Comments on: Dell makes excuses for backing off Linux

By: cuervo73

cuervo73 — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 07:57:20 +0000

Dell has done this act before: abandon a Unix OS. Back in the early 1990’s, they were marketing a popular UNIX from AT&T called SvR4, which they suddenly dropped all support for. But, SvR4 continued on for 6-7 years before it was eventually superceded by Linux. The last folks to sell SvR4 were SCO. Back then, Micro$oft wasn’t the reason for Dells move. But, Dells latest move away from Linux is undoubtedly due to M$ pressure.

By: cyber_rigger

cyber_rigger — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 21:51:58 +0000

The moral to the story is,
“Don’t buy from Dell”.

http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/23168/
http://lxer.com/module/db/index.php?dbn=14

By: JohnP@Dell

JohnP@Dell — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 00:05:01 +0000

RE: Update 1: Apparently someone posted this article on IdeaStorm, and the article has since been removed. Touchy touchy, Dell. Did we bring up a sore subject?

Actually, IdeaStorm is not a forum or a blog. It is a Web site designed to capture your ideas. Since the blog post in question isn’t an idea, it didn’t meet the guidelines for inclusion and was routinely removed to reduce clutter and make it easier for the community to gauge the popularity of ideas.

By: Joe Emenaker

Joe Emenaker — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:50:07 +0000

I did some searching on Google News and I can’t find anywhere where someone from Dell said that they’d be pre-installing Linux. Everything I’ve read from them is in regards to *certifying* some of their product lines for SUSE and, in some cases, shipping some hardware with FreeDOS so that the machine was all set for the user to install their Linux distribution of choice. (http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/ideastorm/ideasinaction?c=us&l=en&s=gen)
What happened after *that* is that some bloggers interpreted that as what they *wanted* to hear and posted “OMG! OMG! OMG! Dell’s gonna ship Linux! W00T!!!!!”, and other bloggers read those blogs and re-blogged it… until everyone assumed that it was fact.

Dell didn’t back-pedal. They reiterated. It’s the *bloggers* who need to back-pedal… but they never will.

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:31:41 +0000

Why is Dell so worried about choosing the wrong distro? They all basically come with the same software. Just pick one. Just let users choose between Gnome and KDE. Also, Dells are custom made. For a little more work, an assortment of distros could be available.

By: Joshua Mostafa

Joshua Mostafa — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:20:15 +0000

Anyone who knows enough about Linux to really ask for it probably knows enough to install their own distribution anyway.

But why pay for Windows to be pre-installed if you are going to wipe it and start again?

By: Orbiting Starship

Orbiting Starship — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 20:26:18 +0000

Anyone who knows enough about Linux to really ask for it probably knows enough to install their own distribution anyway.

Installing/upgrading Linux is easy enough (at least with Knoppix/Fedora Core). The hard part is installing a multimedia ready version of Linux with media players, ATI/nVidia 3d graphics drivers and favourite games (Falcon’s Eye etc…). Using ‘yum install’, ‘apt get#, or ‘rpm -i’ is easy enough, but some files are still hard to find. Finding the correct module name, the right CPU, kernel version can still be tricky.

By: NeutralBoy

NeutralBoy — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 19:59:28 +0000

It’s better to never make a promise than to make a promise and break it.

By: Duality Rules

Duality Rules — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 19:54:23 +0000

At the very least Dell could install a lightweight linux distribution that would give the users an immediate boot into a running system with basic tools.

Anyone who knows enough about Linux to really ask for it probably knows enough to install their own distribution anyway.

And those same people could install from a CD boot almost as
easily as from a hard disk partition.

As far as hardware compatibility goes, the mainline kernel has almost all the drivers, so why wouldn’t Dell just certify a mainline kernel (or kernels) rather than a whole distribution.

Dell could have made a nice gesture but they didn’t. Perhaps the fix was in: a curt phone call from a Microsoggy higherup.

A few years ago a pre-install would have meant more; now that linux installers are getting so much better it is hardly a big deal. But Dell is still behaving like a….. major MS partner.

Cheers…..

By: Linux4ever

Linux4ever — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:56:11 +0000

What’s the point of promising something if later you’re just going to change your mind? All it does is piss people off.