“Michael Dell, chairman of Dell Inc. believes in offering Linux on the desktop, server, and workstation. What he doesn’t believe in, for now, is giving Linux full support on the desktop. In an exclusive interview, Dell explained his company’s Linux desktop strategy to DesktopLinux.com’s Steven J. Vaughan Nichols.”
I’ve read the article, and I think Michael Dell is entirely missing the point.
Don’t support the distro; provide support for your hardware using open source drivers. Any distro should be able to run using compatible hardware.
As long as the basic hardware can be seen, then Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE, Debian, and Mandriva should be able to run on it. If people want extended support, co-mingle the distro with premium support, provided by the community.
He want’s a “Microsoft” type of OS out of Linux. The very nature of Linux development precludes that.
Would you buy a car from this man?
My own single experience with Dell has been horrible:
http://www.just-think-it.com/mydell.htm
Whereas Compaq and HP have worked great for me, as have clones — 15 computers in all.
I wouldn’t dream of buying a Dell computer with the thought of running anything, and especially not Linux on. Dell is making a mockery of Linux, IMHO.
Mock on, Mr. Dell, but you will never see my VISA card.
Floyd
http://www.just-think-it.com
Between my dad and I, we’ve bought 6-7 Dells in the past 10 years, and haven’t had any major problems with any of them, other than a couple of hard drives that screamed like banshees after awhile, but hey .. they’re hard drives. Anyway, those were replaced immediately, so no biggie.
Not to say that your experience is invalid, but as long as mine continue to be good, I will keep buying from them
As for Dell supporting Linux, I’ve ran several distros on my newest one and haven’t had any issues with them, so as far as being able to boot Linux on Dells, I don’t see what the big deal is.
The last thing I checked, hardware sold by Dell included Intel CPUs and integrated Intel Chipsets. If they still do, then there should be no problem running any distro on that.
It’s hard to fault Dell’s strategy. They are about corporates and volume. Offering Red Hat has that one covered, and through Red Hat outfits can get the support and certification they might want at minimum hassle to Dell. On the desktop for home users, Dell can afford to sit it out and see whether one distro starts to cream all the others to the extent that offering it will attract little risk or criticism. Dell don’t have to spend any money, just try to elope with the winner if there is one.
True standardization is darn unlikely to happen, imho. The Linux world doesn’t want it, and this would mean standardizing not just core stuff like the kernel but the 1001 apps that sit on top. But if, say, Ubuntu eventually took such a chunk of the users that Dell started to offer it, then there could be a general move towards the world of deb and away from rpm, I guess.
In the meantime, I’m taking Mr Dell’s stuff about Dell and Linux being none of Microsoft’s business with a couple of tons of salt.
Just my 2 cents, but in terms of who has the largest userbases, it looks perfectly possible that the Linux would could shake down into Red Hat and rpm for business and Debian (probably Ubuntu) and deb for home users, with the many many other distros all some way behind.
The Linux market is far too fragmented to seriously attract ISVs and OEMs. Michael Dell and I seem to agree.
The people who are saying Dell should supply “just” drivers are missing the point. Such a scheme is totally unsupportable from Dells point of view. It doesn’t solve the problem anyway; what format should the drivers be distributed in? What kernel versions should those drivers be available for? Whos responsibility is it to write and test these drivers? How can Dell support customers who have problems with their drivers on their chosen distribution? Such a scheme has more problems than simply picking a single distribution.
Another suggestion is that Dell should only sell hardware that has drivers available already. Now it just happens that most hardware inside a Dell machine do already have Open drivers, but do you seriously expect Dell not to offer systems with the latest ATI Radeon video cards, or laptops with WiFi chipsets that may not have Open drivers?
OEMs and ISVs just don’t care too much about Linux because it’s simply far to much work for them. Sorry guys.
If Dell would just *threaten* to stop selling hardware that has no linux drivers in (say) 18 months… you’d see the drivers pop up from everywhere.
