[SATLUG] Re: Dell & Linux

[Al Castanoli]

On Wed, 2007-03-14 at 16:58 -0400, scs at worldlinkisp.com wrote:
> Hate to be a naysayer, but doubt much, if not
> anything will come of this.

> Dell is in big trouble, HP has and is eating Dell's
> lunch, and Dell would certainly lose it's sweatheart
> pricing for exclusive use of Microsoft O/S.  

> Similar to Dell's sweatheart arrangement with Intel
> that kept AMD processors out of Dell products for the
> last year or two.

> Open Office would be a serious threat to uSoft office
> apllications, especially since it's free.  Would be
> poetic justice for what uSoft did to Netscape.

I can't speak for the desktop crew at Dell, but they've made great
strides in their server offerings in the past five years.  When I
bought my first Dell/Linux server with an enterprise version of Linux
installed at the factory, it was poorly executed and I had to reinstall
the OS before I could do anything useful with the server.

My purchases of Dell/Linux servers last month and last year were
delivered in a useful configuration, but the enterprise versions of
Linux are being supported by the Linux distros rather than Dell
themselves.  However, they did test out the hardware configuration,
which is a lot better than can be said of Altex.  

I had to return a low end 64 bit server to Altex last month because it
wouldn't load Linux (and when we bought it, we asked for it to be
configured to run Linux).  What I was told by the gent at the counter is
Altex now only supports Windows and they wouldn't even try to
reconfigure the server to run Linux.  The Dell we replaced that server
with loaded 64 bit Linux just fine and ended up being cheaper.  Dell
tested the hardware configuration with the enterprise version of Linux
we are using and guided us in what to buy.  

I've also gotten similar support from HP in low end rackmount servers to
run Linux on, but I've never tried to spec a desktop PC for Linux.  I
hope that if I ever do, though, Dell and some of the other large vendors
will be able to support that.

Al Castanoli