Dell Offering "Open" PC 426
Sans writes "Dell began offering a new desktop Dimension E510n PC this week with no operating system installed. The machine is designed for people who want to run open-source software such as Linux instead of Windows. The PC comes with a blank hard drive and a copy of the FreeDOS operating system, which can be installed by customers."
How is this news? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Waste of time and source of FUD for Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
Re:SHENANIGANS! (Score:4, Informative)
$679
After $50 Off Instantly!
Only an 80GB HD, but there's the bonus of a 17" LCD..
Re:news? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SHENANIGANS! (Score:0, Informative)
What do you expect from a company that sells computers? OF COURSE THEY ARE DOING IT TO MAKE MONEY. THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT OF THEM BEING IN BUSINESS.
Re:How is this news? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:news? (Score:3, Informative)
Dell Machines w/Red Hat Pre-Loaded (Score:5, Informative)
Took less than 5 minutes of looking. Hit *customize* and make it your dream machine.
-everphilski-
Re:Not necessarily "Open source" PC... (Score:3, Informative)
Office etc are all the same when buying OEM. We just had a burglary a few months back, and had to repurchase Office (covered, so not a big thing,) because the CDs I had were OEM tied to the hardware that was no longer in my possession.
Re:If it's so open (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not necessarily "Open source" PC... (Score:3, Informative)
The moral of the story: If you want to use an OEM copy of XP on another computer. lie.
I *would* have bought this... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pirates! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Real news will be when Apple ... (Score:5, Informative)
Yellow Dog Linux [yellowdoglinux.com] is an Apple "Value Added Reseller". From their website:
A Unique Apple Reseller
Terra Soft, an Apple Authorized OEM VAR (Value Added Reseller) is granted a unique license to install Yellow Dog Linux on Apple computers and maintain full Apple hardware warranty for home, commercial, education, and government customers.
If that isn't approval by Apple, I don't know what is.
This is not new (Score:3, Informative)
1. People purchasing tons of desktops for organizations with streamlined IT management with pre-defined system images, so they could pull the machine out of the box, put the image and send it to the proper user. Saves them a few minutes per machine in setup.
2. People purchasing tons of cheap reliable boxes intended to run a non-Microsoft OS. Think you just started your dream business as a hosting provider and you wanted to buy 500 $299 Dell servers.
Re:SHENANIGANS! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Dell Machines w/Red Hat Pre-Loaded (Score:4, Informative)
-everphilski-
Re:Dell Machines w/Red Hat Pre-Loaded (Score:5, Informative)
This is how Microsoft got so much market share. They had agreements with the HW manufacturs that based Windows 3.x licence costs on boxes going out the door.
If you sold a computer, you paid MS for a Windows licence, even if the hard drive was unformatted. So there was no incentive (and quite a bit of financial detriment) to offer alternate OS's.
I believe that this was ruled illegal, but by then it was too late.
Re:Real news will be when Apple ... (Score:4, Informative)
Seems like the grandparent is suffering from Mac-envy.
Re:Why FrreeDOS? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ahh, how amusing... (Score:3, Informative)
So if you were Dell, would you just stick a bunch of parts in a box and ship it, or would you at least want to boot it up first? Maybe run a diagnostic or two?
Consider that Dell may have a set of diagnostic programs that have been around a while...not real reason to change, just keep adding to the set of tests as new hardware is introduced. This test suite is based on DOS. No problem to run that on Win(whatever), but there is a porting effort needed to make it run on Linux. But wait!! There is an Open Source DOS product that will fill the niche! You don't know which distro the end-user will want, and it is so easy for them to download and install their choice since, unlike Windows, Linux installers actually work now.
I see FreeDOS as a logical choice on Dell's part.
Re:Waste of time and source of FUD for Microsoft (Score:2, Informative)
Dell has actually offered PCs with no pre-loaded OS for quite some time. However, these PCs were not "advertised." One could only find them by searching Dell's website for the PC model number followed by an 'n' (for example, "2400n").
I manged to talk my boss into buying 3 such machines for embedded Linux development since they were cheap (less than $300 US at the time; $100 cheaper than the stock Dell Dimension 2400) and still had Dell's hardware waranty. Plus, the PCs have nifty 'n' badges in the lower left corner. And I've got 3 FreeDOS CDs floating around now :)
Re:Waste of time and source of FUD for Microsoft (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Dell Machines w/Red Hat Pre-Loaded (Score:2, Informative)
Inaccuracy from TFA (Score:2, Informative)
This is incorrect. Michael Dell himself invested $100m into Red Hat, not Dell itself. They are different entities.
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/09/ 1221229&tid=110&tid=98&tid=106 [slashdot.org]
Re:Waste of time and source of FUD for Microsoft (Score:2, Informative)