Dell charging more for Ubuntu than Vista...???

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/02/20/dell-charges-ubuntu-vista

Un-freakin-believeable.... (but I believe it)

Its harder to get Ubuntu running right than Vista ... and Linux technicians are far more expensive than windows ones.

If you actually put any effort into it i find Linux MUCH easier than windows.

So why he hell can't I get a job in the area?

Think of license prices. The cost of getting someone to install Linux is more than the cost of the windows licence + installation fee? thats b******s... :-)

Windows machines are cheap because the manufacturer gets paid to load them up with crapware.

Dell prolly gets an amount of money for each sold Vista, while Linux would prolly make them no money. Dell is no charity company, they want to make money. Making some money on Windows, and no money on Linux ... what would your choice be, being a company?

Business doesn't use Linux as a desktop because it's nowhere near well enough supported, and it's not cost effective to do so, props to Dell for even trying. It will cost them a LOT more to support a Linux laptop over it's lifetime than a Windows one. I wouldn't even consider it for a mass market.

Linux is NOT a mass market desktop OS.

I wouldn't be surprised if Dell don't drop this option within a year.

Darkheart

I cannot justify how this price increase can be allowed. I thought that Ubuntu was free !. Well... It never cost me anything to download Ubuntu from the official website.

[edit]If they use the "Harder to install Ubuntu" phrase as an excuse, then why dont they sell a machine that has nothing installed ?. That way they can sell them even cheaper, due to the fact that there is an absence of a windows OS, which is not free ![/edit]

Ubuntu is free.
But the dummwitt support Dell will have to give the Ubuntu Users that buy that system is not free. Not talking of the drivers they will have to get out (because ubuntu is crap at best for most systems. Compatibility is far worse than with Mandriva One and other distributions and that on all of my 3 systems. One is an IBM tablet, one a Compal EL80 *intel reference notebook for Core Duo!* and the other a self built desktop with wireless card and a few other things).
Thats something you won't have access to as "free installer" ...

I installed Ubuntu on my GFs laptop yesterday after patching the graphics to look like XP. she has not yet realised i made the change. Firefox still works, so does open office, so she doesn't notice anything.

Ubuntu does have a few compatibility probs at the moment, but it is easy to use. it also works better than windows XP does when it is first installed.

Mandriva had more hardware working on first install than any other Linux distro I have tried but it was way less stable than XP and ubuntu.

Im with you cygnus, my mum is quite happy with it and she doesnt know an icon from a cursor. I do all her admin via sshd/vnc (erm, which ive never actually had to use much, except to install something when she asks is there software for...)

Where on earth did you get that idea?

The reason the support is so expensive is simply because it is at the moment so specialised whereas windows technicians are 2 a penny (its the same with anything else)

I think its wrong that dell charge more though thats stupid (unless it includes 24/7 support i suppose). A linux install takes less time than windows if you know what you are doing, apps and all. Especially if you use an image.

Ubuntu definitely does not come with tech support, but Dell provides it, which does suggest some price change. The significant price difference there, especially given that Dell provides suppport with their Windows sysems as well, hints at some anti-competition behaviour from Microsoft.

Hate to link you to an external web log, but I disagree.

In terms of getting things done in the graphical interfaces that do exist, Ubuntu (or really any Gnome-using distro) is a far better designed system.

You can, at least on the buisiness side of their site. Ubuntu is totally easy to install on "linux friendly HW" machines like modern dells HP/Compaqs, levovos(IBMs), fujitsus etc.. easier than windows (and it even lets you surf the web while its doing it on the live CD) however it is more difficult to configure certain stuff if you are used to windows.

They should offer the option for simply installed. No extra cost to the machine (or very little) OR for the support included option. Other companies that supply PCs with a linux option dont charge more, they charge less so why should dell?

Its probably because vistas rep is so bad they would find it hard to even give it away ;P Just out of interest are they charging more than XP?

I agree totally with that comment, but the blog you link to misses the point totally. The difficulty people are complaining about is trying to get linux working with their hardware, which (in my own personal experience) often involves a lot of workarounds and commandline hacking, if you can get it working at all. Bottom line is that until hardware manufacturers get behind Linux in terms of drivers, it's always going to have problems.

