[ILUG] Interesting piece on Linux adoption from /.

[Niall O Broin]

On Fri, Mar 29, 2002 at 05:11:21AM -0600, Stephen_Reilly at dell.com wrote:

> >And what value of anyone are we talking about ? 
> value ?

Anyone = me looking for 1 notebook with a US keyboard
Anyone = Ford looking for 30000 desktops with Linux installed

> of course, Dell are a profit making company you know. For them to ship you a
> single non standard keyboard; bills of materials have to be made up, new
> part numbers requested, deviation request, yada yada, engineer time (believe
> it or not)

Limerick assembles notebooks for all of Europe, no ? Given that, I was kind
of surpirsed that in the midst of all those keyboard configurations, they
couldn't find a U.S. one. Bu then, if I order in Ireland, would they even
supply me with, say, a French keyboard ?

> >- don't suppose you could find a set of U.S. keycaps for an
> >I8000 Stephen ?
> heh, sorry...

Cost me nowt to ask :-)

> weren't changed. But were soon after ... Images like standard Redhat,
> microsoft, novell etc. are not image blasted onto a disk... The methods
> employed are quite likely to be company confidential though ...

Now we're surely talking semantics here ? It's passing unlikely that Dell
employs an army of people to install software by clicking buttons through
standard installation program. Therefore they employ some method which
results in a disk having an image of a so installed OS on it. Whether that's
using dd, or Ghost, or a custom developed variant thereof, or something
whereby an assembly operative selects some choices from a menu and a disk is
appropriately configured in whatever manner - I'll choose to call that image
blasting. My point anyway was that Dell's incremental cost of building a
disk was hardly different for RH or W2K. I'm pleased to see that they've now
changed that, and currently will factory install your choice of OS F.O.C. if
you purchase it from them. Pricing is good for M$ - W2K with 5 C.A.L. is 785
Euro as against 1299 from Micromail in Cork - but not so good for RH - 170
Euro for an OEM version with CD + documentation, 80 Euro for an OEM
version without CD or documentation. Compares unfavourably with Micromail's
price of 110 for RH Deluxe. Mind you, more than worth it to save you the
hassle of installation if you see that as a hassle. If OTOH you prefer to do
you own install to have things your own way . . . .

And I'm a little curious here - if Dell is installing my OS F.O.C. then what
exactly am I paying 80 Euro for if I choose RH without CD or documentation ?
Can't be installation - that's free. Can't be media - you get none.

> >> If you want you can have Dell put Broin OS on
> >> a few thousand systems, just send in an image and a large Euro note...

The closest thing to Broin OS fits on a business card sized CD :-)

> just a few, and no decimal place please. (wow EUR200, what colour is it ?)

A rather fetching yellow - I think it's nice, but that may have more to do
with the number than the color :-)



Niall