Re: Woohooo! Dell + Linux
On Sat, 2007-03-31 at 17:25 -0400, Kamaraju S Kusumanchi wrote:
> Andrei Popescu wrote:
>
> > Kamaraju S Kusumanchi <kamaraju@bluebottle.com> wrote:
> >
> >> That is awesome news! Thanks for sharing it. Now I just hope that the
> >> Dell systems come pre-installed with Debian!
> >
> > As much as I like Debian, but wouldn't Ubuntu make a better option?
> >
>
> Actually no! If they go with Ubuntu, every 6 months they have to train their
> staff for the new release Ubuntu makes. Moreover, from my personal
> experinece, I think Debian Stable is much more stable than Ubuntu Stable.
>
> If they are serious about this, it is better if they go with Debian.
>From what I was reading, I gather Dell is considering creating community
support for whatever Linux distro(s) it offers, rather than its
traditional method of supporting the installed OS (Windows, most of the
time). That was among the questions it asked in its poll of potential
customers interested in buying Dell with Linux pre-installed: Would you
be satisfied with community support from Dell, Dell Linux user forums,
etc.? (Dell already has forums for Linux users and they can be pretty
helpful if you have a Dell and are having some problem with one distro
or another.) If they went that route, you would probably only call Dell
with hardware issues, though sometimes it can be hard to tell whether
something's not working properly because it's misconfigured or because
the hardware is faulty.
So in one sense, it wouldn't really matter which distro they offered if
it was to be primarily community supported. OTOH, going with a distro
like Ubuntu would mean Canonical could also provide premium support if
it wished, which might give potential Dell customers an extra sense of
security. Many people, especially in Dell's target demographic, are
happy to pay something for support just for the ability to call a
toll-free number when they can't figure something out and have someone
walk them through what they need to do. They would prefer that to
searching mailing lists and forums and what-not. With Debian, there
currently isn't any commercial premium support for these people to turn
to.
Another problem with Debian as a pre-installed distro is that stable, at
any given time, is often well behind others in supporting newer
hardware. Dell is not about to hold back on offering the latest and
greatest hardware because Debian stable doesn't support it yet. And of
course there is the issue of Debian not holding to any sort of schedule.
Businesses like predictability; they don't like "when it's ready."
That's what Ian Murdoch was referring to when he opined that Debian is
missing opportunities. Debian essentially takes itself out of the
running because of this attitude. Microsoft can afford to delay and
delay because it is a monopoly still, but OEM's were not happy about
Vista's endless delays. In the Linuxverse, there are plenty of distros
to choose from that do release in a timely fashion -- OEM's are not
going to go with one that does not.
The company I bought my box from, [1]Groovix, used to offer Debian
pre-installed -- now they offer Ubuntu. They do so precisely because
Ubuntu offers them predictable releases to choose from, whereas Debian
does not. A guy in support there told me Ubuntu is so much easier to
support than Debian testing, which is what they used to offer, because
it's less of a moving target. Stable was, most of the time, too old for
the hardware they were selling. Furthermore, they don't have to move up
to the latest release every six months -- Ubuntu supports its regular
releases for 18 months, its LTS release for five years. An OEM could
easily upgrade the distro they offer once a year, rather than every six
months.
[1] http://groovix.com/groovix.html
--
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to
dream." --S. Jackson
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