job of it, no.