For wifi, that is. ATI is simply incapable of writing up-to-date drivers, so that would be a bit more difficult, I guess.
Its pretty simple how to choose which distribution. DON’T!!!
Provide it for the vanilla kernel that Linus works on. Every distro basis there kernel off of that… retty simple.
He means, “what version of the vanilla kernel should we develop for?”
Windows is a much simpler target than Linux for driver development. Many Windows 2000 drivers worked out of the box in XP. Many nVidia graphics drivers for Linux don’t work after a few bugfix versions, let alone minor versions.
Another suggestion is that Dell should only sell hardware that has drivers available already. … do you seriously expect Dell not to offer systems with the latest ATI Radeon video cards, or laptops with WiFi chipsets that may not have Open drivers?
If they create a “Linux series” of products, then they can easily choose hardware that is already compatible, without restricting their choice of components for their Windows gamer/corporate systems.
Even just an improvement on that is going to be well appreciated by any open source developer or distro.
Dell, you know as well as every Linux geek does, if you support one you support them all.
You’re a hardware vendor. You don’t support Linux distributions, you support Linux, itself. That’s all we need. We don’t so much care if you can tell us how to click through adding new software, we can do that. We just want hardware that works with Linux.
Know the best way to say “this hardware works with linux?” Pick a distribution and offer it on the machine. Hell, roll your own if you like. We don’t care! If we absolutely have to we’ll use your kernel in our favourite distribution!
He can’t support Linux on the desktop because his vendors aren’t. Plain and simple. He’d be looking at paying more for some parts to get ones from companies which support Linux. He’d have vast wireless choices like, Intel, or Intel.
His printer choices would also be incredibly wide: They’d just cost 8 times the price of the crap Lexmark’s he ships
.
Quit lying Mr. Dell. We know it’s not the fragmentation. And we can all pick out about 3 or 4 distributions which are truly viable to be shipped with hardware for desktops: Suse, Mandriva, Ubuntu. And this is Dell, and Ubuntu is free of charge, so it’s easy to narrow it down further.
Contrary to popular belief the Linux kernel has no major fork to consider here. We aren’t asking for a choice between 2.4 and 2.6.
When I was an eng’r at a disk drive vender thru the 90’s, Dell, and other PC venders pretty much told us what they wanted and what price they wanted to pay. We had to compete on razor thin margins during the boom years!. This is probably true for most component vendors though I suspect graphics card vendors maybe an exception.
Because of their efficient business model, I’m sure Dell have the clout to make Linux compatible boxes more easily than any other top tier vendor.
I’ve never bought a Dell machine before, but i think their Linux strategy is pretty fair. It would be somewhat unfair to expect Dell to support every flavor of Linux out there.
Even if a device is supported under linux by the manufacturer, there’s still the question of how the driver is packaged. Is it RPM? Source? Kernel Option? APT? etc.
Somebody above said Intel Chipset-based computers are fine under linux. Tell that to my laptop’s wireless card…
It would be somewhat unfair to expect Dell to support every flavor of Linux out there
They don’t have to.
Even if they decide to install some distribution I wouldn’t want to use, I’d rather have my money go to some Linux distributor than to Microsoft.
Michael Dell,industry leader is unable to make up his mind which distribution to choose? This is his excuse?
If Michael took more of a positive approach to this issue and selected a single Linux distribution and then used the companys resources to solidly market this distribution he would in effect be determining the outcome of which Linux distribution would be the one the general public is introduced to.
Dell would support the hardware and lets say Ubuntu would support the software.
Another option would be to sell dual boot systems with Microsoft as the primary and lets say Fedora as the 2nd operating system. Dell supports the hardware and Fedora supports the software. This second option would be a great low pressure way to introduce Linux to people and would work well as long as Dell is not locked into some contract restrictions levied by Microsoft. Michael did end the interview saying
” Microsoft has not talked to us about Linux. If they did, I wouldn’t care. It’s none of their business.”
