Huge Linux Desktop Deals Get HP Thinking

An anonymous reader notes an article in CRN about HP recently cutting deals for multi-thousands of Linux desktops. With all the talk about whether Dell will offer pre-installed desktop Linux any time soon, in the end HP may beat them to that particular punch.

This really isn't news per se....

[8127972]

Compaq had LINUX support as early as 1999. In fact Compaq had an alliance with Red Hat:

http://www.chguy.net/news/jun99/press_compaq.html [chguy.net]

And some models of their servers came pre-installed with Red Hat:

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT= 104&STORY=/www/story/11-21-2000/0001371236&EDATE= [prnewswire.com]

That gave them the ability to put LINUX into the enterprise as it was easier to deploy than a "roll your own solution."

Given that Compaq was bought by HP, would it not be logical to assume that HP would simply keep doing this (although maybe they wouldn't broadcast it as loudly as Compaq did)?

as a former employee

[Anonymous Coward]

as a former employee I can say Linux is quite big within HP itself... they have a large business unit (including R&D for drivers and several F/OSS applications) purely for Linux. They also have great management tools for providing applications and patches/updates to all desktop users, including Linux desktops. This is probably tested well enough to consider rolling it out to customers now. Within HP you can choose whether you want to run Linux or Windows, although they will only support certain distros (forgot which ones, I suspect they were SuSE and Fedora, although there is strong (user)support for Debian as well) with their managment tool.

HP's got the clout

[yog]

HP's stock is up--take a look at their chart (HPQ). They have a market capitalization of $109 billion, they have surpassed Dell as a supplier of desktops, and they have new stable management (post-Fiorella) in place.

It takes clout to stand up to Microsoft. Smaller companies have little choice but to toe the Microsoft line and act as Windows pimps for their Redmond masters, but the huge players--IBM, HP, and Dell (if Dell had any backbone) can push back a bit, even though they still have to continue to sit at Microsoft's table.

Microsoft stumbled with Vista; they have insisted on replacing XP on all new machines. I couldn't even buy a Dell laptop with XP a couple of weeks ago--have some specialized software that still doesn't run on Vista--had to find one from HP. Vista is late and has problems and Linux is looking better and better.

In the end, it is a combination of market demand, linux readiness, and corporate clout that will break the Microsoft hold on the PC market.

Perhaps a reason HP is taking mkt share from Dell

[Scott7477]

PC World's posted yesterday iSuppli's market share report for the fourth quarter of 2006; the headline is "HP Beats Dell in PC Sales" [pcworld.com]. It looks to me like HP is responding to what customers are asking for, while Dell is clinging to Microsoft's subsidies. The top 5 vendors look like this:
1. HP - 17.4%
2. Dell - 14.5%
3. Lenovo - 7.1%
4. Acer - 6.6%
5. Toshiba - 3.7%

Re:The downside

[gi.net]

Downside?

It's would be far less frustrating than the current situation:

Linux Geeks getting called out when friends and neighbors can't get their *MS Windows* Desktops working.

And you can do it remotely and securely.

They also give free courses

[hopbine]

Go the HP Learning center at http://h30187.www3.hp.com/ [hp.com] and look for the free Linux courses.

Re:Laptop committment as well

[swillden]

I have Ubuntu running as a VM on my dv9035 with no problems. I do not have Linux running native on any laptop so I can't speak for it but I'm guessing that my VM install would handle just as if it were installed directly on the laptop. Maybe others can verify this or set me straight on the difference.

Nope, it doesn't run the same in a VM as it does running natively on the machine. For much of the hardware -- basically anything except USB -- the "hypervisor" (VMWare or what have you) provides fake devices to the virtual machine. Your Ubuntu install sees, for example, a VMware-brand network card (mine sees a "VMware accelrated AMD PCNet Adapter"), a VMWare-brand graphics card ("VMware SVGA II"), etc., and talks to those "devices". The hypervisor intercepts the requests from the guest OS, translates them and hands them off to the host OS, which uses its drivers to talk to the real network and video card.

With VMWare, at least, USB devices are potentially handled differently, and direct access to them can be handed to the guest machine, via a faked USB controller. I say potentially, because if the USB device is a USB implementation of another kind of device, like a network card or a serial port, you can also allow the host machine to control the device, and then export the functionality to the guest as just another network or serial interface.

Re:HP's got the clout

[yog]

I was in the "Home" section of Dell.com. No XP was offered there, only Vista. I called Dell's sales line and was given the same story--no XP available on any laptops.

However you are correct--the small business section is still offering XP. I guess I should have thought to try that. But I believed what the salesperson told me, gave up, and went to HP.

How many people do you think know how to program?

[NDPTAL85]

Wider adoption of Linux is not going to turn more people into operating system geeks simply for the fact that Linux will not gain wider adoption until it is easier to use.

Despite what you may think the vast majority of people have absolutely no interest at all in learning how an operating system works. Who has the time for that anyway? Should I learn how my TV works? Or my heating system? Or my Microwave? Don't know, don't care. All people care about is if the stuff works or not. If it stops working they don't fix it themselves, they hire someone who specializes in it to do so. The entire reason Windows has such wide adoption is because its easy to use. The fact that I as a consumer or user cannot take a look at or modify personally the Windows kernel matters not one in the least to me. Why? Because I don't know how to program anyway! Its not like anyone can just become a computer software programmer. To some this ability comes easily and for the rest of us it would take far more work than its worth to learn how to do.

Like do you get that? The fact that programming is not an easy thing to do for most people? If it was everyone would program their own software and there wouldn't be a market for for-pay software in the first place!

Re:As Vista/Office 2K7 go down

[Gr8Apes]

You're not alone. There's some of us going all the way back to 93/94 that said that Cairo->Longhorn->Vista was going to kill MS should they ever actually try to release it. That's right, look at Cairo's claimed functionality, and you'll see Longhorn, of which Vista is the reality.

MS overshot/overstated their capabilities, and anyone with even half a brain knew it.

Re:Honestly it does not matter.

[nick.ian.k]

That is what is needed. Linux users to get off their asses and help 1-2 new people through getting up and running in linux. you never EVER can say RTFM! but have to hold their hands.

Nonsense. You should be *encouraging* people to RTFM. Note that this is very different from shouting "Leave me the fuck alone, noob!"

A big part of learning anything to do with computers that gets skipped all over the place is "how to think/how to learn". You should never, ever just hold somebody's hand all the way through a particular task or procedure, because ultimately, this is going to prove detrimental to them. Relevant information should be given to the user, and then, in tackling the problem at hand, the user should be asked a series of questions which will slowly move them in the correct direction, but also help establish a general thought pattern for solving the general category of problem being dealt with. Otherwise, the user may never learn much beyond "I think I can call my helpful friend, they'll tell me exactly what to do," which is akin to a full-grown bird looking for its mother to regurgitate food into its mouth at dinner time.

Re:They also give free courses

[AJWM]

Nothing says welcome to Linux like go to url h30187.www3.hp.com

Okay then, go to linux.hp.com [hp.com] -- it gets redirected to some godawful URL, but it still gets you to the HP Open Source and Linux page, with links off from there to whatever aspect grabs you.

Re:Government doesn't like closed formats

[jZnat]

You can still make an obfuscated, patent-encumbered format with XML. Just look at OOXML!