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Linux Software

Dell to offer Linux on Dimension Line 149

Posted by Hemos from the more-support dept.
Quite a number of people have written in with the news that Dell is going to be expanding their Linux support. Beginning in October, they will be offering installation of Linux on their hugely popular Dimension Line of PCs-before this, it had only been offered on servers. Will this mean more competition for the VAs and Penguins?
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Dell to offer Linux on Dimension Line

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  • i just hope that in the future, people won't be
    like "Linux sold out" etc. heheh.

    music industry: mainstream = "bad" = selling out
    pc industry: mainstream = "good" = making money

  • Amtrak does not use OS/2, but what appears to be a variant of OS/2. I've seen one of those ticket machines 'break' so that the desktop underneath was revealed, and while it looked like Warp 4, it identified itself as OS/400 (no, not AS/400), I believe.

    --Philip
  • I know they offer linux, but how many people does it take to put linux on a line of machines. I hope they keep up their high industry quality on these new machines.
  • if you read the article, it mentions the Linux laptops released at about the same time.

  • Ya know, I've always wondered why some rpm couldn't be made that would install the basics needed by Debian, mv some stuff around, then do the necessary apt-get magic... hmmm

    I, for one, would love neat little ways to move back and forth between distros w/o new installs

  • I knew I should have kept that dead-tree InfoWorld. I think that's where I saw one of those big-assed adds from either IBM or some name company adverting a line of servers with Linux as an OS option along w/ NT. I looked at it and said, "Oh, well sure, they've been saying they would support Linux for a while." And didn't keep it.

    Anyway, I have seen adds offering Linux, but I just can't recall whose ad? (poor little brain cells, crash, crash, crash :))

  • Whe are you people going to learn, RH has the most corporate recognition and therefore is the only viable choice for a compnay like Dell. Read the comments a few up, multiple distros=tech support nightmares. I think you will see SuSE long before you see Slackware from a major player like Dell. SuSE has the European market penetration to make it look good to international companies.

    RH is Linux, Linux is not RH, my boss has never heard of Debian or Slackware, when are people gonna understand this ?
  • > Actually, the Dimension line is really geared towards small businesses and home users.

    You misunderstood. I mean for desk jockeys in corperations. Ie, the standard cubicle computer. And sorry for using the word average (tm). It would seem one can't use the word these days without someone pointing out they're "average" and don't fit your description. At any rate, I don't imagine the average Linux user has the power to buy 50 computers a year. And if you do buy 50 computers a year (presumably for employees at your company), I don't imagine assembling each of them as much of an option anyhow. ;) I was indeed referring to the do-it-yourselfer types.

    When I worked at Nortel, we all had Dimensions, corperate wide, on our desks (well, okay, I'm almost positive they were Dimensions .. they were desk machines, not server machines). I can't tell you how much I would have preferred to have people running Linux so I didn't have to run around to every computer and fix them at the desks themself. This is what I was saying - it would be great if this helped push Linux on to the desks in cubicle environments.

    SirSlud
  • Having had to take apart and upgrade a few Dimensions, I feel pretty confident saying that they're not for the hardware-savvy crowd. They seem like they're actually designed to be difficult to take apart, let alone removing/replacing the hard drives.

    I dunno, I would much rather have an Optiplex. One button and the case opens, PCI bus is on a removable riser, just a really nice box.
  • The idea that Dell is doing this because of MS Office coming to Linux is waay too farfetched. Its simple business.

    1. The won't go bankrupt by doing this. Worst case, they loose some money. If they only cover their expenditures, then they are doing better than Compaq. Hemorraging money maybe fashionable but I don't think Dell is into that.
    2. If anything, they increase their market share. And they doing it by *opening up* their offerings (unlike some other companies).
    3. Maybe they are preparing for less MS business, I dunno. Pure speculation.

    All in all, I think its just good business, respond to industry trends, get there first. We all said a couple of years ago that Linux would be big on the desktop, and now it looks like its starting to happen, so this is more "yeah, thought so" than big news.
  • at last now normal (l)users will have access to linux, without having to install it themselves, which many are scared to do. this could bring more support and software if it proves to be a popular option. i just wish diabloII was going to support linux.

    -----------------------

  • ... considering the average Linux user isn't the type to purchase from large companies like Dell. On the other hand, Dell supplies to many corperatee IT companies like GE (Global Enterprise?) and such. Maybe this will contribute to the acceptance of Linux in the corperate invironment?

