On Sat, 2007-03-31 at 17:25 -0400, Kamaraju S Kusumanchi wrote: > Andrei Popescu wrote: > > > Kamaraju S Kusumanchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
