[ILUG] Dell's pathetic Linux device support

[Chris Higgins]

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 17:20:15 +0000
Aidan Delaney <adelaney at cs.may.ie> wrote:

> Hey all,
> 	I'm sure a good proportion of us buy some of our servers and  
> desktops from Dell Ireland.  I've recently had problems getting modem 
> drivers from them and am wondering how we can end the driver misery
> for  the future.  Between us all there must be a reasonable purchasing
> power  to warrent being listened to.  HP, IBM and several other
> vendors have  made noises about providing proper GNU/Linux support on
> their desktop  machines.  Can we get Dell to do the same?  All I'm
> looking for is  source to (win)modems but I'm sure others are not
> happy with the  support for some of their network cards etc...
> 
> a) How much (if anything) have you bought from Dell in the last year?

Nothing - because they wouldn't sell it without Windows.

> b) How many sales (if any) have Dell lost in the last year because of 
> their lousy GNU/Linux support?

I had a specific requirement for 10 high-spec laptops with either linux 
installed or no OS installed. I have had no responses to my queries
from the Irish sales team.

> c) How much will you be buying in the next year and will Dell be  
> considered a viable supplier?

Need to upgrade a couple of servers, and a couple of desktops. 
Probably two more laptops.... 

Currently looking at self-build for the servers/desktops and 
Compaq/HP for the laptops.

> Thank you,
> Aidan Delaney.
> 
> Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
> See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

Oh the temptation...
luggage:~> find . -size +9000 -name "*.ppt" | wc -l
6
luggage:~>

How about a nice big powerpoint attachment, I'll even
uuencode them for added effect :-)


--

Chris Higgins                              Cisco Learning Partner
Darach Technology Ltd                      tel: +353-1-6204370
email: chris.higgins at darach.ie          fax: +353-1-6204371
http://www.darach.ie