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  • From: "Bill Geschwind" <geschwin AT email.unc.edu>
  • To: "'InterNetWorkers'" <internetworkers AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Liar Liar Pants on Fire!!!!
  • Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 14:41:05 -0500


>
> It is so difficult to get there that a random Joe Sixpack or
> Mary Soccermom
> will be unable to even find it.

No argument here about that specific point, and no argument about that
other point you made with that car dealership analogy that Dell's
advertisement with regard to Linux availability on their regular PCs and
laptops is confusing and misleading. However, the point that I was
trying to make was that if you are absolutely determined to get Linux on
a Dell machine, it is still possible to do so, regardless of how
difficult it may be.

If you want to order a very high-end workstation or a server from Dell
with Linux on it, that seems to be as easy to do as ordering one of
their PCs or laptops with Windows on it, but that is obviously not
something that "Joe Sixpack" or "Mary Soccermom" is likely to do. Linux
is a great server OS and is a very powerful system in the hands of a
technically very sophisticated user, however I have my doubts as to
whether Mr. Sixpack or Ms. Soccermom would have any idea what to do with
it.

As I'm sure you have guessed by now I come from a very Windows-centric
background and only have had very limited exposure to UNIX/Linux. About
2 years ago I tried to install Red Hat 5.2 on one of my spare machines
at home just to see what the hype was all about. The installer was
pretty slick, and I had no problem getting the OS installed. However,
when it was done, all I had was a prompt. Unless you have at least some
prior experience with UNIX/Linux and know what to do, that prompt is
useless, and I'm positive that the non-technical user will have no idea
what to do from there. At that point I called a friend of mine who has
extensive experience with Linux for help in order to get some sort of
GUI running, and eventually got X Windows running, but I couldn't get
the desktop resolution changed to something useful to save my life, and
I eventually just gave up out of frustration, and decided at that time
that Linux on the desktop for the non-technical consumer was just not
ready for prime-time yet.

That was a couple of years ago, Linux has continued to evolve, and as
soon as I have enough free time available, I would love to repeat that
experiment with a somewhat more up-to-date PC with the current version
of RH, to see if it will change my opinion of Linux.

Now, I'm sure that a company like Dell wouldn't just put RH Linux
straight out of the box onto a PC without any kind of customization and
sell it to consumers. I'm sure they would configure X Windows or some
other GUI to come up with a decent resolution and pack some sort of
utilities on there that a consumer can use. However, most software and
peripheral equipment available that a consumer is likely to use comes
with Windows support straight out of the box, and getting it to run
under Linux would be difficult at best. Just think about things like
those DeskJet printers, digital cameras, DVD players, TurboTax, etc. I'm
sure Dell is aware of this and thus would rather sell Windows on their
machines to consumers, in order to spare themselves of all the hassles
of consumers calling them for tech support and returning those machines
that they don't know how to use.

- Bill





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