    SirSlud
  • Now if they only offered an alternative chip, they would be opening the door to the brave new world of wintel independence. They could do the next big thing.
  • Subject line says it all... does anyone
    know if they plan to offer any non-RedHat
    distributions pre-installed
  • As interesting as this may sound, I was looking at purchasing Linux servers for a new company I am starting. I went to Dell's site looking for the Linux support on the servers, but I'd have to say that it wasn't very easy to figure out just exactly what was supported. An example is that they have RAID configs for their boxes and list their RAID card that they use. The problem is that I couldn't cross reference that RAID card with the Linux Hardware Compatibility list. This may just be a documentation issue, but I didn't want to risk forking X thousand dollars only to find that the RAID card isn't supported, but standard Adaptec SCSI is. To make a long story short, I'm purchasing my Rack mountable, redundant power supplied, hot swappable drive server from Penguin Computing [penguincomputing.com]. :) This isn't a plug, but I thought this might be helpful info for those of you that are in the market.
  • Many corporations will probably be more inclined to buy boxen from a well-established vendor with good support (which Dell has, IMO.)

    This is probably also good for brand-conscious consumers who wouldn't want to buy from a 'small' shop like VA and who want linux pre-installed, for whatever reason. *ahem*

    Baby steps to world domination...

    Derek

  • ftp.cdrom.com (allegedly the busiest single FTP server publically accessible) is a Micron...running FreeBSD.

    How about we send Micron a few thousand polite emails asking them to officially support FreeBSD and/or Linux? :)

  • Well it's seems to me, from reading this article that they aren't going to change that. They'll simply put up little flags in their configurations that warn users about incompatabilities. So if you choose a WinModem and Linux it will tell you that you have a conflict with your modem.



    ---------
  • I am running Linux on a Dell Latitude CPi laptop right now. Everything works great, except I can't get X to work with the external video port (which isn't a big deal to me). BeOS 4.5 works well on this machine too. I don't know why it is taking so long for Linux on laptops to catch on...
  • They are accurately reflecting the cost, they are including the cost of the added tach support personnel. Unlike some of us the rest of the world will call tech support and ask questions.
  • 410 Precisions off the Dell Outlet are sweet. Press one button and its open. Ultra2SCSI, 3Com905B TX onboard. Dual CPU capable. Hard drive assembly slides out making install/removal (cold swap) easy (with a long LVD cable). Loads of room, good air flow pattern. Got rid of the FirePro GL card for a Voodoo 3000. Multi boot 98/NT/RH6.0.
    having the ability to boot off of different SCSI ID's better than messing with LILO.

    not a sucky box at all.

    Paul
  • will tech support "tech support?" I know that their warranty policy is very stodgy, and that if you want your computer fixed, they expect it to be in the original configuration as you got it.

    I've owned several Dell computers (2 actually) and on one a sound card fried. The tech had no problem coming to my dorm to install a new card (it was during the first year with on-site service), and didn't blink an eye when he saw my fairly heavily modified system (new modem, SCSI card, hard drive, CD burner, and of course, OS :-) ). In fact I had the system open and sitting out when he arrived, so he didn't have to take the time to unscrew it. I would have prefered that they just overnight me the card but during the first year of next-day on-site service, they want to install it themselves I guess.

    Sufice it to say, I have absolutely no complaints about their service or machines. They are both great! and if Dell has announced that they are offering Linux pre-installed, I have faith that they will tweak it to your custom hardware (within the options they offer, of course, which is adaquete for most users). They may use a distro like Redhat, we'll see. I'm also certain that they will offer the same high quality tech support that I am used to recieving from Dell. I hope they lower the price of the system by $50 or so if you choose linux over Winblows, but would be happy enough if they just kept it the same price.

    Spyky
  • Aye. Back when purchasing my current box (a Dimension R450) -- I did remember to request, specifically, a hardware-based modem, but didn't ask about the sound card (given that I didn't really care. Heck, I used to play _Doom_ on my (silent) P90...). Turns out that at the time, Dell was using Aureal Vortex-based cards (TB Montego) which are OSS-only.

    Everything else, 'tho, including the TNT-based video card and the requested IDE tape drive, worked fine in Linux. That's spiffy.

