[Sussex] Dell going with Ubuntu

[Steve 'Dobbo' Dobson]

Morning all

On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 03:10:16PM -0600, linux at oneandoneis2.org wrote:
> Quoting "Karl E. Jorgensen" <karl at jorgensen.org.uk>:
> >I thought that OEMs got kickbacks for preinstalling "crapware" (e.g. the
> >AOL icon, some-antivirus etc)? At least this was the reason given in the
> >past for why Windows would be cheaper than a free Linux...
> 
> True, but I suppose when you think about it, installing all that  
> rubbish must cost quite a bit in terms of administration, and just  
> getting Windows installed is nowhere near as painless as pro-MS people  
> would have you believe.
> 
> E.g. when I installed the beta of Vista, after installing the OS I had  
> to install drivers for various bits of hardware off numerous CDs and  
> download one or two off the net as well.
> 
> When I installed Ubuntu Feisty the other day, I needed nothing but the  
> Ubuntu disc - everything but the graphics card had out-of-the-box  
> support. And the graphics card driver was installed for me as soon as  
> I needed it...
> 
> I imagine the man-hours it takes to do all that, plus the cost of  
> Windows itself, do add up.. And Mark Shuttleworth's probably canny  
> enough to have offered some kind of inducements for Dell to keep the  
> price down ;o)

I doubt that the man hours per sale is that much.  I'm sure Dell has a
small army of backroom boys making sure that the disk image for a 
systems has all the appropriate drivers installed.

Sure doing that for one system is a lot of work as you point out, but
if you were going to be building lots of identical systems you'd install
and test on one and then image the disk.  Dell sale thousands.

> >With due repect to Canonical, I hope they won't preinstall similar
> >stuff. I'd hate to see an AOL icon on a Ubuntu desktop!
> 
> Well, the article does say it "doesn't expect the version shipped by  
> Dell to differ from the download version of Feisty" - that's pretty  
> hopeful.

The problem I see for Dell (and any other PC maker) is the lag between
hardware release and the drivers getting written and then packaged in
the various distros (or for Dell Ubuntu).

Of course Dell, being such a big player, can just demand of it's h/w
suppliers that Linux/Ubuntu support is there.  This should mean that
either the h/w manufactures employ Linux kernel developers or early
access to the h/w is given to the appropriate teams.

So on the whole this is a good think.

> >Depends on the demand I guess. But it's going the right direction
<snip/>
> But if Dell are faced with two bits of hardware that work and are  
> priced about the same, but one has good Linux support and one doesn't  
> - I'm thinking Wifi in particular in this case - Dell has no reason  
> not to just switch wholly to the Linux-friendly WiFi across the board,  
> because the Windows experience is identical, the Linux experience is  
> better, and it's easier to support one bit of hardware than two.

Agreed.  Although, as I said above, I think Dell will be a little more
active.
 
<snip/>
> >And what a nice dream it is :-)
> 
> Isn't it just? :o)

Ditto.

Steve

-- 
                              Steve "Dobbo" Dobson
                                steve at dobson.org
                               SussexLUG Master
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