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Dell to offer Linux on Dimension Line
Quite a number of people have written in with the news that Dell is going to be expanding their Linux support. Beginning in October, they will be offering installation of Linux on their hugely popular Dimension Line of PCs-before this, it had only been offered on servers. Will this mean more competition for the VAs and Penguins?
Whe are you people going to learn, RH has the most corporate recognition and therefore is the only viable choice for a compnay like Dell. Read the comments a few up, multiple distros=tech support nightmares. I think you will see SuSE long before you see Slackware from a major player like Dell. SuSE has the European market penetration to make it look good to international companies.
RH is Linux, Linux is not RH, my boss has never heard of Debian or Slackware, when are people gonna understand this ?
Hahah, that's pretty accurate. I'll look up from my paper and see what is going on when I hear a Who tune coming from the TV. They know who has the purse strings, and what kind of noise to use to get my attention.
:-)
"..talkin 'bout my g-g-genereration!"
According to a friend of mine at AMD, Dell is the only major OEM who has no AMD-based systems whatsoever. And it's kinda pathetic, actually, because Dell and AMD are both in Austin, TX.
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
I bet Dimensions account for most of Dell's sales - as Linux continues to be the "it girl of the '90's", it's smart for them to extend their support there, to the volume sector. That's where the money is.
Dimensions are the "value" line, built with fairly generic ATX mobos & mid-tower cases. They don't suck at all, but Dell changes components on short notice, depending on what's "hot" at any given time. I switched my company over from those to Optiplexes because, hey, they may cost more but I can call Dell this time next year and buy the exact same machine I buy today. When you need to maintain a fleet of PCs, it helps a lot when they're the same. Of course, right now I'm running NT on them (contrary to general belief, NT isn't bad as a desktop OS for the average joe user in a 'corporate' environment), but the day is coming when I can switch - even though NT isn't bad for a desktop Linux is much, much nicer. Official support is a Good Thing, and gives me that much more ammo to fire when the time for the revolution comes.
But offering Linux on Dimensions is even easier than offering it on their other configs for just that reason - generic hardware (BX motherboards with 3 DIMM slots and integrated sound), only IDE to worry about, standard NICs (3C905b), and a hotrod video card (probably the TNT2 right now). They can just build a kernel under Redhat 6 with support for the few options they offer as stock, and ship it in 1 or two configs to handle different video cards under X. Piece of cake. I'm surprised they waited this long. If you can get it on a Precision or an Optiplex, Dimensions are trivial.
It'll definitely be Red Hat, after all - Dell owns a piece of them.
Now what I'm waiting for from Dell is two things:
1: Official support for Linux on my Inspiron 7000 (it is sweet!), because running X with the built-in ATI Rage Pro LT is a kludge.
2: Dell to run Linux for their WebTalk support system so it won't crash all the time.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
This article seems to imply that Dell knows something everyone else doesn't know. It can't be the value of *linux* the OS can it, ZDNET? No, they suspect that Microsoft is involved. Riiiight. At any rate, I think it is *incredibly, hugely unlikely* that Microsoft is going to release MS Office on Linux. Never saw MS Office for OS/2 did we? Don't think we are going to see one for linux. Linux competes for too directly with Windows for them to ever do it. Enough bashing ZDNET for shoddy reporting and baseless implications. Dell is selling their machines with Linux pre-loaded because it sees potential in the operating system, they wan't to be the "first" big company to offer it. I say its great for us, the more companies who do this, the more alternatives will continue to gain support. Also, Dell produces top-quality machines, I have a year old PII/400 from them, wonderful stuff, a year before that I had a PII/266, now that I am boycotting M$ I can buy my *next* machine from them too, without paying an M$ tax. Kudos to Dell!
Spyky
Being rather technically inclined, when I want a machine regardless of the OS I generally do my research and build it. Thats for personal stuff of course. When it comes to handling purchasing influence/decisions at work I rank Dell, Micron, and Gateway as the better ones to get good solidly built boxes from. This definately ups Dell in my opinion. Now to turn the Microsoft Srockholders in the boardroom... Finally got our Webserver back on Solaris/Apache and off of the IIS shit they had us on. Would like to see a corporate wide shift from Win95 to Linux instead of the almost inevitable Win95 to Win2k(bulid 666).
...
Blah... Just whish the fighting was over and the wold saw each os for what it is. BTW Heres a funny snippit.... (OFF TOPIC)
IF OPERATING SYSTEMS RAN THE AIRLINES - Submitted by J. Hovind (BeOS and Amiga added by yours truly)
_______________________________________
UNIX Airways
Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come to the airport. They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they are supposed to be building.
Air DOS
Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on and let the plane coast until it hits the ground again. Then they push again, jump on again, and so on
Mac Airlines
All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don't need to
know, don't want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.
Windows Air
The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.
Windows NT Air
Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.
BeOS Air
Pretty Colors in the planes and terminals but no one know about them and they can't find any engines to fit their planes.
Amiga Air
Damn good airline considering when it came out and its compitition. However they have suffered several buyouts and are way behind technologically. their customers don't care and in fact are quite fanatic about the Amiga experience.
Linux Air
Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself. When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the
seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?"
www.mp3.com/Undocumented