To be fair though, it -usually- picks up 99% of it with no issues and no external drivers needed. Its usually the nicknacks like unheard of webcams, dodgy wireless cards etc that cause the most problems IME. I usually just check the hardware chart and go out and buy a compatable one (small price to pay) rather than trying to hack around. As for Dells, Ubuntu picks up everything out of the box. I know this because the company i work IT support for use the whole range except inspiron (and a few HP/Compaq & IBMs) and have tried the liveCD on all the models to see how it runs and we use it for certain recovery stuff.

As for video cards, the days of the Xsession bluscreen is now over in ubuntu as it has both a vesa failsafe mode incase of problems as well as the start in safe graphics mode as before.
The new 3rd party restricted drivers from ATI and Nvidia are much better than just 1 year ago and seem to setup all the HW acceleration etc with no fuss.

So what's the problem? They go through the hassle of pre-installing GNU/Linux on their hardware, add a commercial DVD-Player software for Linux (since that is what users want) and provide technical support for the baby.

Just because they do not have to pay license fees does not mean that it won't cost them. And obviously they found out that it costs them more to ship and support GNU/Linux than Windows costs them. And that's probably because they have to either train their existing staff or hire new staff with Linux skills, which does not come cheap and they do not even know if their Linux adventure will make them any money at all.

Instead of complaining, GNU/Linux-users should be happy that a big player is (re-)entering the Linux-desktop market after everbody already believed it dead.

I think it's ok and with some luck, this will become a viable business for Dell. And if it does, the price tag will change.

On a more general note: I still find GNU/Linux a pain to install and it's still hard to do things that should be simple, as for example connecting to a WLAN, connecting to a file share on a Windows server, connecting a second screen or beamer to a notebook. The GUI tools coming with Ubuntu or Fedora Core 'Werewolf' simply don't work (on my hardware), and I do --not-- have the newest toys on the planet. But that's the same old story with GNU/Linux since ever. So it can only be good news when a big vendor now sells pre-configured machines, and it's worth the additional price.

And when they sell enough units and the system gains momentum, we will also see that more and more commercial applications for GNU/Linux will become available. Open Source is nice and great, but in most cases I require commercial software to get the work done.

So if you care for GNU/Linux... Purchase some Dell stocks and then some Dell hardware with Linux on it. ;-)

Winni: Sorry, a tad off topic, but often the GFX manufacturers package their own tools. If you have an NVidia card, you are in luck! (Warning: It works, but it does make a horrendous mess of xorg.conf. I suggest you not look at what it leaves behind).

With NVidia's proprietary drivers, you can run gksu nvidia-settings. For ATI's stuff, I believe there is the Catalyst control center somewhere. Alas, no hotplugging, and I can only run the external monitor in portrait mode if I use Xinerama, which breaks Compiz, or as a seperate X display which feels like using two different computers. It's quite a dillemma :(
Still, it could do the trick for you!

That contradicts itself a bit ;) and most people don't care about an OS so long as it runs their programs. I don't think your should have to put any effort in at all, which is why I use windows. It just works.

I have had almost 0 problems with windows since SP1 of win2k was released. (which means I don't remember any, other than Via chipset driver problems with photoshop early on.

what i meant is, as a new user to a new pc, ubuntu VS windows, you can pick up ubuntu quicker.

I will guarantee you put some effort into finding stuff in the UI.
For me, ubuntu installed, I wondered where stuff was, clicked, found it. sometimes a scary looking terminal was there but even that is easier than DOS.

The "effort" involved is simply in opening your mind to the fact that it does work. It just doesn't work the same way as Windows, which you are used to.

I guess there are two main reasons for why they'd charge more for Linux than windows:

1) Higher tech support cost
2) Keep in mind: the purchase price of a new windows machine is often partially subsidized by all the crapware they load on top of it. Those URL assistants, 60-day trial versions of Norton anti virus, trials of Word Perfect and all that other junk aren't pout there out of the goodness of Dell's heart -- they are put there because the companies in question pay them money to do so.
Linux = no 3rd party commercial crapware bundled, meaning they're missing out on that revenue stream... Which can result in the price for a machine with a free OS being more than one with a commercial OS.

My main reason has always been a lack of photoshop and 3dsmax, plus games. No one needs 2 OS's. Just one that does everything. Just having 2 OS's for different tasks is too much effort for me.

With new users, they are just going to like whatever they first use and become familiar with. Thats usualy the biggest thing that seperates Mac and PC users.

Many of us would still be using amigas if they were still around. Not because they were really any better, but because we were comfortable with them. For me, I'd prefer to have no OS at all and just my programs that run, unfortunately AI isn't good enough to read my mind and know what I want to do with my files so I'm stuck with an OS for now. But other than file management do people really use the OS outside of having it run their software?

D4NM4N can you name any blue chip company that is using Linux as a desktop OS? It's not an ideological debate, it's a practical reality, Linux on the desktop is something nobody in business is going to take seriously.

Linux has it's place, but on the desktop in front of every company employee is not it. Add to that the fact the cost of the OS is totally trivial compared to the TCO over the unit's lifetime. It's all about enabling people to do what they need to do, when they need to do it,how you get there is irrelevant. Users want support, they want it to work and they want compatibility and extensibility. They don't give a stuff what you use as long as they get what they want when they want it. Linux meets none of these criteria.

As I said earler, props to Dell for trying, but I think this will be a breif flirtation.

Darkheart

Evak, photoshop (CS2) works with wine pretty well, and Google has recently announced of investing money for better photoshop support under wine. And there is also gimp, which is good enough for most people (I agree that for professionals gimp might lack a feature or two).

If i understand blue chip to be an established corporation with stable stocks then i would suggest probably (aside from 1000s of asian companies):

A description of the company and what they run Linux on:
* Alenia Aerospazio - Divisione Aeronautica (Desktops, servers, thin desktop clients)
* The Boeing Company (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Sony Electronics Inc (thin desktop clients, servers)
* DaimlerChrysler (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Cloudstone Petroleum Resources (desktops, thins, servers)
* Decollement Consulting, Ltd. (desktops, thins, servers)
* Giant Industries, Inc.
* Mathtech Pakistan (desktops, thins, servers)
* Beacon Maritime(thin desktop clients, servers)
* Data Flow Systems, Inc. (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Mercedes-Benz AG (desktops, thins, servers)
* Cloudstone Petroleum Resources (desktops, thins, servers)
* Decollement Consulting, Ltd. (desktops, thins, servers)
* Giant Industries, Inc.
* Mathtech Pakistan (desktops, thins, servers)
* Schlumberger Limited (desktops, thins, servers)
* United States Army Publishing Agency (thin desktop clients, servers)
* U.S. Navy: Personnel Support Activity, San Diego (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Artisys s.r.o.(thin desktop clients, servers)
* Beacon Maritime(thin desktop clients, servers)
* Chipworks, Inc.(thin desktop clients, servers)
* control Systemtechnik GmbH (thin desktop clients, servers)
* CustomWare (thin desktop clients, servers)
* diplan GmbH (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Fuss & O'Neill Inc. (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Gulf Interstate Engineering (thin desktop clients, servers)
* IBT SA.NV / Sylis Group (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Ing. Friedrich Bauer (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Kärnkraft Säkerhet och Utbildning AB (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Lumic Electronics Inc. (thin desktop clients, servers)
* MASH Computer und Softwareservice (thin desktop clients, Desktops, servers)
* MCH Konsulting Sweden (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Optim Microwave, Inc. (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Quester Tangent Corporation (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Rachana Systems and Software (thin desktop clients, servers)
* The Silver Hammer Group Ltd. (thin desktop clients, servers)
* SSM Business Corporation Sdn. Bhd. (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Sulzer Hydro GmbH (thin desktop clients, servers)
* Townsend Engineering Services, Inc. (thin desktop clients, servers)
* UNITED RAILWAY SIGNAL GROUP, INC. (thin desktop clients, servers)

For starters - the list was too big to copy!

They no doubt use windows too, but there is plenty of 'desktop linux' in there. Interestingly theres a lot of huge corporate names, the kind who want to keep things REALLY secure, stable and reliable like the oil industry, aerospace, military, automotive, biotech etc. etc.

The company i work contract IT support for (a large biotech firm i feel uncomfortable saying who) are most certainly blue chip and there is a little bit of desktop linux going on there too, but i dont deal with those, just the windows stuff (just as well or I would have nothing to do ;)..

Sony Electonics Inc likes Linux so much that they appear in the list twice.

Here's the info from the wines compatibility page. You can get Photoshop CS2 to run, but slowly.



CS3



It's cool that it runs at all, but its far easier to just run it in windows, and never have to worry about compatibility.

Oh yeah thanks, my fault, i copied one of the lists in twice and thought id removed them all :D
-fixed-

@evak
I agree, but those things on winehq ar often out of date or inaccurate, dont forget thats just one persons report, for others the experience is usually either better or worse.
Its usually a pain to get stuff working in wine as you have to mess about with the DLLs sometimes but the good thing is you can back up the entire wine structure to DVD once its all working right. To be honest i only use it now for Paintshop Pro. Ive found naitive equivalents for most other stuff.

An OEM Windows Install takes exactly 1 click
Why the heck do you think do OEM corporate licenses exist ... its not only for money reasons but to allow them to create one click / network installable versions of it that they can easily maintain.

With 1 click you are most likely faster than with Ubuntu. Especially if we take into account that you need to manually feed it with other drivers.

Don't know what people have with mandriva stability. Mandriva One 2008, which is free, is far more stable than Ubuntu / Kubuntu has been in any 7.X distri

Dell have be banging Linux boxes out on and off since 1998. They use to favour Red Hat and now its ubuntu. They offer linux as a OS as some customers ask for it to be pre-installed.

Most people would just buy the cheaper Dell with Windows installed, see if they can get a refund on the OS (and die of old age trying (if any one has succeeded please post :o) ) and install what ever takes their fancy.

Eh? the only way i have ever seen to install windows with one click with drivers (oem or no) is with an image or recovery package which is in effect an image too (which you can do on any OS)

With a normal bare OEM / full install of windows users have to:
-manually babysit (next,next,next) every option at irritatingly spaced out stages of the process,
-wait watching screens saying how great it is which you have read a million times (during irritatingly spaced out stages, so you cant just walk away)
-install security software asap (antiv etc) + updates to it
-install all the updates sinse the last service pack before it gets hijacked
-Then you have to babysit drivers for far more stuff then you need to in ubuntu. This is especially true of vista.
-then you have to babysit in the apps one by one (next next next) - (unless you have a non verbose automated script supporting apps / delivery server).¨
-Any other special settings like shared drives etc.
-copy back all your data, user settings etc.
-do trimmings like proper video drivers, codecs, appearance etc.

On ubuntu its simply:
-Use the live CD and you can browse the web after answering a few questions. Or use the text based one, answer a few Qs and then do something else.
-Do any updates (no rush)
-Tick all the apps you use from a list and click install.
-While thats doing that either go to pub or copy back your data, app settings & wine structure to /home/ + any special /etc/ settings like network shares etc.
-Install any commercial/proprietry software you use.
-do final trimmings like installing the proprietry video driver, codecs, whatever.
-job done

Or as you described above install everything in one click from an image from CD/DVD or LAN.

Of course its not that smooth on every PC but thats how it installs on most reasonably recent linux cerified machines like Dells, HPs, IBMs, (my fujitsu not tried other models)

D4Nm4N,
I don't know where you copied and pasted that long list from but it is NOT for Linux on the desktop.

Thin desktop clients are NOT Desktop Linux, all it means is they are using a boxed Linux OS to run a Citrix Clients or TS Clients, and nothing else. You will find in almost every case if the user is using the box as a desktop it connects to a Windows server, probably running Citrix.

Running a single linux application in a box is NOT desktop Linux.

I'm talking about (and this thread is about) deploying the actual Linux Desktop OS on a PC. I'm well aware Linux is used in business but NOT as a desktop OS in large companies on a large scale. It simply costs too much money and there is no company that can provide proper large scale support for desktop Linux. Add this to the poverty of professional applications in Linux and you can see why people don't use it as a general desktop OS.

Darkheart

No, im not im talking about both "fully fledged desktops" AND thin clients which are fully seamless remote X session desktop environments. (which are the same as having a local desktop as far as the user is concerned, as you turn it on straight into your desktop, no client app in sight) These connect to a centralized linux server via XDMCP, MX (or whatever) so for all intents and purpouses becomes a seamless desktop with mouse monitor and keyboard with a linux powered desktop environment.

Nothing to do with citrix.

