Linux preloads - not doing too well at all
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 20, 2010 6:49 PM EDT |
This is all I could find on the Dell U.S. site: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=dxcwdu... It's not a bad machine. Ironically (or not so much) it includes the very graphics chip I'm having so much trouble with in Ubuntu 10.10, Fedora 14 and Salix 13.1 (but which works great in Ubuntu 10.04, whith which this particular box ships). But it's ONE machine. And you can't even get there from the Dell home page. After such fanfare a few years ago, it's come to this? Has Canonical pretty much given up on preloads? |
| hkwint Dec 20, 2010 8:20 PM EDT |
Forget about Dell and all the other companies (including Asus!) which are dependent on Microsoft (probably for the prices they pay for "large amounts of Windos licenses"): They will never push Linux! Never wondered why companies like Google, Verizon (think they ran a $1 billion add campaign pushing Android), Texas Instruments, ARM and many more ARE pushing Linux, while Dell, HP et all. aren't? Plain simple, because the companies who're pushing Linux are not dependent on MS at all! |
| Scott_Ruecker Dec 20, 2010 8:36 PM EDT |
ZaReason System 76 Red Seven They are the three that jump off the top of my head. They all provide Linux pre-installed and support it. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 20, 2010 9:26 PM EDT |
I really appreciate what those Linux-focused companies are doing, and they are a great model for the rest of the industry. I'll add Frostbite Systems http://www.frostbitesystems.com/ to that list. They're great, but they cater to the already converted. I'm talking about the major manufacturers that sell to millions of units to business, industry and home users: Dell, HP, Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Sony, Gateway, Lenovo. None of these companies are in any way owned by Microsoft. If there are business practices that discourage the offering of alternative operating systems, these need to be brought out into the open and should be regulated. I'm not saying that Dell or HP shouldn't sell Windows PCs, but there's a legitimate demand out there for Linux-equipped PCs, and these companies should step up offer this to their customers. And it wouldn't kill Canonical to get into the hardware business, especially if it can't get any deals done for OEMs to offer Ubuntu. If Apple didn't make its own hardware, where would its OS be? |
| Scott_Ruecker Dec 20, 2010 9:44 PM EDT |
I agree Steven, Canonical should hook up with Sony or something. They have good hardware with no OS of their own to push with it..yet. |
| helios Dec 20, 2010 11:16 PM EDT |
@ Scott... I don't know about Sony. I still have chapped nether-regions over the rootkit debacle. I have not bought a new Sony product since. Sure I might have bought a few DVD CD Rom RW's from craigslist but as far as buying a new product...a sale from which they profit. I cannot do it. I don't think I am alone in this mindset, although we tend to let some stuff fade after a while. h |
| jdixon Dec 21, 2010 12:22 AM EDT |
> And you can't even get there from the Dell home page. Yep. Dell's given up on the Linux market. Whether because it wasn't cost effective or because of pressure from Microsoft, we'll probably never know. In doing so they've also given up on me as a customer. But I doubt they care. It's a shame, as the Mini 9 I bought from them with Ubuntu 8.04 preinstalled has been a great little machine. But there's no indication they'll support an upgrade to 10.04 or later, so when support for 8.04 ends, the machine becomes a paperweight for your average user. Shops like ZaReason and others are our only real option for preloaded systems. It's obvious that Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer. and Asus aren't going to do the job for us. |
| Bob_Robertson Dec 21, 2010 3:06 AM EDT |
I've bought two machines from http://magicmicro.com/ because they offer their systems built and tested, but without OS. I asked them about Linux, but they said "we don't support that." It may very well be that simple, there are just not too many retailers that want to support Linux (in all its variations) when they can just support one Windows. They could always say, "We ship Ubuntu xxx, if you use another Linux you're on your own", but that requires both imagination and an expectation that people will buy it. The reputation Linux users have is to install what they want regardless of what ships on the machine. Could be that's just a self-fulfilling prophecy, we have to install what we want because what we want isn't preinstalled, and what we want is not preinstalled because we just install what we want. Sounds like a USEnet argument! "You're the Nazi!" "No, You're the Nazi!" |
| bigg Dec 21, 2010 7:30 AM EDT |
From some discussions I've had the last month the desktop/laptop market is not very profitable right now. Phones and tablets have decent profit margins, and they fly off the shelves. Desktops and laptops are only worth selling if you can sell extras. Thus don't expect the big companies to care about Linux. |
| JaseP Dec 21, 2010 10:02 AM EDT |
It's all about the subsidy. M$ pumps major $$$ at hardware vendors in terms of discounts. The majors get no discount/rebate from Canonical. Plus Linux has no secondary sales (Office, Symantec or Norton, etc.). They mark up the Linux boxes under pressure, thereby removing the economic incentive to the consumer to buy Linux. That said I've purchased 4 Dells in recent years. 2 were Ubuntu & 2 were not (the form factor I wanted was only available as a WinTel box). I'm actually glad I did. I paid $300 less on each of the Windoze boxes, otherwise. |
