Dell to intro Linux based notebook

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 1:08 pm

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31300
"SOURCES SAID Dell in Europe and Mandriva will introduce a Latitude DX20 laptop using the Linux operating system."

I REALLY hope that this is true then that retard Rob Enderle will look like a fool if Dell starts preloading Linux, even here in Europe.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 12:29 pm

It's only getting released to limited markets in France. I guess it's good news, but I can't see this setting the world on fire. Wake me up when Dell quits teasing us with these small deals, and actually does something significant on a global scale. It seems like every couple of years you hear of companies trying this, and nothing ever comes of it.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:19 pm

Wally Balljacker wrote:It seems like every couple of years you hear of companies trying this, and nothing ever comes of it.

You're right about that, I think it's because a lot of the times, the companies are not really serious about, for example they don't put a big ad on their website saying "NOW WITH LINUX!".

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:35 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote:
Wally Balljacker wrote:It seems like every couple of years you hear of companies trying this, and nothing ever comes of it.
You're right about that, I think it's because a lot of the times, the companies are not really serious about, for example they don't put a big ad on their website saying "NOW WITH LINUX!".

Exactly. It's no surprise HP didn't have success with Linux on their notebooks. They never fscking promoted them! You had to dig through their website just to find information about Linux. We need to start seeing "Dell recommends Linux" right on their home page.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:39 pm

Wally Balljacker wrote:Exactly. It's no surprise HP didn't have success with Linux on their notebooks. They never fscking promoted them! You had to dig through their website just to find information about Linux. We need to start seeing "Dell recommends Linux" right on their home page.

I agree, Michael Dell argued that the reason they don't preinstall Linux is that there are so many distros, and they just can't support 'em all, and then people telling them "No not that one, the other one". Personally I think if they could ask Novell to create kind of a consumer distro based off of it's upcoming SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, with all the XGL stuff and GNOME tweaks, but without all the advanced remote management stuff, they would have quite a good distro to sell to grandma.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:48 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote:
Wally Balljacker wrote:Exactly. It's no surprise HP didn't have success with Linux on their notebooks. They never fscking promoted them! You had to dig through their website just to find information about Linux. We need to start seeing "Dell recommends Linux" right on their home page.
I agree, Michael Dell argued that the reason they don't preinstall Linux is that there are so many distros, and they just can't support 'em all, and then people telling them "No not that one, the other one". Personally I think if they could ask Novell to create kind of a consumer distro based off of it's upcoming SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, with all the XGL stuff and GNOME tweaks, but without all the advanced remote management stuff, they would have quite a good distro to sell to grandma.

It would be nice if they went with a single distro like SUSE or Ubuntu installed right out of the box, so Joe user doesn't have to choose. Having the choice of 10 different Linux operating systems would just confuse people. Advanced users like us who want to install our own distro could avoid paying the Microsoft tax, and wouldn't have to worry about incompatible hardware.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:56 pm

Wally Balljacker wrote:It would be nice if they went with a single distro like SUSE or Ubuntu installed right out of the box, so Joe user doesn't have to choose.

Yeah I agree, but I think Dell's issue is also kinda like "How do we choose the right one?", because in 2001 I think they actually did a more serious try, not as serious as I would like but still more than HP, and everyone was like "NO not Red Hat, do X distro", "Do Y distro" .......

Wally Balljacker wrote:Advanced users like us who want to install our own distro could avoid paying the Microsoft tax, and wouldn't have to worry about incompatible hardware.

Well, for laptops this could be useful, but if you know how to install an operating system, you can probably build your own machine anyway, it's not really that hard anymore.
But 'ey, it would be nice to have Dell preinstall Linux, if they could offer be a thin laptop, with a nice screen I would be very interested.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 2:09 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote:
Wally Balljacker wrote:It would be nice if they went with a single distro like SUSE or Ubuntu installed right out of the box, so Joe user doesn't have to choose.
Yeah I agree, but I think Dell's issue is also kinda like "How do we choose the right one?", because in 2001 I think they actually did a more serious try, not as serious as I would like but still more than HP, and everyone was like "NO not Red Hat, do X distro", "Do Y distro" .......

