Rain? I'm dancing in the streets, rain or shine. We'll see how this works out, but the free driver pledge puts real muscle behind free software. Dell's preference for hardware with free drivers puts pressure on all vendors to make sure free drivers exist. Systems certified to work with free drivers will work with any free software and this eliminates the hardware lock Microsoft has enjoyed so long with big vendors like Dell.
As was revealed in the Iowa consumer case, Microsoft believed Linux was in Dell's best interest all the way back in 2002. Dell's move may have something to do with the exposure of that opinion. No one likes being manipulated. There is only one thing that can be said with certainty about the people who filled out Dell's survey: they are potential Dell customers. Their ability to use free software as a primary desktop is not certain. To prove the point, let's have a poll about how hard it is to avoid the M$ Tax. How many of you are Microsoft free? I am, for all the machines in my control but I think that's unusual even here on the LUG. It's my opinion that we've all been sold multiple licenses to Windows and other Microsoft stuff. Even I use two windows 2000 machines at work, because my major professor is a lab view user. No one else uses those computers, so they must be mine. In the past, I've personally bought DOS and Windows 3.1. Windows 95, 98, NT and 2000 have been provided for me by employers. LSU has used my tech fees to pay for others to have XP, Vista, Office 2007 and others. I might be Microsoft free, but I'm still paying the Microsoft tax. Let's put my opinions to the test. How many of you are Microsoft free on all the machines you own? How many of you use gnu/linux as your primary desktop? How many copies of Windows do you own? How many copies of Windows do you use? The biggest win of all will be when whole companies are easily able to switch over to free software and whole groups are liberated from the Microsoft tax and file format lock in. Dell Linux goes a long way toward that. Their liberation reduces the network effect by that much and PHBs can now see it as a viable option. On Friday 30 March 2007 1:09 pm, -ray wrote: > Not to be negative or rain on the parade, but this isn't going to work > unless Dell really puts some muscle behind it. Basically all they're > saying is, sure we'll pre-install linux. Get your support from the > community forum. > > Problem is, the people that filled out the survey (yes i filled it out) > aren't the ones that *need* Dell to preinstall linux. ...