| bigg Dec 21, 2010 12:43 PM EDT |
> Plus Linux has no secondary sales (Office, Symantec or Norton, etc.). That's exactly the reason you won't see Linux offered. MS Office is very profitable. I build my own desktops. I should have started that years ago. Just the way I want it, a great price, and no manufacturers playing games that force me to buy a new computer because it can't be upgraded. I had a bad experience attempting to upgrade a Dell and will not buy a Dell with my own money in the future. |
| jdixon Dec 21, 2010 1:35 PM EDT |
> I build my own desktops. In general, so do I. I'd prefer to have the option not to do so though. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 21, 2010 1:46 PM EDT |
In the original post, I didn't write my "gateway drug" analogy in which users are exposed to FOSS apps in Windows/Mac, including Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, FileZilla, GIMP, Inkscape, Geany, etc., putting them in more open-source apps and making an eventual transition to a FOSS operating system not as much of a change as it would be if they were not already familiar with the apps. |
| HoTMetaL Dec 21, 2010 3:43 PM EDT |
Dell U.S. currently has six offerings for Ubuntu pre-installed. The one Steven found in the first post, as well as five other Ubuntu portables buried in their business section: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/laptops#facets=80770~0~179... There's about 23 other offerings with FreeDOS (or RHEL on their higher-end stuff I think). I'm definitely not defending Dell's slack support of desktop Linux offerings, just sharing what I found today while digging around. |
| hkwint Dec 21, 2010 5:35 PM EDT |
Building your own desktops is usually more expensive than buying a 'pre-built' one in my experience, because when you buy a pre-built one, you buy "+6 parts" (case, PSU, HD, CPU, MoBo, Fans, RAM) and receive a kind of 'discount', but when you buy those parts separately, you don't receive the discount. I'm not sure it really is like this, but I've always perceived this was how it works. Of course, you'll probably receive even more discount on a desktop if it's turned into an advertizing - column before shipping. |
| bigg Dec 21, 2010 5:46 PM EDT |
> Building your own desktops is usually more expensive than buying a 'pre-built' one in my experience I've only found that to be true if (a) I don't recycle any components, and (b) I want something on the low end. In my case I can usually grab various parts from an existing desktop. |
| jdixon Dec 21, 2010 5:56 PM EDT |
> ...but when you buy those parts separately, you don't receive the discount. The better vendors (NewEgg, Mwave, etc.) offer bundles which alleviate this problem. |
| hkwint Dec 21, 2010 5:59 PM EDT |
Bigg: Good point. My case, PSU and fans are all about ~6 years old I believe, though some other parts are only ~3 years old, so in the long run DYI is probably cheaper. Probably the feeling I described arose when I built two desktops almost 'from scratch', and then I eagerly looked at some Dell-advertisements. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 21, 2010 6:26 PM EDT |
I haven't built from scratch yet, but the ability to pick your parts is very enticing. I'm not looking to do anything fancy - just a motherboard with some kind of quad-core, 6 GB of RAM, decent and Linux-friendly (and cheap and preferably fanless) graphics, a 1 TB hard drive or two and a fanless power supply. |
| JaseP Dec 21, 2010 6:53 PM EDT |
The "bare-bones" offerings you can get are often decent as a start. And I have built my own machines in the past. But the time lost & component failure rate is a money/time pit. If you are looking to build for a defined purpose (eg: server or HTPC) then it may make sense. But if just for pride/ego, I feel it's a waste of time. |
| tracyanne Dec 21, 2010 8:03 PM EDT |
For anyone in Australia go to http://www.pioneercomputers.com.au/ you can order computers with and without any OS or with Ubuntu preinstalled. Sometimes you will have to send the machine back because the BIOS doesn't support Linux properly, but I've had several netbooks where they installed a different BIOS, and all worked fine. What I find is best is to get them to make sure it works properly with Linux before shipping. It's also a good idea, and can save you money (and also you can become a conduit for friends etc) is to become a business customer. You will need to register a business name (as a minimum) first. |
| tuxchick Dec 21, 2010 8:48 PM EDT |
Build-your-own means you get better parts, if you pick well. OEM machines, especially lower-end ones, are specced to the absolute minimum and as cheaply as possible. Crappy little power supplies, cases that savage your flesh, cheap fans that don't last, noisy, small capacity hard drives...ZaReason and System76 don't cheap out on parts, and you're guaranteed Linux compatibility. The big OEMs invest considerable resources into customizing their Windows machines; you can't even be sure a generic 'full retail' (what a scam) Windows will work on one of these. They're usually not upgradeable or customizable either. What they want is for the software to be so bound to the hardware that we get brainwashed into always buying them as a unit. And a lot of people do this, they have no concept of the hardware and software being separate. |
| bigg Dec 21, 2010 9:08 PM EDT |
ZaReason has an entry-level desktop for $299. You can upgrade to a dual core processor and it costs $338. System76 offers a nettop for $259. Thus it is not as though you need to go with the big boys to get an inexpensive desktop. From everything I've read, the service is very good, and of course Linux is installed when you get it. |