Well, when it comes down to it, there's really only a handful of potential consumer distributions to choose from:

Ubuntu
SUSE
Mandriva
Linspire

IMO, that's what it boils down to. Either offering all of those, or choosing one or two can't be very difficult. It certainly can't be as bad as 7 different versions of Windows Vista.

hellonorman · Post by **hellonorman** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 9:21 pm

Wally Balljacker wrote: Well, when it comes down to it, there's really only a handful of potential consumer distributions to choose from:

Ubuntu
SUSE
Mandriva
Linspire

IMO, that's what it boils down to. Either offering all of those, or choosing one or two can't be very difficult. It certainly can't be as bad as 7 different versions of Windows Vista.

The fact that they would have to choose one those distros takes an already small market and shrinks it. As soon as they choose one they have taken a side in zealot wars whether they want to or not.

You can't compare supporting windows vista with supporting different linux distros. The vista versions are just the same thing with escalating functionality enabled. The different linux distros all do things differently.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 9:59 pm

hellonorman wrote:
Wally Balljacker wrote: Well, when it comes down to it, there's really only a handful of potential consumer distributions to choose from:

Ubuntu
SUSE
Mandriva
Linspire

IMO, that's what it boils down to. Either offering all of those, or choosing one or two can't be very difficult. It certainly can't be as bad as 7 different versions of Windows Vista.
The fact that they would have to choose one those distros takes an already small market and shrinks it. As soon as they choose one they have taken a side in zealot wars whether they want to or not.

You can't compare supporting windows vista with supporting different linux distros. The vista versions are just the same thing with escalating functionality enabled. The different linux distros all do things differently.

Well, what would you suppose they do then? And by the way, we who are geeks don't buy machines with Linux preinstalled, I'd say we usually build our own machines and load whatever Linux we like on them.

hellonorman · Post by **hellonorman** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 1:53 am

I would suppose that they keep doing what they are doing now. Not be real serious about offering linux on their laptops.

Any choice they make in regards to offering linux takes the already small linux market and shrinks it.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 5:57 am

hellonorman wrote:I would suppose that they keep doing what they are doing now. Not be real serious about offering linux on their laptops.

Fair enough, more power to Microsoft's monopoly, yeah!

hellonorman wrote:Any choice they make in regards to offering linux takes the already small linux market and shrinks it.

Dude, it's not US, the geeks, who would be the market for this, it's grandma, mom and pap type people who just know how to take a machine out of the box and plug it in, and turn it on, there are a crapload of people like that out there, a lot more than there are geeks. Because we can just build our own machines and load whatever Linux/BSD on there, and I think most geeks actually do that. And dude, mom and pap don't care what distro they're running, as long as it looks nice and works great and does what they need it to do, they're perfectly happy, and heck even if geeks who want another distro buys a desktop or laptop with preinstalled Linux, they can just get DBAN and wipe the system and put Ubuntu, Slackware, Joe's Super Distro on there.
I think if Dell would preinstall Linux and be serious about it, it would actually expand Linux's market share significantly over maybe 2 years, I don't think we'd rule the world, but maybe we'd have like 10%, which should be enough to convince Adobe port Photoshop over, and then we're set to make huge inroads in other areas.

thetza · Post by **thetza** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 12:12 am

Europe? EUROPE? Honestly, who uses computers in Europe!?

USA, thats where I want to buy a notebook from a major manufacturer with full hardware support at a reasonable price.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 1:46 am

thetza wrote:Europe? EUROPE? Honestly, who uses computers in Europe!?

Actually I do wonder about that myself sometimes because computers are, at least here in Denmark, not fully utilized for a lot of applications.

thetza wrote:USA, thats where I want to buy a notebook from a major manufacturer with full hardware support at a reasonable price.

Well, I think you're gonna have to wait quite a while for that one.