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1 of 3 Dell Inspiron Mini Netbooks Sold With Linux
christian.einfeldt writes "According to an article in Laptop Magazine on-line, one-third of Dell Inspiron Mini 9s netbooks are sold with the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Dell senior product manager John New attributed the sales volume to the lower price point of the Ubuntu Linux machines. And the return rate of the Ubuntu Linux machines is approximately equal to that of comparable netbooks sold with Microsoft Windows XP. Dell spokesperson Jay Pinkert attriutes the low return rate to Dell's good communications with its customers, saying 'We have done a very good job explaining to folks what Linux is.'"
Netbooks are the prefect place to introduce people to Linux. Because they generally don't expect to play games (Other than flash games and the like) or use them for a lot of officework, Linuxes major flaws are not apparent, while its advantages (Free, faster) are.
If I were involved in the Linux community I'd be pushing hard for a lot of development of drivers and the like for Unbutu (Linux needs some name recognition somewhere)
That's why the previous story about difficulty with the EEE and Linux was disturbing to me.
Isn't that what stops people from switching to Linux in the first place? On the other hand, if Linux is supplied by the OEM, they're just as likely to keep Linux versus switching to Windows, "just in case."
\\//_ Live long and prosper.
Its a crippled kernel that only recognizes 1 GB of RAM. They also rebranded Firefox 3 as "Web Browser" and installed a Yahoo! toolbar by default, and had Yahoo! as the default search engine by default. The crapped up Firefox some other way so that the trackpad scrolling worked HORRIBLY. If you have one of these machines, spend $20 on a 2 GB stick of RAM and install the vanilla version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix from:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR
You'll have a MUCH better experience. I have one and now love it, I hate what Dell did to "their" ubuntu though. They added no value and imposed artificial limitations to the hardware. Its really slick on that lowend hardware without Dell's cruft.
My Babylon
I would really prefer Dell to ship the standard xfce or gnome interface for their machines, rather than trying something 'cute' like HP. A pretty layer would entail developing a whole new layer over the existing UI. This layer, inevitably would have bugs and irritating traits because of one simple reason -- It takes a lot of time and talent to create a good user interface/desktop environment. I would think that HP has slapped on a pretty but buggy and quickly developed layer over gnome to make it look cool, which ultimately will go on to frustrate the user. Then, Linux would be blamed and not that cruddy attempt at coolness.
well dell currently offers the xp version with more ram at less cost (after a $150 "rebate") , so i think i'll just be putting on ubuntu after market. (only problem i can see is getting rid of the stupid microsoft sticker from the bottom without it becoming all gummy
What proportion of Dell Inspirons are running pirated XP? My guess - around 32%.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I believe the stock kernel always has, since the hardware always has. IIRC Dell's modified kernel only supports 1 GB of RAM (and they provide NO updates in their repos) so that their marketing agreement with Microsoft that they not sell an item that can support more than 1 GB of RAM on it is abided by.
My Babylon
Not to rain on the FOSS parade, but the Dell Mini 9 is a huge favorite among the Hackintosh crowd. No doubt a lot of them are buying the Linux version (after all, it's cheaper, why pay for XP?), but then immediately reformatting to install OS X.
The 1 GB limitation is probably due to the way they have the kernel compiled. The Linux kernel has a 1 GB limitation unless you have High Memory enabled. If I remember correctly, the kernel runs faster if High Memory is disabled, which is why Dell probably has the kernel configured that way. Linux mini 9s come standard with 512MB. Way too much information that I don't understand can be found here: http://kerneltrap.org/node/2450
As for the yahoo toolbar junk, I can't defend Dell on that one...
Thanks for the UNR link, I didn't know about that. I actually ordered a mini 9 with Linux a week ago when Dell was having a sale on em. ($284 w/ 1mp webcam, 1gb ram, 8 gb ssd) Can't wait for it to get here.
The problem are the other two thirds.
What? I'm sorry, What???
We're seeing Linux have 33% market share on a general-purpose computer. Yes, I know, it's a certain class of computer but what I driving at is that it's a machine that is suited for a wide variety of tasks (as opposed to only being a router, phone, DVR, text reader, etc.).