    This adds nicely to leverage w/ the hardware companies...
  • Yeah, Optiplexes are really nice, but their price tags aren't. If I want to spend that much money on a PC just to get *official* Linux support, I'll go to VA. Otherwise I'll get another consumer PC and just pray to the gods that it's all Linux friendly.


    And speaking of which, I just bought a Gateway Performace 550 and it's almost 100% Linux OK. The only problem came with it's Ultra66 ATA controller card, and there's already work being done in the 2.3.x series on that. I wholeheartedly recommend both Dell and Gateway for Linux users.

  • My Company Ordered a PowerEdge in May or June and it cost us $50 more to have RH5.2 installed on it. We figured it would be cheaper then one of us doing it.

    When we got the box we had to blow out the file system. Their setup was not very good. I could imagine an ISP running it with a 300MB /home partition.
  • Hahah, that's pretty accurate. I'll look up from my paper and see what is going on when I hear a Who tune coming from the TV. They know who has the purse strings, and what kind of noise to use to get my attention.

    "..talkin 'bout my g-g-genereration!" :-)

  • I was on my way down to Florida two weeks ago. I was stuck on Delta in Atlanta. We sat on the runway behind 18 other planes. When we finally got to the front of the line we moved up to the runway, then pulled off. The pilot then starts to say, "Well folks, how can I put this. Our computer just dumped on us and we have to wait ten minutes for it to come back online. We can't move the plane while it is coming back online. ..." Needless to say, although I know they don't run off Microsoft the thought definately came to mind. Just when you are about to do something important, splat, then wait ten minutes to reboot and if you move it crashes again. :)
  • According to a friend of mine at AMD, Dell is the only major OEM who has no AMD-based systems whatsoever. And it's kinda pathetic, actually, because Dell and AMD are both in Austin, TX.
    Timur Tabi
    Remove "nospam_" from email address
  • Ah, but remember: They aren't selling Linux. They're selling support for Linux. They're selling the idea. They're "Linux Compatible" and I for one would much rather buy a PC from them, knowing that all the hardware is going to work with Linux, than a PC from (...random choice...) Acer, where I might be fsck'ed with a WinModem or something that they weren't totally honest about in their ads.

  • Aren't they the ones selling the "unstoppable" Windows NT ? I always laugh when I see that commercial.
  • the inspiron line is their laptop line
  • I've held the same opinion, that Microsoft was extremely unlikely to release Office for Linux or any other Unix variant. Any revenue they'd receive for Office on Linux would be tiny compared to the billions they will coin shipping Office 2K on Windows. However, the Linux platform does offer an opportunity for Corel, Lotus and others who have been effectively frozen out of the Windows platform by Billy's Bullies, so Microsoft could see some strategic value in porting to Linux. The clincher for me has been the undercutting of the Windows platform such a move by Microsoft would represent. The following conspiricy theory just occured to me nonetheless. Let's say Microsoft ports Office or parts of it to Linux in an attempt to undercut their arch-nemesis Sun. Though Unix in general has a tiny, tiny fraction of the desktop market, Office on Linux could boost the penguin in shops that run Solaris on their servers. I know it's not completely logical, but marketing never is, completely. Now for the nefarious part. Microsoft only ports Word and Excel, not Access, Powerpoint or the other cruft. This blunts competing commodity word processors and spreadsheets on Linux, but leaves Windows a better platform for Office in general. Windows remains the dominant desktop OS, and the competition for NT at the server is further split.

    And my space alien contacts assure me that Richard Nixon is alive and well on Arcturus IV.

  • They are evidently using RedHat 6.0 on their Optiplex machines (see here [dell.com] and here [dell.com]), so I imagine it will be the same on the Dimension.
  • If you really want to buy prebuilt linux servers go with any of the linux vendors. Some of them are quite good and you will get much quicker results than you would with dell.

    I personally recommend www.dcginc.com for machines. I've gotten a few multiproc PCs and some of their Ultra boxes and have been very happy with them.

    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • Actually That would be HP
    (with the kung fu grip;)
  • I heard Aretha Franklin singing "Think" in a perfume commercial the other day. It got my attention.
  • God how I hate that quote. =) Perfect example of why Microsoft is where it is today. If people can't figure out the canyon-sized hole in Herbold's reasoning, they deserve the Windows platform. ;)

    SirSlud.
  • Actually, maybe the justice department should look into it. It seems these people are only distributing Netscape, and not also IE on the CD.


    (just kidding, obviously there is no IE for Linux to put on the CD)
  • Oh yeah ... and one more thing I'd love to ask Bob. If the cost of computing is going down so fast, why is the cost of being a Microsoft customer is going up just as fast? Heehee.

    SirSlud
  • But if they swap in real printers and modems, the lack of the "MS tax" offsets the difference in price.
  • Hopefully this decision is giong to be made across the board of Dell's operations and not be restricted to the North American market.

    I have to say that although it's only a good thing it would be nice if manufacturers paid a little more lip service to the european market - we only have a few vendors who are willing to install Linux and they have not yet reached the same sort of size or recognition that VA and Penguin have - for a company such as Gateway or Dell or any large high street aware brand to bring Linux into Europe on their pre-installed range can only do good - not only for Linux but also for their own image.

    Come on guys - remember we're over here.
  • WP is great.
  • I (and those friends and employers whom I advize) have bought several systems from Dell over the past several years, and I've never had the problems you mention. Specifically, I've modified some of their systems rather heavily (high-end SCSI bus, NIC and sound card added, OS changed, etc) and never had them blink about supporting any other parts (even when the new ones were potentially involved in the problems). Maybe YOU've had problems with Dell, but I can assure you that your experiences are far from common.

    On another note...

    I find it likely that Dell won't measure up to VA. I've worked with people, however, who refuse to buy from anyone they haven't heard of/seen ads for on TV/etc... this has caused more than a few folks I turned towards Alpha-based servers from Microway and their ilk to refuse to purchase them. Dell still will fill a niche in the Linux market, and VA will retain theirs.
  • MS Office is irrelevant. For these that really desire the 100-pound godawful hodgepodge of features that MS has shoehorned into a 5-pound sack, there is StarOffice. It even recreates the Start-button interface, making even the most ardent Windows fanatic feel right at home.

    However, for those that use Linux because its stability, speed, and configurability are orders of magnitude better than MS' offerings (and others' too, to be fair), the lack of MS Office on Linux is no burden. This is tantamount to claiming that Linux would be taken seriously as a server OS if MS were to port Exchange. (Pah!!) There are a multitude of offerings that serve all of the needs of most of the people. All that's necessary is a good set of file translators, which StarOffice, Applix, and Wordperfect all have.

    The funny thing, IMHO, is that many of the major Linux distributions now include lots of apps at install, including office productivity and browser software. I'd like to see Microsoft attempt to sue Red Hat or SuSE to force them to give MS equal space on the preconfigured Gnome or KDE desktop (because the GPL cadre is a de facto monopoly?? God knows what MS lawyers will think up...).
  • Lets stop and think here for a moment. Who does Dell market it's computers to? Only housewives and small children? Oh wait, I forgot they also have some very large businesses and schools. That is why Dell is now offering linux on it's desktop lines. They're not trying to convert Joe Average user to linux, but give businesses a Windows alternative that is scores stabler than Windows 98 or NT. It won't make anyone think it's like Windows, if anything it will just make more people realize that Windows is not the end all be all of computing. More people would try linux if they could get it preinstalled on their computer. Linux is relatively easy to use but like all unicies it's difficult to administer. Desktop manufacturers that are supporting linux are taking some of the administration work out of using linux on home systems.
  • Maybe i tried the wrong model, but so far the cheapest configuration i can figure out is 1278.00 - am i wrong?
  • Yes! Finally another step toward world domination for the Linux OS, and one step backwards for that other OS, whatever it is.
  • MS Office is irrelevant. For these that really desire the 100-pound godawful hodgepodge of features that MS has shoehorned into a 5-pound sack, there is StarOffice.

    Well, that's one theory. As much as it pains me to say it, Microsoft Office is light years ahead of StarOffice in the annoyingly important areas of:

    1. Peformance
    2. Powerpoint
    3. comPatibility with Microsoft Office

    No, I don't use Microsoft Office when I can avoid it. Unfortunately, however, it has gotten tough to avoid Powerpoint and its stupid .ppt files, and StarOffice really doesn't help there. And even if it could, the last time I tried to use StarOffice it made me envy the dead.

    But I'm not wishing for MS to port Office to Linux, and neither should you. What I would really like to see is a truly open API to Windows and the Office applications, so that data trapped within office documents and can be saved to useful formats, and the occasional need to create Powerpoint files for somebody else's presentation can be met.

    King Babar/strong.

  • On a serious note: What avid linux user would buy an M$ product??? That would be like getting a coke out of a pepsi machine. Strange and twisted in its own way.
  • See subject.
  • Like I said in a reply to someone's comment, linux is relatively easy to use but difficult to administer. Dell is taking on some of the responsibilities of your office Unix guru, offering support for their products under linux and configuring the system for you. Sure most of us could or already have built our own systems but in an office with dozens or hundreds of employees you don't want to do it yourself. Some people will bitch about not having office but there's always Applix and Star Office, which are both Office 97 compatible and are very well put together not to mention much less expensive than Office 97 or 2000. We're going to see alot more linux-ready desktops in the next year. Especially with nVidia et al opening up their hardware and helping with drivers for their products. The 2.4 kernel with FireWire and USB will do alot to increase linux's popularity, with USB support we'll most likely see linux drivers for all of our favorite USB toys.
  • Dell Raid controllers use the AMI MegaRaid Chipset which is supported by linux (2.2 kernels). I have a machine at work that also uses a MegaRaid-based raid card and it works fine. This fact is stated on a support page hidden in the site somewhere.

  • Of course it is good that a company in bed with Microsoft is beginning to offer free software solutions. But has Dell made any investments in free software the way Redhat, VA Linux, SuSE, IBM, or SGI have? I would like to be shown that I am wrong in thinking Dell has done nothing and is simply an opportunist. VA Linux and Penguin would be more responsible choices with whom to do business.

  • I know, eh? Optiplex's are sweet. Man, if I could get an Optiplex w/ Linux at work, you can bet your ass it would take me half a second to expense it :-) (our company has a contract or something with Dell so that all our new workstations are Dells - the Optiplex pIII/450's are nice, but Win98 is *such* a pig on it. I gotta get permission to wipe and reinstall with 98lite [98lite.net])
  • I bet Dimensions account for most of Dell's sales - as Linux continues to be the "it girl of the '90's", it's smart for them to extend their support there, to the volume sector. That's where the money is.

    Dimensions are the "value" line, built with fairly generic ATX mobos & mid-tower cases. They don't suck at all, but Dell changes components on short notice, depending on what's "hot" at any given time. I switched my company over from those to Optiplexes because, hey, they may cost more but I can call Dell this time next year and buy the exact same machine I buy today. When you need to maintain a fleet of PCs, it helps a lot when they're the same. Of course, right now I'm running NT on them (contrary to general belief, NT isn't bad as a desktop OS for the average joe user in a 'corporate' environment), but the day is coming when I can switch - even though NT isn't bad for a desktop Linux is much, much nicer. Official support is a Good Thing, and gives me that much more ammo to fire when the time for the revolution comes.

    But offering Linux on Dimensions is even easier than offering it on their other configs for just that reason - generic hardware (BX motherboards with 3 DIMM slots and integrated sound), only IDE to worry about, standard NICs (3C905b), and a hotrod video card (probably the TNT2 right now). They can just build a kernel under Redhat 6 with support for the few options they offer as stock, and ship it in 1 or two configs to handle different video cards under X. Piece of cake. I'm surprised they waited this long. If you can get it on a Precision or an Optiplex, Dimensions are trivial.

    It'll definitely be Red Hat, after all - Dell owns a piece of them.

    Now what I'm waiting for from Dell is two things:
    1: Official support for Linux on my Inspiron 7000 (it is sweet!), because running X with the built-in ATI Rage Pro LT is a kludge.
    2: Dell to run Linux for their WebTalk support system so it won't crash all the time.

    - -Josh Turiel
  • I would not be surprised at all to see MS release Office 200x for Linux in some partially complete fashion, once they see a credible market for shrinkwrapped, retail-distributed Linux-desktop software. However, it is much better for everyone if Access and Powerpoint never get ported. Powerpoint is an abomination aesthetically and in terms of file size and CPU utilization, and Access is a dbms that barely works, behaving inconsistently and commonly doing things like losing records or attaching updates to the wrong record.

    Hopefully by the time this release happens (it it happens), MS Office will be well along on its tumble into irrelevancy anyway.
  • Look at their linux page. You can already buy an optiplex desktop, no strings attached.

  • This article seems to imply that Dell knows something everyone else doesn't know. It can't be the value of *linux* the OS can it, ZDNET? No, they suspect that Microsoft is involved. Riiiight. At any rate, I think it is *incredibly, hugely unlikely* that Microsoft is going to release MS Office on Linux. Never saw MS Office for OS/2 did we? Don't think we are going to see one for linux. Linux competes for too directly with Windows for them to ever do it. Enough bashing ZDNET for shoddy reporting and baseless implications. Dell is selling their machines with Linux pre-loaded because it sees potential in the operating system, they wan't to be the "first" big company to offer it. I say its great for us, the more companies who do this, the more alternatives will continue to gain support. Also, Dell produces top-quality machines, I have a year old PII/400 from them, wonderful stuff, a year before that I had a PII/266, now that I am boycotting M$ I can buy my *next* machine from them too, without paying an M$ tax. Kudos to Dell!

    Spyky
  • Could be nice, but...

    ...will it be custom-built, or will it be only a stock hardware configuration, to save work by Dell tech support?

    ...will tech support "tech support?" I know that their warranty policy is very stodgy, and that if you want your computer fixed, they expect it to be in the original configuration as you got it.

    ...will they match up to VA? Of course, the price will be better, but will we be better off buying Linux pre-shipped from Dell? I bet there's some serious tweaking that the end-user will have to do once it's out of the box to get it the way they like it.

    I hope Dell takes these things into account when they're brandishing "Linux" all over the web. It's not just a buzzword--it's a philosophy, almost. If Dell is just looking to get publicity and misled sales, they might as well try to sell BeOS as well.

  • Being rather technically inclined, when I want a machine regardless of the OS I generally do my research and build it. Thats for personal stuff of course. When it comes to handling purchasing influence/decisions at work I rank Dell, Micron, and Gateway as the better ones to get good solidly built boxes from. This definately ups Dell in my opinion. Now to turn the Microsoft Srockholders in the boardroom... Finally got our Webserver back on Solaris/Apache and off of the IIS shit they had us on. Would like to see a corporate wide shift from Win95 to Linux instead of the almost inevitable Win95 to Win2k(bulid 666).

    Blah... Just whish the fighting was over and the wold saw each os for what it is. BTW Heres a funny snippit.... (OFF TOPIC)




    IF OPERATING SYSTEMS RAN THE AIRLINES - Submitted by J. Hovind (BeOS and Amiga added by yours truly)
    _______________________________________

    UNIX Airways

    Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come to the airport. They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they are supposed to be building.

    Air DOS

    Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on and let the plane coast until it hits the ground again. Then they push again, jump on again, and so on ...

    Mac Airlines

    All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don't need to
    know, don't want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.

    Windows Air

    The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.

    Windows NT Air

    Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.

    BeOS Air

    Pretty Colors in the planes and terminals but no one know about them and they can't find any engines to fit their planes.


    Amiga Air

    Damn good airline considering when it came out and its compitition. However they have suffered several buyouts and are way behind technologically. their customers don't care and in fact are quite fanatic about the Amiga experience.

    Linux Air

    Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself. When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the
    seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?"



  • AMD? Not likely unless they use the K7. Consider this: Dell makes CHRP compliant PowerPC RS/6000 clone. Install Linux, AIX, MacOS X, etc. on it. That would be truly alternative (for a regular PC maker that is).
  • What's so hard to find?
    http://www.dell.com/linux/ [dell.com]
  • >even though I will have to reformat and place NT
    >on them.

    Umm, unless you bought liscenses for those, you are breaking the copyright law.

    Just fyi.
  • Er, more competition is a good thing, right? Monopolies are bad, right? Don't tell me you've gotten your loyalties mixed up again! :)

    --
    Wonko the Sane

  • I just checked out Dell's online store(which i use to purchase pc's for work) and I compared two equally configured systems in NT and Linux. The NT box cost $4840 and the Linux was $4607.

    Interesting to note, the default configurations show up as NT being $7151 and the Linux box coming in at a friendlier $5776. If you went shopping online and saw those two prices, which would you choose? Hmmm...

    BTW: The systems I checked out were Precision 610 Workstations configured as follows:
    PIII 550 w/512kb cache
    256MB RAM (on two slots)
    Diamond something video w/32MB
    9GB SCSI
    24" Monitor (neat)
    and the rest is ho-hum normal crap like mouse, etc...
  • If you tell me how to build my own notebook, I'd be glad to build my own. I can't wait till I can start buying Linux notebooks from lots of different companies... this announcement (even if only one line in an otherwise desktop article) is a good step.
  • FYI, Delta runs OS/2. So does Amtrak, whose Quik-Trak ticket machines in Penn Station all rebooted simultaneously a couple of weeks ago while I was trying to retrieve my pre-ordered tickets. I still use OS/2 on occasion, and it's a solid OS, but unfortunately I can't vouch for its "real-world" stability.
  • Yeah, I have a Dimension XPS-T450, and it has the Yahama DS-XG soundcard in it. I downloaded the trial OSS drivers, and got the sound to work, but I haven't shelled out the $30 to get the real version. I hope ALSA ends up supporting this soundcard. The winmodem is just a pain right now.

    Oh yeah, mine came with a 3com 3c905c ethernet card, so I had to download the newest version (development) of the driver, cause the stable one doesn't support it yet.
  • >Does this new Dell support imply that Dell will
    >help in cajoling hardware manufacturers to write
    >Linux drivers? I dam' well hope so, though it
    >might not help me any.

    Dell's a big company. I'm sure they'll do some arm twisting if necessary to get whatever it takes to support Linux on their boxes.
  • Actually, my first experience with Linux was totally end-user. I bought the Yggdrasil Plug-and-Play Linux (first release- the plain white book with green print on the cover), plugged it into my 486 with the 1x CD-ROM drive and a Sound Blaster Pro, and it booted up, running off the CD. I remember that it played music on my sound card as it came up to the login prompt.

    That was in 1993.

    It took some time for it to sink in what I had, but it was definitely an end-user experience, not a techie thing at all. Of course I graduated to Slackware when I finally figured out what I was doing. . . The early Yggdrasil was a great demo-version, though, for it's time.
  • PGP 5.0 can compile on slackware without a problem! Why was I trolled?
    ---------------------------
    ^_^ smile death approaches.
  • Oh yeah, mine came with a 3com 3c905c ethernet card, so I had to download the newest version (development) of the driver, cause the stable one doesn't support it yet.

    Are you aware that you can use the 3c59x.o module to drive it? The one drawback to this card is that if you have a dual boot system, you *must* go to a power-off state after running win9x, or it will be severely confused.

    James



  • Simple: Slack works to build apps because you installed it with the proper packages (tgz's) to allow you to do this, probably libc headers, some libcrypt stuff, yadda yadda. RedHat just needed the same stuff installed (most common mistake is not to install the glibc-devel rpm's), and it would have built fine, as would any other Linux distro, even (in the case of a well-written app that uses all the imake stuff) on just about any other Unix.

    RedHat, Slack, Deb, Mandrake, SUSE, whatever, you just need to know what you need to install to make stuff work.

    So in your case, "trolling" as in asking for flames by spouting erroneous output.

    Don't blame your ignorance on the distro, buddy.

  • MSOffice for Linux will ship if and when there are 5 million or
    more LinuxPPC or LinuxAlpha machines in use on the street.

    MS will never release an MSOffice for any Intel based OS other
    than it's own except that they are told in no uncertain terms
    ( Falling stocks, slow sales etc... ) that the Windows dominance
    is over.

    For evidence of this mindset look at the Release of IE for Unix.
    It generally costs very little to port running software from
    Solaria to Linux since they are so similar underneath. Many
    people ( including me ) believe there are probably more Linux
    X86 desktops out there than Solaria Spark desktops ( Not servers
    here ).

    --
    "THINK" -: former IBM motto.
  • if linux never becomes mainstream, it will remain hard to obtain compatible software. it IS better than windows, and so taking a huge chunk of ms's market share would be a good thing. the only people who will complain about this are those who cant bear to do anything anyone else is and feel the need to think theyre better than everyone else because they use an unpopular os. (by unpopular, i mean not standard and recognized by a mojority of the population.)

