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

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.

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: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!