I'd love to live in a world where Linux had 33% market share on general-purpose computers. I think that trading one monopoly (MS) for another (Linux) is not a good thing, even if I like Linux.
What I'd much rather see is a wider variety of OSes and no one kind having a dominant position. That way, we can have more competition, more attention paid to being cross-platform and (hopefully) more interoperability.
I don't much care what everyone else uses as long as I have a good experience with Linux. As long as I can't make people stop hosting their videos in stupid flash wrappers (and gnash doesn't work very well) I'm dependent on flash working well enough on Linux. As long as there are no fast graphics cards with open-source drivers, I'm dependent on the proprietary ones.
So, I want the people in control of the software I have to run to be happy to treat the platform I run with some kind of respect.
But I don't want my choices imposed on anyone else. To healthy competition!
Some points to note as a Mini owner and occasional contributor at www.mydellmini.com: 1)Minis are capped with a 16gb solid-state drive if you choose WindowsXP; you can get up to a 64gb drive if you choose Linux 2)Many geeks are buying bare naked Minis with 512mb memory and 4gb drives for $250, and then equipping them with aftermarket runcore 64gb drives and 2gb of memory (another $200 for upgrades). To get the price low, they buy the Linux system and then load Windows or OSX (I know, kinda sick but they are talking about it on mydellmini.com) Bottom line: I think these numbers are skewed by geeks and bargain hunters.
Because of a deal they made with MS.
Call your dell rep and ask they will tell you all about it.
Get over it. I use the hedrat at work and it sucks. Yum is a garbage package manager and their repositories contain little to nothing.
It seems a real stretch to suggest that the numbers of people installing a hacked OSX would be more then a small fraction of either:
I'd venture that most of the slashdot crowd would install there favorite OS. I have no real feel for what the average Dell customer would do though, and I rather suspect that few of us here do.
It is credible to me that a significant portion of the 32% is XP installs, but it also seems likely to me that over half of that 32% remain a linux install. As a prior post indicated, the price point is not huge, which limits the the re-installs to the fully intentional pirates (i.e. you are fully intending to pirate when you purchase). I rather doubt the few bucks saved means that much to most Dell customers, and that most of that 1/3 at least intend to use Ubuntu when they purchase.
I can't really blame them for altering their version of Linux, at least not as an abstract rule. At the very least, they're going to want to re-theme it for branding purposes, to give it a distinctive look, or at least to get rid of the Ubuntu brown. The probably should make sure that it has any fixes relevant to their hardware, assuming the distro doesn't accept their patches or just hasn't accepted the patches into the "stable" version yet. On top of that, of course they're going to want to add value if they can think of a way to do that.
Of course, that assumes that they have people at their company who are qualified to do this. The theme has to be good. The value-adds have to actually add value. That's not as easy as it seems. And then, these companies will unfortunately also try to protect their additions by trying to make it so their competitors can't use them. That's going to run afoul of the open source community even if not violating the GPL.
Here's something I'd love for Dell to do: create their own apt repositories (and repositories for any other package managers are used by distros they support) that provides drivers and any other software (e.g. openmanage) for all of their hardware. Servers, desktops, netbooks, everything.
It's not a distro responsibility to make sure all the devices have current drivers, it's the manufacturer's job to do that.
DEMAND THEY DO IT.
And accept nothing less.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yes, it works well, it's fast, and all hardware is supported. Installation is done with a retail Leopard disk, so it's a lot cleaner than most hackintoshes, and it's safely updateable.
How To: Hackintosh a Dell Mini 9 Into the Ultimate OS X Netbook
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
A not-insignificant chunk is running OS X, as well.
How To: Hackintosh a Dell Mini 9 Into the Ultimate OS X Netbook
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
I'd conjecture not. Hey, we have the same amount of data!
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
I meant that the Dell Ubuntu lpia kernel was initially limited to 1GB, but has since been updated to allow 2GB. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6435627
So after the beginning of January, Dell Ubuntu no longer has the "crippled kernel that only recognizes 1GB of RAM", it supports the full 2GB.
I am not a *blank*, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
If that's true, that's the sort of thing I'd want regulators to stomp on, not that "don't bundle IE" silliness.
