OT:Message to all computer vendors
Roberto Sanchez wrote:
Monique Y. Herman wrote:
On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 at 03:14 GMT, alex penned:
What do you think of everyone on this list and other Linux lists
sending a form letter to all computer vendors asking them if they have
systemless computers or components that will work with Linux? Do
you think that would give them some incentive to become interested in
providing such computers and advertise them as such? As it is now,
what incentive do they have ?
I'm not sure how many requests they have to get before they have an
effect. People are already asking now, aren't they? But maybe the
sales person on the other end doesn't report this request to his/her
boss
I suspect that's what happens when such requests come in occasionally
but if they
receive similar messages by the hundreds or even thousands, somebody is
bound
to wake up especially if they realize that similar messages are going to
other
vendors.. Whether a form letter is used or not, they have to become aware
that there is a considerable population of Linux users in this world who
could be
potential customers A form letter would indicate that the Linux
population is
unified but that shouldn't preclude individuals from creating their own
message.
For maximum effect, the effort should be coordinated so that the
vendors' inboxes
became inundated and it should be repeated at regular intervals..
Whenever I call and ask I always make sure to have the salesman ask
his supervisor. Failing that, I ask to personally speak to the
supervisor.
That didn't work, did it? The answers I get include" We don't
support Linux" and "I don't know".
How do you think the supervisor would handle hundreds of messages
arriving at the same time.?
Wouldn't that be a wakeup call?
Maybe having the right address / point of contact is the key.
Even more so if it is mass mailing..
This is probably major point that is currently being overlooked.
Such a letter could be drafted and posted on lists along with as many
major vendor addresses such as Tiger Direct . It could be designed so
all one would have to do is copy it and the TO addresses and send it..
In my opinion, a form letter will not have as much impact as a number of
individual letters. On the other hand, I don't know how much more of an
impact a form letter has than no letter at all.
If they received 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 letters (boilerplate
or not) saying "I want to buy your products, but I won't until you
offer Linux support/OS-less machines/whatever," they will get their
butts in gear.
Take a cheap desktop system, US$ 1000, times even only 10,000 potential
customers. If there is a company out there willing to reject out of
hand US$ 10,000,000 in potential sales, their shareholders need to
know about some major high-level mismanagement.
My thought is the letter should not be system specific but use the
word Linux in a generic sense..
Well, this poses problems, doesn't it? I agree with you in theory, but
they want concrete facts, because they can probably be sued if they say
"certified to work with linux" and then it turns out that some asshat is
running redhat 6.2 and the driver support isn't present. So they want
to be able to say "certified to work with X version of Y operating
system." Problem is, I'd be pretty surprised if most new systems will
work with, say, woody, right off the bat.
Ideally, they would say "certified to work with linux, and here, the
linux drivers for all the hardware are on the CD we shipped with your
system." Even that probably falls prey to issues of gcc versioning and
whatnot, though ...
My old Quantex PII MMX 333 Mhz machine has 5 different Linux systems plus
Windows 98SE running. Don't you think that new faster machines couldn't
be made to do this? There probably are some out there right now but
how can
we tell which ones? My guess is that there just hasn't been any incentive
for manufacturers to 'bother' with even trying them on Linux. Could it
be that
they don't have any Linux knowledgeable people working for them?.
If manufacturers were targeted with mass mailing, I'll bet you'll see
"Wanted,
Linux geeks' in their hiring notices.
If the drivers are GPL (as most are), then a simple statement like
support for this hardware is available in the Linux kernel version
2.4.21 and higher (or whatever), since GPL drivers tend to got included
in the kernel. They can even give some suggestions, like: "The Linux
kernel version 2.4.21 is available as part of Red Hat 9, Mandrake 9.2
and SUSE 9.1," or something like that (I'm pulling version numbers
out of the air).
Yes, why not at least include qualifiers? But, I still cannot accept
the idea
that new and faster computers couldn't be made that can run any Linux
system.
and for a price no higher than what it is today.
Who knows, perhaps if the machines available today were tested, there
might
be many that are fully compatible with Linux. There's no incentive to
do this.
alex
-Roberto
alex
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