OT: Dell to offer linux pre-installed on desktops

[James Knott]

Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 05:10:31PM -0400, Pavel Zaitsev wrote:
>   
>> At volumes that Dell Sells, linux drivers of whatever quality will be
>> written, in short time. To get contract from Dell or keep having one,
>> hardware parts dealers will do whatever it takes. Considering their
>> volume.
>>     
>
> Including making stripped down hardware with the same name but less
> features that the normal one.  The SB Live! Dell OEM for example, which
> did not in fact have an emu10k1 DSP at all.  Yes it was capable of 16bit
> sound and multiple channels, but it did it all with software in the
> driver, which only ran on Win XP (no other version).  Many customers
> were unpleasantly surprised to learn that their sb live! was in fact not
> an sb live! except in name.
>
> In the past they have also made video cards with less ram than the same
> model would normally have, without ram upgrade connectors that the
> normal model had, etc.  I think they even had a 3com network card
> without the netboot rom socket on the board, just to save a buck.  Same
> model number as the retail card with the socket of course.  Wouldn't
> want the customer to notice they are getting a custom piece of hardware
> that doesn't actually match what the competitors are shipping.
>   

My work computer is a Dell notebook.  It's nowhere near as good as my
ThinkPad.
> I would hence not be surprised to see Dell perfectly happy with binary
> only drivers for whichever version of linux they happen to device to pre
> install and certify, since historically Dell has never had the
> customer's best interests or long term support in mind.
>
>   

According to what I've been reading, binary drivers are not an issue,
provided they remain in user space.  Create the binary blob and then
wrap it in the appropriate API for the OS.

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists