OT: Dell to offer linux pre-installed on desktops

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 04:37:44PM -0400, Alex Beamish wrote:
> I don't see it as amazing at all -- maybe I'm missing something key in this
> whole discussion.

Well I guess their drop in market share may have clued them in to the
fact their customers didn't just want wintel anymore.  Especially their
server customers.  The netburst based Xeon was a hard sell when their
competitors had Opterons.

> If Dell customers want something that's not a Windows OS on their hardware,
> and if Dell can make a business case for supporting such a configuration
> (training the phone support, hiring some folks with 1337 skills to man the
> support forums and IRC channels, doing some configuration management, hiring
> some Linux folks to provide second and third tier support), then they should
> do it, because they'll sell hardware and make money doing it.

Well someone will eventually do it, and perhaps Dell is the company to
try.  Not sure.

> I hate to go to the car analogy, but it's not unlike the recent fad of
> running your car on vegetable oil, rather than gasoline. The response from
> the manufacturer should be "Hmm, that's kinda different, but we *can* make a
> car that does that, so why not?" .. rather than mumble about how no one
> wants it, and anyway it's impossible. if the customer wants it, and you can
> make money doing it, what else is there to decide?

I can see why the car makers don't want to support that, given the
issues it has with cold weather and such, along with not having any idea
which type of vegetable oil, the quality, etc, since it is not a
regulated fuel source.  Use the wrong kind of vegy oil, and screw up the
fuel pump, who is responsible?  And vegetable oil doesn't work as a
substitute for gasoline.  It can be used in place of diesel on some cars
(I believe some VW diesels can run on it with very minimal changes to
the fuel system, although certainly none made since 2004 can).

--
Len Sorensen
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