Dell has announced that more of their systems will be available with Linux pre-installed: "It's exciting to see the IdeaStorm community's interest in open source solutions like Linux and OpenOffice. We are listening, and as a result, we are working with Novell to certify our corporate client products for Linux, including our OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations. This is another step towards ensuring that our customers have a good experience with Linux on our systems." In addition: " Dell recognizes our customers' desire to have unlimited control over the software on their PC. In fact, today XPS customers can opt-out of almost all preinstalled software. We will be expanding this effort in the coming months."
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Member since:2005-07-08
I disagree. Many corporate computing environments make it nearly impossible for all but the most die-hard Linux gurus to run their preferred OS at work. Between Exchange, Citrix, and <insert homegrown accounting/sales software here>, using Linux at work is often a fruitless struggle.
Even at IBM it wasn't easy to get everything working until they semi-recently rolled out the Open Client internally. Before this there was an internal community project that maintained a Loki installer for the Lotus Notes client via Wine, which worked sometimes (for sufficiently broad definitions of "worked"). Access to certain VM mainframes wasn't fully compliant with telnet, so they had their own Windows-only remote session client for that. And who can forget the time your presentation looked great in Impress, only to discover (during your presentation for high-level managers) that your bullets were replaced by ASCII rectangles and your titles were hidden behind the background when displayed via PowerPoint?
On the other hand, GAIM with the Meanwhile plugin for Sametime messaging has always been far superior to the Lotus Sametime client. I even use it on Windows!
At home I run Linux for many reasons, among them is that I like having a choice. At work, I don't have a choice. I either play nice and work with their infrastructure, or I forfeit my meal ticket. Thankfully the Open Client is here and Linux at work is a pleasant reality for me. But this is not the case for many less fortunate Linux users.
Edited 2007-02-25 05:10
Member since:
2006-08-26
I would actually nuance your comments by saying that what geeks adopt at home they eventually drag in to work. Most businesses in the early 1980's had to be dgragged kicking and screaming off their green-screens to PC's. Their IT people were to busy fiddling with their Wangs and mainframes. Just as in the 1990's I started seeing "unofficial" machines pop up in data centers used for various tasks - running Linux.
I whole heartedly agree that they have to figure out how to economically support Linux. Some companies support Linux, but what they mean is they're still supporting RH9, AS 3, and SuSE 9. However, I think it would be worth their while to crack this nut. Of the people that buy computers every couple of years - I imagine quite a number are geeks. It would be nice to see the $999 laptop with a Linux compatible wirless chipset and video card.