Edited 2006-03-08 17:40
How can a community distro offer free support to the sold Dells? It is not reliable, or a good business practice for Dell.
If you want to sell support for an OEM distro, it would have to be one that offers support options, like RHEL, Mandriva, Xandros etc. Dell tried this by selling machines with RedHat, and it failed.
As was stated in the article, the RHEL Dells didn’t sell because of the fragmentation of distros. Each Linux user who will order an OEM wants their specific distro. of choice. Dell cannot maintain a “support solutions” for the ins and outs of each distro, each kernel.
Nothing wrong with this fragmentation – it is what is strong about OSS. But, if OEM installs are to start these issues will need to be resolved. Which distro to offer? Which kernel to offer support for? If a user upgrades the kernel, do we still offer support for the drivers we wrote for 2.6.x.x (or 2.4.x.x)?
The problem is, “the public” isn’t interested in Linux right now. It’s hard to market a product when you have to answer the same old questions that Mac users have long been used to: can I run all my games? Can I run Quicken/Office/whatever? Does it have “The Internet?” (IE)
In other words, after you get done either truthfully answering “no,” “no,” and “no” to the previous questions (or alternatively trying to explain how it’ll all magically work, albiet somewhat unreliably, or not at all, once they download and compile a few things.) Not to mention how much fun you’re going to have explaining to people that the documentation is “all there, online,” or in a man page, or worst of all, they can just ask their fellow friendly Linux users on the nearest discussion forum. Since the usual response is a warm, heart-felt, “RTFA, n00b!” I can see where Dell might have some reservations with this plan.
Dual booting is a worse option, because your average user will a) never boot it, b) occasionally accidentally boot it, and then get upset when they can’t find their Windows, and/or c) be confused and annoyed at this extra software they’re never going to use taking up precious hard drive real estate.
Dell is marketing Linux-capable boxes to the people who already want to, and are capable, of running Linux. They also wisely realize that Linux users have a nigh-unto-fanatical devotion to their favorite distros that sometimes leaves even the most rabid Mac zealouts shaking their heads in awe. Doesn’t it seem sad that people would not order a Dell box with Red Hat preinstalled simply because it wasn’t their preferred distro? All they’d have to do is delete it and put on the one they want, but unless Dell includes something as innocuous as FreeDOS (which you also would replace, anyway), people would rather just not buy in the first place.
The kind of people who choose Linux have done so before they’ve installed it. Everyone else would just prefer something that lets them get their work done, even if it isn’t the most perfect operating system in the world.
Edited 2006-03-09 01:10
Thats when you wake up and realize Game on a work related machine ?
Office/Quicken ? there is crossover if you cant use the provided superior solutions.
IE ? even on Windows its recommanded by everyone to not use it.
There is Book and documentation on paper and on video availaible , you can even get online and offline class teaching you how to use GNU/Linux , just like you got clas steaching you how to use windows.
If you whant support there are company providing support.
Dual booting a problem ? for there being a dual booth it whas made by choice. Its also illegal with a Windows system the vendor sign a contract that specificaly forbide resaller to install another OS with windows.
Dell is not marketing any kind of GNU/Linux they made some workstation for the reaserch facility and scientist but thats it.
It would be nice that you stop spreading the lies that GNU/Linux user are all Jihadist and zealot , youve never met any of both , in both case you die upon meeting them.
The kind of people who choose GNU/Linux know about it and got a working solution and real support. Its also what works best for them
Most people dont know that GNU/Linux exist and that Dell machine are not supported by GNU/Linux because , Dell dont offer them for the GNU/Linux distribution to support them and also he change hardware specification without releasing specs or new driver.
If Dell cant support GNU/Linux now , I guess its time to sale all your share in Dell as GNU/Linux is the futur.
I tought that Dell whas not afraid or controled by Windows. Please …
You want _Dell_ to provide drivers for its hardware? Dell doesn’t make hardware. They make a computer case, and they stick hardware inside of it.
