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Dell Officially Supporting Linux?
An anonymous reader sent us a link to an article over
at FairFax where you can read that
Dell is Supporting Linux.
It will supposedly be an "Entry Level Server" and will be
available in the next few months.
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righteous
Dell has had Linux drivers for their PowerEdge servers for some time and you have been able to purchase a server without an OS too. The more support the better though :). A big pat on the back for Dell, they are open minded enough to see a market in supporting Linux (as IBM and others are also beginning to show too). It's nice to see these big vendors supporting Linux, it is a great compliment to the hard work and dedication to those that have made Linux what it is today. My hat goes off to you all who have given so much to the development of Linux.
distro: if it's being sold in north america, it'll be Red Hat. Can you honestly imagine Dell selling servers preloaded with Slackware? :-)
servers: well, the bottom line for Linux is that when you take into account its performance on low-end hardware, and its cost, it is a *killer* choice for low-end servers. On the high end, I think people are still skittish of "freeware", as the article puts it. Dunno why, I can't think of anything much more high-end than Yahoo, and they use "freeware" server software...
I just hope Microsoft doesn't bully them into
changing their minds nor that Dell limits this
preinstalled Linux deal to outside the US given
that Microsoft has a tight grip of the US market.
From what I've seen of Dell, they do nothing software-wise unless it's with Microsoft's approval. Dell gets the very best discounts on W95,NT and office. You dont do anything to piss off your suppliers in a market where a couple of bucks make a huge difference in margin. I'm sure the Linux options was done with approval, if only tacit, from Redmond. It helps make the case for MS if Linux is shipped by one of their biggest distributers. Dell just recently absolutely resufed to ship a machine with Netscape installed as a default browser. Bill owns M. Dell's corporate soul.
The back cover of the last mailing I received
from Dell had a picture of a laptop with a bunch
of penguins on it.
Dell is bundling TNT cards and TB Montego sound cards with their high end systems nowadays. Best case scenario is they sink some money into decent free drivers for these products. YEAH RIGHT! Like that will ever happen...
"Fortes are my Forte" - Moe Yerca
I wonder if MS gets a cut for each of these sold.
I was under the impression that the main PC vendors (Dell, Compaq, Gateway, etc) had it in their contracts to pay MS for an OS on each system sold, whether it had Windows on it or not.
To quote the article: ``The no license fee (for Linux) is attractive for us and our customers.'' That could be interpreted as ``no license fee, period'', or as ``no license fee for Linux, but still a fee to MS''. Just curious as to which it is.
Dell went from saying "We do not use shareware of freeware..." to shipping Linux... and just in time for the DOJ lawsuit where M$ will try to use Linux as a defence. IMHO, Dell has no credibility.
Notice that they didn't state *when* they'll start shipping servers. Also notice that they are putting Linux on "entry-level" servers. Last I checked, Linux smoked NT...
Fairfax probably shouldn't have FunkyCaps, because it's a family name. For whose who care, they are the publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age (Melbourne) and the Australian Financial Review.
Needs:
1) ECC Memory. Handled by the motherboard.
2) Hardware RAID. See AMI MegaRAID (woohoo!)
3) 100 Mbit NIC support. 3Com or Intel.
4) Robust SMP. We're waiting patiently.
5) Support for stupidly large quantities of RAM. See above.
6) Load balancing and failover protection. Anybody? Buehler?
This is above and beyond all the software like databases, network file systems, transaction monitors, ERP packages, yadda, yadda, yadda.
So what is Dell bringing to the table other than some propietary odds and ends? FIBRE-CHANNEL!?! Can anyone say Linux SAN!? Until Dell does something like this, they can get bent. Buy your gear from a Linux HW vendor, like VA.
High Performance Computing Fan
Apparently Dell in the UK have been offering free pre-installation of Linux (think it was RedHat) if you bought them in quantities of five or more for a few months now. If you bought less than five, IIRC, there was an install charge of approx £200.
I think this was limited to corporates to begin with, but it looks like they've decided to expand things.
this is something that has been in the pipe for longer than the microsoft trial, so it's pretty unlikely that Bill Gates has anything to do with this. doesn't it sound more like dell is moving to provide a supply for a growing demand?
;) opinion
now, you are correct about not pissing off your suppliers, but remember that Dell won't be the first big OEM to offer linux on their server line, and being the first to offer support for it gives them a marketing angle in a market that dell is relatively new to, and is keen to capture marketshare in. this is about making money, capturing a growing market earlier than your foes and nothing else.
just my (in this case pretty well informed
AC
Linux SMP was tolerable in 2.0 and totally rocks in 2.1. I should know. I run an SMP box at home.
Linux has supported the tulip based cards for ages now.
A fellow employee is running Linux with 512MB of RAM, no problem. It should be able to support a couple of gigabytes (Whatever the intel archetecture limits you to.)
Maybe you should look into beowulf or linux DIPC. Sure you have to write your apps yourself but most shops that need that sort of thing will be doing that anyway.
