Dell to offer Linux on its new PCs

From the Desktop Linux website (edited): (28 March 2007)

Dell will be releasing select desktop and notebook systems with pre-installed Linux as an option in the coming weeks.

We do not know at this time which Linux distributions it will be supporting, or what Dell desktop and laptop machines will have pre-installed Linux as an option.

David Lord, a Dell spokesperson, did say, however, that Dell has been listening to its users and that the users want home and office desktops and laptops. Dell's current offering in this area includes the Inspiron and Latitude laptops and the Dimension and OptiPlex desktops.

The new systems, Lord added, will be true pre-installed Linux systems -- and not just a PC with a blank hard drive and a bootable CD or DVD. Software support is likely to come from the community, however, rather than from Dell. Lord added, however, that hardware support on the Dell Linux systems is likely to be the same as it offers on its Windows-powered systems.

According to Lord, Dell will also make buying the new Linux-powered PCs as easy as possible for customers.

In a note on its Ideas in Action Website, the company stated, "Dell has heard you and we will expand our Linux support beyond our existing servers and Precision workstation line. Our first step in this effort is offering Linux pre-installed on select desktop and notebook systems. We will provide an update in the coming weeks that includes detailed information on which systems we will offer, our testing and certification efforts, and the Linux distribution(s) that will be available. The countdown begins today."

However, at his blog, Matt Domsch, Dell's Linux software architect, did go into more detail on how Dell will be approaching the problem of Linux device drivers. First, given a choice in the matter, Dell will support free software drivers over proprietary drivers every time.

Domsch wrote, "For device types where a choice exists between a component with a non-Free driver and one with Free driver availability, in our Linux offering we'll opt to bundle the component with the Free driver."

"It's been our standard operating procedure for the last 8 years on PowerEdge servers, which today have no closed-source drivers necessary, [to insist on open-source drivers]," said Domsch.

"For new Linux desktops and notebooks, we'll use drivers already in the mainline kernel.org kernels for as many components as possible. In these cases, the drivers will be included in your distribution of choice. This includes storage, wired networking, power management, USB, and more."

For cases such as 3-D drivers for video cards, where the best possible drivers are proprietary, Domsch said, "while we continue to encourage the development (by all parties) towards open source drivers, we will provide the closed-source drivers for people who wish to use them."

For cases such as WinModems, for which there are neither open source nor proprietary drivers available, Dell will be encouraging users to substitute a hardware-based modem. "However, we can't substitute hardware-based modems in our notebooks without redesigning and significantly increasing the price of the system. If it's important to you to have a hardware-based modem, you would add one into your PC Card or ExpressCard slot."

While the Texas-based computer company was unwilling to go on record as to which distributions it will support, comments from Dell officials indicated that it is likely to offer support for multiple distributions.

Recently, Dell asked users which distribution they'd like to see out of a selection of Novell/SUSE, Red Hat, Fedora, openSUSE, and Ubuntu. The results of that survey are still not known.

It does seem likely, based on comments from Dell insiders, that Novell SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) will be one of the supported distributions. Dell is already known to have been working with Novell to certify SLED on its business desktop line, including OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks, and Dell Precision workstations.

Novell executives, at the company's recent annual BrainShare show in Salt Lake City, said that they were working on getting Dell and Hewlett-Packard to commit to Linux desktops. In an interview last week, before the Dell news broke, Roger Levy, Novell vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions, said, "We're talking pre-load with everybody. Customers are now beginning to see that we have creditable alternatives on the desktop to Windows, and they, in turn, are talking to the vendors about these options. We expect the desktop Linux business to jell in 2007."

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My Comment:

This is great news for computer users and especially for the Linux community. For a major PC manufacturer to acknowledge that PC users want choice is fantastic news, and finally we may see an end to the monopoly of Microsoft Windows being shipped with every new PC. Dell have listened to customers and PC users and the message is clear to them: give us Linux as we do not all want to use Windows.

Until now I have resisted buying a new PC, preferring instead to build my own or buy second-hand and reconfigure. Although recently I bought a small Compaq Ipaq PC which someone had pre-loaded with Zenwalk Linux instead of its original Windows OS. It works great and only cost me £40, although so far I have really only used it for web surfing when my main PC is busy doing something else, such as burning another Linux distro CD or DVD.

Previously Dell had sold PCs pre-installed with Linux, but stopped doing so in 2001 due to low demand, according to CNN. And Dell have continued to offer Linux on servers. But now that Linux has matured and become a viable alternative to Windows, it is good to see that Dell are going to offer what users now want.