    -----------------------

  • Actually FYI most colleges and large corps have site licenses for things like NT.
  • Probably not. Imagine the tech support nightmare that would turn into. TECH: "Okay, can you tell me what operating system you're running?" USER: "Dell, duh." TECH: "No no, the operating system. Like Windows 98 or Linux?" USER: "Oh, it's Linux." TECH: "Which distribution?" USER: "KDE" TECH: "No no..." Dell will pick one distribution and stick with it. It will probably be RedHat, unless Caldra can wedge themselves in there. But don't count on seeing Slackware from them anytime soon. Or even Debian or SuSE. They just don't have the corporate recognition. --------
  • little mis-info there, they offer red hat on their precision workstations, or whatever their high end workstations are. But why just red hat? why can't we have some suse or slack-ness?

    red hat is linux, but linux is not red hat. why can't people understand this.

    stu --- got slack?
  • Select models of Dell OptiPlex® Desktops, PrecisionTM WorkStations, and PowerEdge® Servers are certified by Red Hat® Linux 6.0 and can be custom configured for quick and easy deployment.

    from the dell site from the last poster...
  • I've got a year-old Dell Dimension with three OS'es on it, and have been having some real headaches trying to find drivers. Does this new Dell support imply that Dell will help in cajoling hardware manufacturers to write Linux drivers? I dam' well hope so, though it might not help me any.

    P.S. Dell isn't the luser computer manufacturer, that's Compaq. At least Dell's boxes don't look like something out of a quasi-futuristic 1950's commercial. And they don't have a semi-transparent moon button on them either. Or 'stylish' plastic doors which block the CDROM drive from opening. I bought my Dell because of the good price and the intelligent design of the case.

  • As much as I like that little paperclip, we don't really need another Office distribution under Linux. StarOffice is really really good (although having 256 megs of RAM doesn't hurt). Applix is almost as good and has a much smaller footprint. I haven't really used WordPerfect, but I can only imagine that it's of a high quality too.
    ------
  • For the same hardware, will I get a lower price for the Linux OS box vs. the WinOS box?



  • One of the biggest things I see happening from this move is the inability of hardware manufacturers to ignore Linux. Any OEM who wants to be bundled with Dell (which is basically everybody) will now _have_ to produce Linux drivers. With this move, we now have a chicken and OEMs will have to produce the eggs.
  • There are four Dell Dimension XPS's at the place I work. I had to install SCSI cards in them. Piece of cake. One screw for the cover, push the tabs and tada! Today I installed a cd-r with a scsi card in another dell dimension. Same deal. Its a little more tricky to get the front cover off, but I got no impression of a "DON'T OPEN THIS" attitude.

  • I thought the standard Microsoft monopoly contract stated that vendors have to *pay* Microsoft for a Win9x license for every machine shipped even if it goes out the door with something else on it.

    Has anyone here done a reclaim against Dell?

    Dave
  • Have you ever read one of those articles in the PC magazines (they appear every few months) where they go through the "let's give Linux a try" bit.

    They all spend half the article bitching that to run Linux you have to partition the hard disc, ignoring that fact that the work is predicated on the fact that (a) Windows is already there and (b) you actually want to keep it. The reverse applies if you have a pre-existing Linux install and add Windows.

    For the average non-techie, installing RH or SuSe (predicating Linux supported hardware) is a lot easier these days than installing Windows, it's just that they never have to install Windows.

    These preloaded machines will go long way to dispelling this urban legend in the minds of the masses.
  • If you're hoping to avoid lining Microsoft's pocket, think again...if you check you'll find that the price difference between Linux and NT models is the same as the price difference between NT and Win98 OEM's, and you'll still be paying Bill his $25 or so. This is written into Dell's deal with MS and they're not going to eat it for your benefit.

    Does anyone know for sure if Dell's Linux desktops actually ship with RH only, or with a LILO dual boot setup and Win98?
  • What I'd like to see is a Dell-style drop down menu on the ordering page which reads
    • "Windows 98 (standard)"
    • "Red Hat Linux 6.0 (SAVE: $100)"
    Now if I could only do that with the PIII/Athlon tradeoff. Oh well, Dell's getting the bucks from Intel, can't blame 'em. P.S. I wouldn't be surprised if Dell offered both OSes at par, especially because of the increased tech support load they will have to endure. *sigh*
  • I installed Linux on a friend's Dell Dimension. They use Yamaha DS-XG sound chips, which as far as I could figure out (I may have been very wrong), are only supported in Open Sound's drivers. Not to mention the WinModem is standard on Dimensions...I hope Dell is planning to change the hardware a bit for Linux installs...

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