Forcing Microsoft to bundle something other than IE in their own O/S is daft.
Much better to force Microsoft to not "encourage" companies like Dell to artificially cripple/hobble/handicap Microsoft's competitors. Or to do stuff like "Hey if you sell stuff with Linux, we'll charge you more for Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office".
the year of Linux on the nettop!
Assuming that it is true that loads of people are installing Microsoft Windows XP on their Linux-powered Dell Inspiron netbooks (which I'm not sure is true, since the original article didn't mention that), it doesn't really matter. A Linux sale is a Linux sale. When the Dell managers evaluate their future strategies, how much will they consider whether XP was installed post-sale? Very little.
And the same is true for Dell's competitors. If Dell's competitors see that they can move product in a down market by installing Linux on the machines, will they spend much time contemplating whether XP is installed on the machines? Probably not.
Most OEMs have small margins on their sales of all but the upper-end machines. Volume is what matters. Hence the power of Microsoft Windows. At least until today. For OEMs and pretty much everyone in the channel, volume is what matters. As of today, they will know that Linux distros have proven that they can drive one-third of that volume. That is what really matters.
And it gets better. As Linux-related desktop sales increase, you will see more and more third party vendors, such as 2dBoy, port their products to Linux, as maker of the popular indy game World of Goo has recently done.
Volume is king. And now Linux is seeing some significant volume sales.
"1 of 3 Dell Inspiron Mini Notebooks sold with Linux"
"1 of 3" and not "1 in 3"? Big deal. So Dell sold 1 notebook with Linux. How is that going to put a dent in Microsoft's market share?
"But this one goes to 11!"
The machine performs better with the stock UNR installed on it, so why would you assume that?
My Babylon
Why else would they have a deals in place with Dell to nerf the netbooks, spend the energy to bring down the Windows 7 requirements, and keep Windows XP around just for netbooks?! If you aren't in the Microsoft OS you lose all the lock-ins they worked so hard for- Office formats, multimedia DRM, workflow ecosystem.
Microsoft Office sales start to go away when people realize that Open Office works for most folks and more files that aren't using proprietary formats means they need to start working with them better... which means other formats become viable... you no longer need MS Office and the cycle is broken.
They need people to stay in their ecosystem!
the package was called firefox3 in apt-get/aptitude/dpkg/synaptic/Add/Remove Programs, but the icon was changed as was all branding inside the browser. Might even be in hot water for distributing a changed binary called firefox.
My Babylon
not-insignificant? You found a clever way of saying significant. You sly dog.
But I disagree that a significant percent of Mini 9 owners are running OS X.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
Note that most users don't have USB CD-ROM drive to install pirated XP on such netbook in the first place. And installing XP from USB stick or via network... I better stick with Linux instead for it is much easier.
In case of netbooks the argument "they just buy it cheaper to install pirated Windows" doesn't hald.
Same for Australia - nothing but Microsoft Windows from Dell for any consumer grade machine, which is frustrating as a customer, there is no way I'm going to be paying for something I don't want.
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
No Linux version here in Australia. If it's accounting for 1/3 of sales, why the hell isn't it available?
I certainly won't buy the Windows version, but I'd definitely consider the Linux version.
I thought I agreed with you on your comment, but then I thought about it for a moment. People who do the whole "warez" thing, and who have been doing it for years, know how to work stuff like this.
As a teen, I was pretty heavily into warez. Everyone who was 'into' computers was. It's just what you did, and how you got your software when you were a kid. So how would a person go about putting XP on a laptop that has no CDROM?
I've installed Windows (2003) on a system with SATA but no floppy drive. I don't remember exactly how I did it, because I seem to recall that USB was not available within the setup, either. But I do remember it was a huge pain in the ass.
Things have gotten easier since then, much easier, with the widespread use of LiveCDs. Windows fans have learned a lot from the Linux community, and BartPE helped a lot in that regard. A cursory look at various torrent sites tells me that there is "live" XP for installation on USB media.
This would, I believe, make the installation of Windows to the internal disk on a netbook fairly trivial. In fact, one of the first search results was "Windows XP sp3 Lite for ASUS eee PC". Seems like XP is getting a fairly wide acceptance/installation on netbooks to me.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers