| Which Linux will Dell offer? |
Apr. 21, 2007
Opinion -- I've been following the story of Dell preparing to sell Linux on its business and consumer computer lines so closely that if we were cars and they came to a sudden stop, I'd crash into them. Despite that, I still don't know what Linux, or Linuxes, they'll choose.
Darn it.
Here, for what it's worth, are my best guesses on what Dell will be doing with its pre-installed desktop Linux plans.
First, it is going to be soon. Really soon. I expect the announcement before the end of April. After all, Dell began running Dell Linux desktop ads in late March. And, as anyone who follows Dell Linux news knows, Michael Dell -- the big Dell on campus as it were -- recently announced that he's running the newly released Ubuntu 7.04 on his personal laptop.
I've been hearing from some people who are still sure that when push comes to shove, Dell will not actually release a Linux for fear of Microsoft's wrath. Sorry, folks, but it is going to happen.
For that matter, it won't be the first time that Dell offered users a business, rather than workstation, Linux. Back in April 1999, Dell sold Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse 1,250 Linux-equipped OptiPlex PCs in the first major Linux desktop sale.
Long before that, Dell even had its own house-brand of Unix. By 2001, though, Dell had dropped its business PC Linux line. At the time, a Dell spokesperson said, "Our customers did not seem to want it, though; the numbers didn't add up."
In more recent times, Dell has been offering RHEL WS 4 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux WorkStation 4) on its Dell Precision low-end workstation line. Dell has also long sold the nSeries. These are OptiPlex PCs for small business users, which don't come with an operating system on either system. Instead, the company supplies a copy of the open-source FreeDOS operating system with each PC, with the expectation that users will install the Linux of their choice.
Mr. Dell explained to me last year that Dell wasn't selling pre-installed Linux on any of its consumer or small business systems because, "It's not that there are too many Linux desktop distributions, it's that they're all different, they all have supporters, and none of them can claim a majority of the market."
Things have changed.
Let me list the reasons why:- Dell's own customers are demanding desktop Linux.
- Desktop Linux is far more mature.
- Dell needed to do something to stand out from its competition, especially HP.
- Last, but never least, Vista is turning out to be something of a flop.
Don't believe me? You don't think Dell decided to start offering Windows XP again this week because they were overwhelmed by demand for Vista, do you?
No, the time is right for Dell to start offering Linux, the only question is: which one? The candidates seem to be Novell/SUSE, Red Hat, Fedora, openSUSE, and Ubuntu.
Novell and Red Hat have been working with Dell for years now on servers. Today, you can get both RHEL 4 and 5 and SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) for your servers. In addition, RHEL WS 4 is already available for workstations. While Dell doesn't currently sell SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10, Novell has already certified its SUSE Linuxes Dell systems on the i386 architecture.
I also know for a fact that Novell has been working hard on getting Dell to make SLED one of its offerings. Red Hat, on the other hand, still seems more reserved about the Linux desktop market in general. If I could sum it up, Red Hat wants to sell you a server operating system with a Java-based application server. Novell wants to sell you both a server and a desktop.
Both companies are, of course, more than ready to sell you support plans to go with their desktop operating system. Dell has made it clear that, if you're looking for support, you should be looking to the Linux companies and the community, not Dell.
As for the community Linuxes, well, as far as I can tell, Dell has not made any kind of formal arrangement with any of them. As Mark Shuttleworth, the CEO of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, told me recently, "I didn't even know Michael Dell was trying Ubuntu. You shouldn't read too much into this [Dell using Linux on his laptop]. I'm thrilled he's using it, but I didn't know that he was going to announce it, and I can't comment on any talks we are, or are not, having with Dell about preloading Ubuntu onto Dell laptops and desktops."
Shuttleworth then added that he'd only met Dell once, and that was on the Microsoft campus and he didn't feel it would be right to talk to him about Linux there.
So, with all that in consideration, what's it going to be?
I think Dell will start by offering several Linuxes. I'm betting it will be RHEL WS 4, SLED 10, and Ubuntu 7.04.
In the case of the first two, Dell will simply be building on existing relationships. It's the easiest way for Dell to pre-install Linux. Both companies also already offer strong U.S. support operations, which make it both an ideal play for Dell's business customers who would only consider a desktop Linux if it came with all the support trimmings.
I think it will be RHEL WS 4, rather than a desktop RHEL 5, because Red Hat is moving more slowly on its desktop offerings than it is its RHEL 5 server. SLED 10, on the other hand, is already a mature desktop. There is a major service pack, SP1, coming soon for SLED 10, but it's already being deployed in production settings by some eager-beaver beta testers. In short, SLED's ready to go.
And Ubuntu? It's the most popular of the community Linuxes with a large and active user community. This is the Linux for home users and enthusiasts. This is the desktop Linux that I, and I'm sure Dell, believes will generate the most excitement.
Besides, as I'm sure Mr. Dell would agree, Ubuntu's a darn fine distribution in its own right.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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