Now they arrived

Story: Still no Linux at Dell'sTotal Replies: 8
Author Content
wjl

Aug 09, 2007
1:51 AM EDT
One of our readers pointed me to Dell's German pages again this morning, and right - now they are there. Finally, you can buy the first PCs from a $big$ vendor without having to pay the M$ tax.
hkwint

Aug 09, 2007
4:30 AM EDT
OK, that's good news. From what I've heard it works in France too, but there were a lot of troubles in Great Brittain.
wjl

Aug 09, 2007
5:07 AM EDT
Yeah, saw some headline like: "You have to pay a premium" or so...
Abe

Aug 09, 2007
11:39 AM EDT
So far the news about Dell selling desktops with Linux has been good. What I wonder about is how long it is going to take HP to do the same!

HP offered desktops with Linux a few years back and then they stopped. They have been offering FreeDOS or NO OS on business desktops since then. Today, you can save about $160. on such desktops compared to ones with Vista.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/12454-12454-64... http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/12454-12454-64...

What is HP waiting for? When Dell takes number one OEM slot again? I think it will be pretty touch for HP to regain that slot a 2nd time.

jdixon

Aug 09, 2007
12:12 PM EDT
> What is HP waiting for?

Lots of folks complained about how slowly Dell moved with their Linux offerings. Dell is a large corporation, and does move rather slowly as a result; but HP makes them look like the hare to HP's tortoise. It will take them more than twice as long as Dell to make the same adjustments. Hopefully they'll have their Linux line ready for the Christmas market.
tuxchick

Aug 09, 2007
12:17 PM EDT
HP is in the best position of any Tier 1 vendor to offer an extensive Linux line of products. They've been selling Linux servers for some years, they're the only printer vendor that supports nearly all printers, scanners, and multifunction printers on Linux- and with FOSS drivers, no less- and they already have some sort of semi-secret "workstation" Linux. So it's not a very big step to leap whole hawg into desktops and laptops.
Bob_Robertson

Aug 09, 2007
12:57 PM EDT
HP will have to do something about the Broadcom cards shipping in the Pavilion laptops though. Linux support for them is not so good, and the bootROM won't let you run any other card.

Although it's a DELL/Broadcom card, even Dell ships the Intel3945 card in their Linux laptop. The Broadcom card is in their Windows offering of the same laptop.

If I had been able to return the HP Pavilion when I discovered this little gotcha, I would have bought one of the Dells to replace it even if I don't really like Dell hardware. This particular move on Dells part deserves to be rewarded.
Abe

Aug 09, 2007
4:14 PM EDT
Quoting:HP will have to do something about the Broadcom cards shipping in the Pavilion laptops though.
Bob, I have "HP-Compaq D330 ST Base Model all Linux", Yes it came with Mandrake when I bought it. It came with Broadcom as shown below

05:02.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5782 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 03)

I ran all sorts of distros on this machine and they all worked. Never had any hardware detection issues with anything. Never had a problem with the Ethernet card. It might be different than the Pavilion though.

Quoting:So it's not a very big step to leap whole hawg into desktops and laptops.
Not at all, and the desktop I have proves it. I actually have 5 different HP-Compaq models at home, some are very old (1 GHz) and all run Linux with no problem. HP can get going with Linux in no time. At one time, HP/Compaq had the largest Linux support staff, they shouldn't have any issues. Their hardware is a lot more standard (and better IMO) than Dell.

What are they waiting for?!

Bob_Robertson

Aug 09, 2007
6:30 PM EDT
> It came with Broadcom as shown below

Different card. Different laptop. I wouldn't have expected anything else, since your system shipped with Linux preinstalled, just like the Dell systems ship with Linux preinstalled.

That, actually, has been my hope with preinstallation all along: I expect to erase whatever is on it and install Debian Sid, what I really want is known-supported hardware.

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