Posted on 03/13/2007 6:54:28 PM PDT by Halfmanhalfamazing
Dell Inc. began polling customers about their software preferences on Tuesday as part of an effort by the struggling PC vendor to meet a popular request for desktops and notebooks that run on Linux instead of Windows.
Dell posted the survey on a company blog, asking PC users to choose between Linux flavors such as Fedora and Ubuntu, and to pick more general choices such as notebooks versus desktops, high-end models versus value models and telephone-based support versus community-based support.
(Excerpt) Read more at open.itworld.com ...
Interesting ping.
Looks like Dell fears Mac the mouse more then Gates the great...
Makes sense to me. Dell makes no money off the OS.
My Dell (2004-2006)
Stupid question but is Linux just like Windows in the way it looks and operates?
Dell should hire several hundred first-rate software engineers to transform Linux into a high-quality application platform. If they devote the necessary resources, they could have DellOS ready to ship in three or four years.
"Stupid question but is Linux just like Windows in the way it looks and operates?"
It's close, but not identical-
If you would like to see how well it works, and looks, on a machine you are using, get a "live CD"-- a CD that will boot your machine without changing anything on the hard drive.
Two examples?
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
You can order a CD, or better, download the ISO file and burn it to your own disc. Set the PC to boot from the CD drive, and see how you like it.
It is NOT a stupid question. It has a few minor differences, but it a quick learning curve. If you want the EASIEST and BEST distro, I would say download and burn a live cd of MEPIS. It can be found HERE. It is a build from UBUNTU, but it is easier, and is a cleaner install (everything "just works"). You can run it off a live cd to see if you like it. I will never go back to windows.
Frankly, I don't give a damn, except for the "competition is good" aspect.
It can be, it can also look and feel like a mac. In terms of what goes on under the hood its far more like a Mac than it is like windows.
Hal,
its only going to be worth it if Dell ditches the X environment and writes a proprietary GUI thats not exactly the business they are in. Otherwise you will just see people downloading it for themselves.
I agree.
Apple's product has alot of innovation in it.
MS's doesn't.
It can look like windows.
But it doesn't have to.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=kde+3.5&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=1
KDE is similar to windows in that you have a toolbar and a "start" menu.
Red Hat has done that already.
Actually they do, which is why nobody sells Linux preinstalled on home desktops. Microsoft provides a portion of the O/S dollars back to the OEM vendors who then in turn use that money to help pay for customer support.
Linux is a foreign clone of Unix products, not Windows. Therefore it's natively more like Apple's OSX, although some foreign cloners have built a couple of versions that look exactly like Windows, but probably you won't see those here in the states due to threat of lawsuit.
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