Maybe you should look at a modern version of Linux. We've come a long way since the 1.2 days, which is obviously the last time you looked at it.
I can't say anything first-hand about Dell officially supporting Linux, but I do know there are people at Dell looking at Linux pretty closely. Here are some examples.
I had an email conversation with one Dell employee about how Red Hat installation floppies are put together (we both learned something); the same employee has infrequently posted to the aic7xxx mailing list. A non-Dell person I was trying to help eventually got a fix from the "linux guy at dell" (email quote), who is a different employee; BTW, the fix was to set the LILO mem= below the 1 gig limit.
So while official support of Linux by Dell is still a rumor, I can confirm that Dell does have some interest in Linux.
Tom Bylander
bylander@cs.utsa.edu
I'm too lazy to get an account, and I wouldn't remember the password anyway.
The Intel AD450NX platform (like the VArServer 4100) supports Quad Xeons and 8 Gigs of memory.
Linux's current SMP is not very efficient. I'd like an EIGHT-WAY running full-bore, thank you. Windows NT had such crappy SMP support that eight-way vendors (AXIL) just couldn't sell anything. I don't want to see that happen with Linux
Someone else already mentioned that Linux doesn't support more than 2 gigs of RAM.
Beowulf is for massively parallel processing, it has nothing to do with either load balancing, or failover.
Don't get me wrong, Linux is 80% there. But I'd like to see Linux boxen replacing overpriced Suns, HP9000's, RS/6000's, and Tandem Non-Stop clusters.
I'd also like to see this hardware support sooner, rather than later, so the world can see just how much of a joke NT is compared to Linux on high-end hardware.
If you're in for some hard work, you can go to the NetCraft survey page. There, you'll be able to query any site to see their server and OS. If you're more interested about how they are implemented, I'm afraid you'll have to go to someplace like ElectricLibrary or EBSCO and search for articles.
This is especially nice considering their awful
FUD-oriented full page ad in computer world last
year, which should a windoze Start button and
'ls -lR' and 'WHAT WOULD YOU RATHER DO?' in 1-million-point Times Roman Bold across the top.
I can forgive them now.
-dug
I'll believe it when I can select "Debian GNU/Linux" from the OS selector on dell.com...
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Just lurking, thanks!
While this looks as undervalued position it is possibly not so bad at all - for spreading of Linux it is maybe the best starting point.
Cheap servers -> volume sales -> market share. Not to mention less IIS' as time passes, main distribution point for IIS are preinstalled servers.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
Wow, It looks like even Dell thinks MS is gonna lose the case :) I still think they will wait until the final decision before officially supporting Linux.
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-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
It's annoying how people who write these article keep referring to Linux as 'freeware'. It doesn't mean the same as 'Free Software' or 'Open Source' it simply means software that costs nothing.
It is particularly incorrect as many people pay for Linux (whether it's a few $$$ for a cheap CD or a full distribution).
The use of the word freeware probably puts a lot of corporations off the idea of using Linux.
Every person who uses the term 'freeware' when referring to Linux should be politely emailed suggesting the correct terms to use (no offensive flaming, just constructive criticism).
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Umm, didn't Microsoft agree not to charge per-processor in their 1995 consent decree? I'm pretty sure that they did. If they did agree to that but are still doing it, I think the DOJ has another case ahead....
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Hrm. I thought UNIX WAS the one to beat. When you put Linux in with UNIX, marketshare makes NT look small. Maybe it's just knee-jerk reaction, but I think Bill and Dell are up to something. Hopefully I'm completely wrong.
Just for the record, in the late 2.1/2.2pre kernels, SMP has been very very happy for me. While I'm sure work always remains, the current code is excellent.
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Funny how money changes things. 6 months ago
Dell was asked whether they would consider
installing Linux as an alternative OS. Their relpy? When hell freezes over or something to that affect. "Dell does not use shareware or freeware on their systems."
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com
Just imagine, what with no W2K tax, and Linux efficiency and performance, the savvy buyers will buy the Linux cut rate server at half the price and laugh all the way to the bank. Then as word gets out...
Can youimagien PC Week or one of those rags comparing a cut rate Linux server against a dual PII W2K octsing twice as much? I drool in anticipation.
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Infuriate left and right
While this is good news IMHO it's not earth shattering. In fact the article is a bit behind the times in that some of the usual FUD about no support for Linux etc. I don't know where or why journalists feel the need to write about that which they know nothing about. I guess repeating rumours is easier than investigation. Even a cursory investigation would have revealed that there are numurous avenues for commercial support....maybe I'm just tired and took it out of context... :-)
Cheers,
Nick
LSG
Even more support for Linux in the commercial world, it just keeps getting better. :) It would be nice to be able to have a huge vendor/distributor like Dell for Linux. Hopefully this will increase some ITs awareness on Linux.
Force Recon Half-Life TC: Check it out
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A move like this could get other companies to do the same, if Dell pulls this off, it would really make a impact on linux in the server side environment in major businesses.
Really nice too see someone comming to their sences. =)
i cant seem to come up with a sig.