Posted on 03/08/2006 5:49:56 AM PST by Halfmanhalfamazing
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.
"People are always asking us to support Linux on the desktop, but the question is: 'Which Linux are you talking about?'," Dell asked.
(Excerpt) Read more at desktoplinux.com ...
"Microsoft has not talked to us about Linux. If they did, I wouldn't care. It's none of their business,"
Well, not anymore, since they were forced to cease monopolistic OEM licensing.
Seems to me that Dell's position is a reasonable one. If they choose not to "support" linux installs/software then that just provides an opportunity for others to step up and provide that support. If things go well, Dell could conceivably partner with LinuxGeeks.com (I just made that name up) or whomever, and the need will be met. I guess the other interesting thing would be how agressively Dell will choose to market/advertise their Linux capable boxes. I know a guy at work who just bought an emachines PC for the specific purpose of putting linux on it and getting up to speed. I think a national advertising campaign by Dell centered around Linux might generate a lot of buzz if it was cleverly done (could they use Penguins? Or is that somehow protected?).
Agreed.
As an aside note, if Dell wanted to be a linux distributor there's nothing stopping them from rolling their own. They don't need red hat, novell, ubuntu, or whoever else.
Dell Linux. Red Hat's making money doing it. Surely Dell could as well.
I'd much rather be left to choose the distro myself. (Once you've had Slack, you can never go back!) Hardware support is the traditional bugaboo during an installation. If they could help to relieve that headache, then there would be a lot of happy penguin campers out there.
(By the by, my workplace is a all-Dell shop. We use their WinXP boxes and a lot of older Win2k boxes. We're very happy with Dell.)
Last I heard general use of the penguin is not restricted, although individual drawings/renderings of Tux are of course protected by copyright. "Linux" is trademarked by Linus for operating systems, and usage of the trademark is governed and licensed through the Linux Mark Institute.
Excellent points - the more I think about it the more I wonder if this is not so much a product/engineering question as much as it is a marketing/advertising one. A national advertising campaign by Dell promoting Linux would be a real shot across MS's bow and could conceivably accelerate the momentum towards linux which is already occurring.
On the other hand if Dell relegates their linux products to page 53 of their catalogs and if you ask for linux on the phone you are met with a "Huh?" then this is not going to make much of a difference if they "support" linux.
Cool - great info - a national campaign by Dell with the penguin could have limitless possibilities methinks.
I agree--and thus my personal preference is toward Slack. Then again, I have my 12 yr old brother using my computer, so I kinda have to keep my Suse system in place.
Why don't you go back over to OSNEWS to find your quote "recruits" for your quote "cause"?
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=13542&limit=no&threshold=-1
Dell sees how terribly the "zealots" as you referred to them hate the world's richest man and other capitalists, and probably wants to steer clear of them. How could you blame him, when the best they have to offer is pennies on the dollar.
Is there a quote "point" to your quote "post"?
Read the link. Halfman here is over on other sites, admitting these are political issues, but refusing to address them since admitting it makes it harder to gain his recruits. From the link, and halfman's answer:
You missed the obvious context. Dell and I were referring to distro zealots, those who push their preferred distro over all others, and don't like to see the others gain ground. If you'd read the article, you'd see Dell likes Linux, but these zealots make it hard for him to choose a distro to put on Dell boxes.
How could you blame him, when the best they have to offer is pennies on the dollar
They don't have to offer him anything. In fact, he gets to sell his hardware while ignoring Microsoft's complex OEM license. He can slap as many copies of Linux as he wants on his hardware, and he doesn't even have to do the accounting to Microsoft.
So says the guy who cries "commie!" on almost every OSS post, and whose objections to OSS are almost completely ideological.
That's not my quote that's halfman's on another website. He admitted the issues are political, but won't address them since they hurt quote "recruiting" to quote "the cause".
May I suggest you actually read his posts? I just did (ignore this #17, as I now know you didn't say that).
"we are only going to win this by competing in the marketplace"
"to use linux/FOSS simply to use linux/FOSS because it's open is sheer stupidity."
In context, your quote of his about politics shows he recognizes others are making this a political issue and he states that it is wrong.
He's over there debating against the zealots, and yet you call him a zealot. Pretty low, but expected from a zealot such as you.
Too bad, it was a reasonable statement in context, but it would have been hypocritical for you to use.
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