If Dell go ahead with Linux on their desktops and notebooks, maybe my next new PC will be a Dell.

Some parts of the US govt are banning Vista

This is a condensed version of an article that appears on ZDNet.

As Microsoft is out touting the "wow" of Windows Vista, two federal agencies are among those saying "whoa".

The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cite fear of compatibility problems as one of the reasons not to allow their tens of thousands of employees to upgrade to Microsoft's latest operating system.

"We are temporarily not permitting computers with the Vista operating system to be connected to our networks," Michael Baum, a NIST spokesman, said Tuesday. The organization's technology staff is testing NIST applications and evaluating the security in Windows Vista. The same holds true for Internet Explorer 7 and Office 2007, he said.

It is not unusual that agencies aren't rushing to install major software updates. Large organizations in particular tend to do a lot of testing before upgrading.

The DOT also bans Vista, Office 2007 and IE 7. In addition to compatibility concerns, the department lists cost, available funding and a pending headquarters move as reasons not to upgrade, according to a DOT memo dated 19 January 2007 (click for PDF of the memo). The memo is still current, a DOT representative said Tuesday.

"There appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products," according to the memo. The department plans to issue an update next month to clarify its strategy for 2008 and beyond, the representative said.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the largest organization under the DOT, is taking the opportunity to consider alternatives to Microsoft's operating system and productivity software, said Tammy Jones, an FAA spokeswoman. This includes including running Linux on desktops and using Google's online applications, she said.

Vista has been available to businesses since late November and was released to the general public at the end of January. About 90 million copies of the operating system will be installed this year, predicts IDC. Businesses should be cautious, IDC advises.

"Business customers should take a cautious approach to adopting new Windows technologies and need to go through a normal evaluation cycle," IDC analyst Al Gillen wrote in a recent report.

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My comments:

It is interesting to note that some large US Government departments are unsure about adopting the newest Windows operating system, and that at least one is considering moving to Linux. At this time, Vista remains a generally untested operating system, and one that is has not been around long enough for all the bugs to be discovered.

Any new piece of software will have bugs, as the testers cannot test for all eventualities and combinations of hardware and software.

But a decision to move to Linux will certainly be a good move forward. I am not saying that everyone should use Linux, as people and organisations have choice. But with Linux, you get more choice. With Vista there are choices as to which version of the OS you use, but if you want the features you have to go for the most expensive version and probably update your hardware.

If you go for the cheaper version that will work okay on your existing hardware, then you lose certain features.

With Linux, your choice is to which distro you want to use, and what software you want to run. Choices are wider with Linux, which means a system can be more customised the way you want it, and the cost of most Linux distros is free. But for corporations there are enterprise versions, which cost money, but the cost includes the best applications software and a certain amount of technical support.

With a free Linux distro you are unlikely to get much tech support, although online forums can be very helpful. But when I was only using Windows, I found it virtually impossible to get any technical support from Microsoft, at least not without paying huge fees. Online forums for Windows users are helpful too. But why pay a lot for an OS and then have to pay a lot more to get help in using it? Better to have an OS that, if it does not work, is easily replaced at minimal cost (i.e. with a different Linux distro). The only real cost involved in using Linux, is that you have to download the software, usually as an ISO disc image to burn to CD or DVD, and so there is the cost of the internet connection and the blank media to write it to. Or buy a Linux magazine which has a Linux distro on its cover disc that you can try out or install.

The good thing about Linux distros on cover discs from magazines, is that they tend to be the full complete version of the operating system. Whereas free software for Windows that comes on cover magazines is not an operating system, and usually is an application with limited features or a limited lifespan of perhaps just 30 days, or an old version of a program, with a special offer to upgrade to the newest one for a large fee.

Will I be using Vista? Only if the place where I work is using it, then I shall have to use it there, but on my own PCs I doubt if I shall ever use Vista. Or maybe a friend will buy a new PC with Vista installed and then I might get a chance to dabble with it briefly. But I will not be buying it and will not install it on my PCs.

For those interested in trying it out in a virtual machine, e.g. using VMWare in Linux (software which allows you to run another OS inside an OS on a virtual PC that exists only in RAM), note that the license for Vista forbids running it on a virtual machine unless you have paid for one of the top versions. So, even if you want to just try it out as a virtual machine, tough luck, unless you spend a huge amount of money, and then you might find that your PC cannot cope. And if you buy a PC with Vista on, you get only the second-worst version anyway.

I think it is best to avoid Vista; now is the time to consider the alternatives. Viva le Linux!