| Scott_Ruecker Dec 21, 2010 9:23 PM EDT |
There is a local company in Phoenix called Red Seven that sell computers that get upgraded to new hardware and whatever version of Linux you wanted on it upgraded for the life of the machine/contract. Getting free hardware/software upgrades seems pretty cool to me. http://www.redsevenlinux.com/services/ |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 21, 2010 11:58 PM EDT |
Scott, that's a vendor I haven't heard of. And while I'm calling for the big vendors to offer Linux, I'm very grateful for System 76 and ZaReason. The more I hear Earl and Cathy from ZaReason, the more I like what they're doing. |
| jsusanka Dec 21, 2010 11:59 PM EDT |
building your own it cheaper in the long run. if you buy a good case it can last you years and through numerous motherboards. same can go for the power supply. with linux hard drives last a long time. linux seems to be easier on hard drives than windows and this is the reason I am still using ide drives on my main server at home. I am forced to used windows at work and we lease our laptops and I go through like three hard drives during the lease and they all have been dells. I also bought a netbook from system76 and it has been nothing but quality. they give you one with 2gig of ram when everyone else has 1 gig of ram for the same price or even more. I have also put numerous distros on it and they all work out of the box sleep,hibernate,3d, and everything. but this little netbook is great. I have been using it so much I am thinking of giving up my servers and just use the netbook. But I will see as time goes on and components fail. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 22, 2010 1:20 AM EDT |
I pretty much got rid of all the desktop machines I had. They were all old and not upgradeable. |
| JaseP Dec 22, 2010 12:00 PM EDT |
I've had just as many component failures on machines that I've bought vs. built. The trouble with built is that you then have one component holding your project up. Then you have build time, burn-in (not that manufacturers burn machines in anymore), OS installation & tweaking, etc. Hardware choice is nice, but too much trouble, unless you are going with the same components in multiple build projects (2+ of the same machine). I spent weeks researching what I wanted for my server & front-end HTPCs, & ultimately went with stock, consumer machines. It was way simpler & cheaper. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 22, 2010 12:52 PM EDT |
Picking your own components -- it's a crapshoot, for sure. For desktops/servers anyway, it looks like ZaReason does the "is it compatible?" work for you, and uses replacable/upgradable components. |
| JaseP Dec 23, 2010 9:28 AM EDT |
I've strongly considered ZaReason or System7 for my wife's next laptop. Her (circa 2002) Dell Inspiron has seen better days. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 23, 2010 2:33 PM EDT |
I'm with you. Letting the "pros" figure out the hardware seems like a good idea. |
| hkwint Dec 25, 2010 9:06 PM EDT |
Seems I never bought hardware that didn't run with Linux last seven years, except for 'newer' onboard-ethernet chips; the drivers were not in the Linux kernel back then (though they were a few months later). Most of the times I checked on the internet for Linux-compat before buying. But of course _both_ my desktop and OS are from scratch, which also helps a little since you don't have to rely on choices other people made. |
| jdixon Dec 25, 2010 10:16 PM EDT |
> ...except for 'newer' onboard-ethernet chips... Ethernet and sound are normally the ones which have given me problems. But like you, I've found they're normally resolved within a few months. Often, simply upgrading to the latest kernel will fix all my problems. |
| Bob_Robertson Dec 26, 2010 9:00 AM EDT |
The last hardware problem I had was with the ASROCK motherboard. The CPU clock was stuck at 800 MHz, after supposedly being tested for 3 days by the integrator. Fixing that was a matter of doing a ROM update. What really sucked is that they had no facility for doing a ROM update from Linux. Only Windows and DOS. DOS? FreeDOS? Yep. FreeDOS live CD, format thumbdrive; reboot Linux, write the updater and data file to the thumbdrive; Freedos live CD again, flash ROM. I wrote back to ASROCK that they could easily make a FreeDOS minimalist live CD image with their updater and ROM image available to customers, they didn't write back. |
| gus3 Dec 26, 2010 4:42 PM EDT |
The new Asus ROM-flashing technique, involves a thumb drive formatted to FAT12. No need to boot a DOS or Windows system; the BIOS can read the update directly. (About dang time!) |
| Bob_Robertson Dec 26, 2010 8:02 PM EDT |
> formatted to FAT12 That's _wonderful_. I was so pleased when the USB keyboard was recognized and used by the boot sequence, so I didn't need to use the PS2 connector keyboard that I've kept "for just such emergencies". Anyway as a quick aside, just how big a disk can I format in FAT32? I ask because I'd like, as another tool for the "my computer is broken", to have one of those external USB driven disks that both Linux and WinXP/7 can read and write. The problem being that those disks are coming formatted in NTFS, and how to get Linux writing to NTFS is not easily obvious. |
| jdixon Dec 26, 2010 9:28 PM EDT |
> ...and how to get Linux writing to NTFS is not easily obvious. Debian, correct? http://technowizah.com/2006/11/debian-how-to-writing-to-ntfs... Though I'm surprised it's not already in there by now. As you can see this is an old howto. |
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