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.'"

Comments

Netbooks and Linux

[Paranatural]

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.

Re:Netbooks and Linux

[h4rr4r]

Drivers are for the kernel, not for a distribution.

Re:Netbooks and Linux

[d3ac0n]

The problem with the GP's comments is that he fails to take into consideration that XP (and other versions of Windows) REQUIRE the use of:

a) Antivirus software. Yes, you CAN do without it, and many technically minded people do. But you HAVE to know how to properly secure your machine and you will still need to use a one-shot scanner like Trend Micro's on occasion. For the AVERAGE (IE: most of the population) user, they will want AV software. Once that's installed you can kiss your speed goodbye. Especially if you load up what MOST users load up, either Symantec or Macaffee.

b) Anti-Spyware software. See Antivirus software.

Those two items, particularly the first one, completely KILL any speed advantage Windows has, handing the speed mantle to any of a dozen linux distros quite easily. Again, to keep it honest, we MUST compare standard setups to standard setups. Linux does not require AV software, Windows does. Simple fact of life in the modern computing world.

So, rather then your strawman argument of stupid people starting the "Linux is faster" meme, it was actually experienced users used to dealing with (and setting up) multiple platforms that have seen the difference and let others know.

Re:The problem are the other two thirds

[jonlandrum]

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."

Re:"HP's Linux"

[ericrost]

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.

So..

[Hognoxious]

What proportion of Dell Inspirons are running pirated XP? My guess - around 32%.

Re:"HP's Linux"

[ericrost]

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.

What, 33% market share and we're complaining?

[jonaskoelker]

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!

Re:What, 33% market share and we're complaining?

[Chris Burke]

We're seeing Linux have 33% market share on a general-purpose computer.

A general-purpose consumer model, Tier 1 OEM computer, no less. FFS, what does it take to make someone happy these days? If you could have sent word of this back in time to me in 2000, I would have shit a joyous brick just to know such a future was possible.

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.

A Linux "monopoly" really wouldn't be the same thing as the Windows monopoly -- aside from being mostly POSIX, it's also open source, so interoperability isn't a big issue, and there can be competition just amongst linux distros. But yeah, I tend to agree. I'm not that worried, since I don't see a situation where Linux eats all of Window's marketshare, but MacOS doesn't take any for itself.

Re:What, 33% market share and we're complaining?

[nine-times]

But I don't want my choices imposed on anyone else. To healthy competition!

I agree with this. I may be in the minority here, but I don't want Windows to die. I just want Microsoft to be in a position where they have to fight fair because they don't have the influence to rig the entire market.

Global software monoculture wouldn't be such a good thing. It's always good to have valid competitors, so long as there's actually a level playing field.

Re:What, 33% market share and we're complaining?

[impaledsunset]

I think that trading one monopoly (MS) for another (Linux) is not a good thing, even if I like Linux.

Just to remind you that there is a difference between a free system and a proprietary one when we are talking about monopoly.

First, the word monopoly is connected to the market, and is tied to the vendor, not the program in question -- claiming that GNU/Linux has a monopoly would be like claiming that electricity has monopoly in the power market. It simply doesn't lead to any of the problems usually associated with monopoly in economics that I've studied or read about. It's about the _vendors_, not about the products, goods or programs.

However, if there was a monopoly of a single vendor of services for GNU/Linux (for example, Canonical), which is, given the nature of free software, impossible, it would still cause a lot less trouble than what you get from monopoly with abusive anti-competitive practices and vendor lock-in. In your hypothetical situation, you aren't replacing your broken leg with a broken arm, you are replacing it with a painful bruise.

Optimistic at Best

[leeosenton]

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.

Re:"HP's Linux"

[nine-times]

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.

Re:The problem are the other two thirds

[bconway]

A not-insignificant chunk is running OS X, as well.

How To: Hackintosh a Dell Mini 9 Into the Ultimate OS X Netbook

Re:"HP's Linux"

[0prime]

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.