OT: Dell to offer linux pre-installed on desktops

[John Macdonald]

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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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?

The other thing they have to decide is how much money they'll
lose on the systems they sell with MS software when MS removes
its class discounts that are only available to OEMs that sell
only hardware that contains an MS OS.  The number of Linux sales
has to be a lot for them to justify losing a big chunk of the
profit on their mainstream sales.  (Monopoly abuse at work.)

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