Don’t confuse the packager and distributor with the computer manufacturer.
That’s true, but it couldn’t hurt Dell to put some financial backing behind a project to create drivers for the hardware they use. They can also pick hardware that is well supported with Linux already.
Does dell really have a reason to put money behind any linux development ?
We are talking about a company putting money behind something they have stated is 1 and a half percent of desktop sales.
They “encourage” hardware vendors to support Linux and they offer some workstations with the OS installed.
Hell thats more than I’d expect them to do at this point.
You guys raise some great points about Dell’s position to help Gnu/Linux. Rather than choosing a distro to support, instead only use hardware that’s known to “play nice” with the system. That would help everyone.
Also, wasn’t the Linux Standards Base (LSB) formed to help precisely with the issues Dell is raising?
…for the hardware maker. USRobotics figured this out years ago and so they churn out dozens if not hundreds of varieties of their modems. Just try getting a driver for one of them. Nauseating.
So the last thing Dell will ever do is choose hardware that can be easily supported by others. And sure enough their trend today is in the opposite direction, to “higher end” systems — e.g. cases with glitzy but non-standard, odd-sized form factors, custom component mounts, etc.
Floyd
http://www.just-think-it.com
No need for distros. Net is full of them. Give us sources and the rest will be done in no time:) Linux community is powerfull force…
Why is Dell talking about GNU/Linux ? Because HP and Acer are already offering GNU/Linux solution on the desktop and are making Dell loose tons of sale in some populated market.
Dell dont whant to support any distribution , but whant the distribution he named :
Mandriva , Ubuntu, Novell, Red Hat, and Xandros
To support is product 100%. Because he hate loosing sale to other company and already has invested lots of money in Red Hat who took the money and tottally dropped the Customer desktop.
There is a profound hatred of Dell in the Free developper community , because Dell is seen as investing billions in Microsoft and almost nothing in GNU/Linux , the simple fact that Dell dont provide Dell models to the distribution so that they can make there distribution support Dell product is part of why.
He is asking the community to provide him 100% fully working solution and to pay for it , he dont whant to invest 1 cent in the projects and he dont whant to give access to the parts ( CPU , GPU , Motherboard , LCD Screen , Printer , etc .. ) hardware and more importantly the prototype he works on.
The GNU/Linux dekstop market worldwide is at 22% and growing and it seem to me like Dell is going to miss the boat entirely. Its sad because some of the model could be offered cheaper to is customer with a GNU/Linux solution.
If Dell whas trueley not scared of Microsoft removing its preferential threatment and loosing billions in sales because of lack of competivness , he would at least remove it as default OS and ask and inform people on there choice of OS.
Sorry Mr Dell , you dont whant to help us help you , we aint going to pay to support your Hardware on the customer desktop , because we already got a few vendor who supported us in our time of need and you did not.
Its time you reevaluate your GNU/linux desktop strategy and hire someone who can make the decision on which distribution to choose , because frankly beside Mandriva and Ubuntu all the rest are lacking in one way or another or dont even offer a free GNU/Linux desktop for customer.
It can be simply done , make a competition , just send 10 model of laptop to each of the distribution you named and ask them to provide you with fully working solution. Those that dont do it eliminate themself and those that do support you are worth investing more in them.
Otherwise nothing change and everything stay the same.
The problem with DELL is they heavily customize their RHEL installations to the point that if you upgrade it via up2date, you will experience lots of problem. With this, users usually feel frustrated about RHEL and Linux in general. This pro’lly one of the reasons why their RHEL offerings failed.
Btw, using the standard RHEL discs, you won’t experience running up2date.
Supposed to suspend all knowledge of historical and criminal evidence and buy into the story that one of the biggest hardware vendors in the US has never, ever been approached or pressured by MS and wouldn’t care if the biggest bully on the block did lean on them?
Pull the other one, it’s got big ben on it.