A Modest Proposal for Michael Dell (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Glyn Moody investigates the state of pre-installed Linux on Dell computers. "Dell is only talking about certifying its corporate client products. Worse, it's only talking about doing that with Novell hardly open source's favourite company at the moment. The justification for not going further is rather unconvincing: We don't want to pick one distribution and alienate users with a preference for another. So, rather than upset supporters of some distros, Dell has decided to be scrupulously fair and to upset supporters of all distros. It's clear from this statement that Dell is not going to offer systems with pre-installed GNU/Linux any time soon."

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A Modest Proposal for Michael Dell (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 4, 2007 21:11 UTC (Sun) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

I had a chat with Michael Dell last year on a topic close to this one. I'm not going to represent him, of course, but I'll tell you the problem in general. Dell makes money from the software on the hard disk. For example, if you open a trial version and then buy a license, they get something back. If you can arrange for them to get a kickback in connection with the product, say from the support fees, they'll be more receptive.

Bruce

A Modest Proposal for Michael Dell (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 5, 2007 3:09 UTC (Mon) by cleary (guest, #41669) [Link]

It's interesting to note that Dell offer the n-series option for Optiplex/Latitude (business-ey) ranges (no pre-installed OS).
I would speculate that in the business arena most machines are reformatted with a SOE and the chances of getting a sale from pre-installed trial versions of software are small.

Based on that, Michael Dell's argument only seems relevant to the Dimension/Inspiron (Home user-ey) range.

As a general comment from a small-medium sized business who runs linux (debian) on %40 of their desktops, if dell offered pre-installed linux on the optiplex/latitude ranges they would immediately become our preferred desktop supplier regardless of which distro they ship with.

A Modest Proposal for Michael Dell (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 15, 2007 5:04 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link]

Dell makes money from the software on the hard disk. For example, if you open a trial version and then buy a license, they get something back.

The Crapware Dilemma, as noted elsewhere last week.

Can't say I'm happy about it, but...at least it makes sense. The Linux geek's dilemma is then, simply: pay the Windows tax and deal with the potential pain of installing Linux yourself, but get a massive crapware rebate (easily solved by formatting the disk); or else avoid both the Windows tax and any pain associated with installing Linux (particularly on a laptop), but lose the crapware rebate and end up paying more. (The ars technica article linked in the comments to the link above estimated the "paying more" part at $60.)

Of course, you know Dell would be happy to pile on the crap for Linux, too, if anybody would pay them to do so...

Greg