another jerk in my mail box

[Gerald Thompson]

On 6/14/06, Aaron Konstam <akonstam at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 22:04 -0700, Hex Star wrote:
> > I don't think that comment about Dell not carring about linux is true:
> > http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/e510_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn
> >
> I have been associated with an organization that only buys Dell machines
> for many years. And our department loads Linux on all our machines. I
> have three Dell machines running Linux at home.
>
> My experience is that Dell machines run Linux fairly well. If I have nay
> complaint is that Dell sometimes condifures their machines with bleeding
> edge components. So it has happened but not often that Linux support was
> lagging a little behind on video cards for example. But it has never
> been a serious problem.

Aaron is right but not because Dell has anything to do with it, there
is a very simple reason that Linux runs fairly well on Dells, its
Intel not Dell.  Because Dell uses Intel components through all their
hardware, and Intel releases drivers and assists in kernel development
for Linux, that is why Linux runs fairly stable on Dell.  Dell doesn't
customize things as much as HP does, they tend to just order the parts
from Intel and then slap them in to their computers.

Yes you can't buy a home user Dell computer with Linux preinstalled,
although you can purchase business class machines with Red Hat
installed.  You might find it is cheaper to buy the same Dell with MS
Windows on it than it is to buy the same computer with Red Hat or Free
Dos.  That was an article written by one of the tech sites that
mentioned if you priced out the Dell with MS Windows vs the one with
Red Hat, it is cheaper to buy it with MS Windows, format the HD and
throw Fedora on.

We can preach all day about MS Windows though, and I am quite sure a
lot of you will, but most companies look at the bottom line and the
majority of people calling in to the sales office want MS Windows.
Should they give people the option of Linux, yes, and eventually they
will more and more often.  We just have to keep applying pressure on
them.  For now though I am not going to cry too much about it, I have
no problem taking my free MS Windows CD, tossing it on the shelf,
formatting the HD and throwing Fedora on, or better yet, just going to
a parts store and building my own system.

Ranting about it isn't the answer, writing well written letters to the
different companies is a good way to do it.  I have both my computers
running FC5 on one, FC4 on the other, and I have VMware and Win xp for
when I absolutely must test something on MS Windows.  I boot up the
VMware Win XP about once every couple of months.  We would all love
for Linux to take over everything, but instead of going on huge rants
against MS, HP, Dell, IBM and the others, try writing a good letter to
them.  Advocacy rather than Anarchy.  When you respond to them like
you are a raving fanatic that is exactly how they will see us.  If you
respond logically with well thought out responses they will actually
start to listen.  I doubt MS will, but its the hardware vendors that
we need to get onside, so write letters to them, convince them there
is a market for selling Linux on their hardware.

Sincerely,
-- 
Gerald Thompson
geraldlt at gmail.com