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End Runs Around Vista (BusinessWeek)
BusinessWeek takes a look at what various vendors are doing in light of Vista's problems, including a report that HP is considering making its own Linux distribution. "Still, the sources say employees in HP's PC division are exploring the possibility of building a mass-market operating system. HP's software would be based on Linux, the open-source operating system that is already widely available, but it would be simpler and easier for mainstream users, the sources say. The goal may be to make HP less dependent on Windows and to strengthen HP's hand against Apple (AAPL), which has gained market share in recent years by offering easy-to-use computers with its own operating system."
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I'm sceptical Posted Sep 15, 2008 16:46 UTC (Mon) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
I expect most of these 'trials' and 'plans' of Linux are just negotiating ploys to get a better OEM price for Windows. Their hand would be strengthened further in negotiation if they really did sell some Linux-based systems, but it shouldn't be so many that Microsoft really gets upset.
I'm sceptical Posted Sep 15, 2008 17:08 UTC (Mon) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
Lower OEM prices really aren't an option. One thing the DOJ settlement did was make it so Microsoft had to charge all OEMs the same price. As a result all the Tier 1 OEM's pay the same price for windows now. For HP to be successful they would have to lower the price for their competitors to.
I'm sceptical Posted Sep 15, 2008 18:13 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
Since the article state they worry about competition from Apple, that's not a consideration for them.
I'm sceptical Posted Sep 15, 2008 19:05 UTC (Mon) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Bear in mind, that when Compaq was selling Doze 3.11 they used Tabworks as their shell, and they had a lot of control over the software. Their support costs were a lot lower as a result.
When MS released 95 and took that freedom away from them, they lost that edge and support costs rocketed to the industry average.
If they can unseat MS, they will probably do very nicely with their own HP-linux. All they need is a Debian repository with all their drivers, etc, and off they go ...
Cheers,
I'm sceptical Posted Sep 15, 2008 19:55 UTC (Mon) by mosfet (guest, #45339) [Link] In case of end user PCs the price for a Windows license is zero (or even below zero) because you get a lot of money for pre-installing third party Windows trial software. If you choose to pre-install Linux you won't get this money.
I'm sceptical Posted Sep 16, 2008 13:54 UTC (Tue) by paulpach (guest, #20903) [Link]
They can just as easily pre-install trial software on linux and get the same benefits minus the cost of windows.
Like what? Posted Sep 18, 2008 16:37 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]
And they probably will... just as soon as there's anyone willing to pay to have their trial software pre-installed on Linux. Currently there's not.
Ploy or not, doesn't matter Posted Sep 18, 2008 19:07 UTC (Thu) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link]
I have no idea if "most" are negotiating ploys, but in some sense it doesn't matter. If enough of them force Microsoft to seriously drop prices, it'll help long term.
Microsoft has historically enjoyed massive profit margins; that money war-chest meant it was impractical for anyone to compete with them on their turf (they could use the money to "shut off the oxygen" of potential competitors). If Microsoft suddenly has to reduce its prices, which will then reduce its margins, the stream of future dollars to inhibit competition goes away. They'll still have piles of money, of course, but it will no longer be coming in without having to work at it. Instead, they'll be forced to compete based on the quality and cost of their product. Hello invisible hand; I think Mr. Adam Smith described you...! :-)
Ugh Posted Sep 15, 2008 17:33 UTC (Mon) by wilreichert (subscriber, #17680) [Link]
Please, not another sed -ie 's/RHEL/<<insert vendor name here>>/g' distro. Doesn't anyone ever consider just adding resources an existing project to drive it in a direction which meets their corporate goals?
Ugh Posted Sep 15, 2008 18:07 UTC (Mon) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901) [Link]
I'm not sure how an external party can add resources directly to RHEL. They can add resources to Fedora, but there are still aspects of existing distributions that a commercial entity has no control over (such as release schedule, level of commercial package inclusion, branding, etc.) This is where new groups end up diverging from upstream distros.
Ugh Posted Sep 15, 2008 19:00 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> I'm not sure how an external party can add resources directly to RHEL.
Well the closest they can do is get into a business relationship with RHEL and also work with the community of programmers that serve as Redhat's upstream. That way they can get their improvements into Redhat.
I expect that Redhat is friendly towards input from customers and OEM partners.
---------------------------
However...
HP has always been a Pro-Debian company. That is Debian is their favorite distro from a corporate standpoint and they've always supported Debian on select server hardware and have done some work with them in the past.
I expect that if HP is thinking about making a custom Linux distro it would be a Debian or Ubuntu derivative designed for small desktop environments.
Ugh Posted Sep 15, 2008 19:43 UTC (Mon) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]
> I expect that if HP is thinking about making a custom Linux distro it would be a Debian or Ubuntu derivative designed for small desktop environments.
Why just the desktop? debian or ubuntu running on DL580 software makes a great server for classic unix infrastructure roles.
Ugh Posted Sep 15, 2008 20:41 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Because I expect that any custom system would be for the 'netbook' market.
For enterprise-ish stuff I don't see how competing with Redhat would be worth the effort. HP already makes lots and lots of money selling Redhat on their hardware.
yarhel Posted Sep 23, 2008 15:19 UTC (Tue) by xaoc (guest, #54140) [Link]
They also have some re-branded RHEL. This is a quote from /etc/motd from one or our HP Itanium machines:
"Linux for High Performance Computing
This product is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux source
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