Here is one site i found,(non linux-specific). I cant find the others as im not at the same PC. You will find no citrix mentioned anywhere. It gives a breakdown for each company and what they use it for. Several of them do specify actual desktops as well as thins (which in my book is "desktop" usage too).
Thin clients (both win & linux based) are slowly becomming the more attractive option for a lot of buisnesses as it is much more secure than having a local machine, uses much less power plus requires no desktop support whatsoever (unless the hardware fails).

If anything windows desktops in the corporate workplace are becomming more and more terminalized. At our company, with the exception of mabe office and internet explorer almost everything else are IntRaNet based apps using Oracle Flex or citrix etc. Which kinda makes them thin clients most of the time too.

Like it 0r not the "thin client" weather windows, sparc, unix or linux based are slowly becomming the new business 'desktop'.

1) The list is dated 2003, 5 years out of date, and seems to be based on articles even older than that. 5 Years is an eternity in IT 10 years is like 100 in any other business.

2) Where it does describe "Linux used" applications it seems to be referencing mostly old UNIX applications like PINE (does anyone still use that? I thought it died ages ago) or Lynx (talk about blast from the past). So it could just as easily be referring to any company that still uses any NIX based OS (of which there are plenty).

3)I've yet to see any large mutli-nationals, or what I would regard as industry leaders, serious organisations that would really proove the case. Show me Shell currently using Desktop Linux, or Barclays, PWC, BA, BP or Astra Zeneca or anyone like that. Those kind of companies have effectively almost unlimited resources to deliver the best solutions for their users at the same time they have huge obsticles to overcome.

Why do you think business people still buy MSO when there is Open Office for free? Because the business productivity with MSO is much higher than any of the alternatives for most employees and when you scale that on a per employee basis it adds up to far more than the cost of the annual license cost (which is very small under commercial agreements anyway).

Darkheart

A company that large isnt going to change its entire infrastructure that quickly, trust me and would they want to? I dont know which list you looked at but those lists are ONLY listing the linux stuff. Unix and linux often go hand in hand (as linux is technically a unix rewrite) and X-Windows is nothing to so with MS-windows. Everything in those lists is linux based.
Desktop linux has rapidly progressed in 5 years. There is more modern software now and thin clients(or terminals) are now so seamless and good with their geometry you hardly notice you are not at a desktop.

Dont know about pine, im sure its in use somewhere as its quite a powerful client (as im sure lotus notes or ms-mail is still lurking around).

Daimler, Boeing, Sony etc are large multinationals. Im not saying they have it on every desktop on their premises but they DO have linux desktops of some sort for whatever purpouse
Also Shell & BP most likely use solaris/UNIX/Linux client-server stuff for their critical and sensitive useage. (likely very similar to the setup i described in my last post)

Anyway are we gonna discuss this all night or agree to disagree and get b.o.t. :)


[EDIT]
PS, BP actually use a supercomputer system which is linux based and will almost certainly have several "linux desktop" environments for their unique software that runs on it (which would look and behave the same wether locally CPU processed or not (ie. by using a thin)).

[EDIT2]
Shell also do some big things with linux and so do Halliburton(who develop software for them): (one of the linux techs at work showed me this who has actually worked in that industry)
http://www.open-mag.com/features/Vol_33/oil/oil.htm
A quote to save you trawling:


(Well, as all fun sites are blocked, I get real BORED at work dont i :)

How about the French paramilitary police?

You also kind of contradict yourself there. I assume that by "people", you mean 'average joe user'. Average joe user certainly does not need a professional video editing suite!
(Although on the topic of Photoshop, Google is now contributing to get it living under Wine).

Dell must be selling it though to be able to charge more like that... I mean they're not exactly crap at "business" are they :/

.Dup

Interesting, Ive just visited dells site and pretended to buy some pcs.

If you choose "big business", (I think I picked lattitude), you get the option of Red Hat or XP Vista, they are exactly the same price. Which makes sense i guess as red hat is proprietry too.

However,

With home & small office I have found the Vista XPS model to be $999 on its starting price and $949 starting price for the ubuntu model. So i guess for home use its cheaper by 50 green which perhaps is about right for the price of an OEM (@ trade price?)

Mabe that article is not right or dell have seen it and changed their tune :/
Or prehaps the press have bent the fact that the sales people talk people into getting gold support (an option) that costs $$$ more.

I then followed the links it gave and got this checkout. It is in fact $100 less but there seems to be an 'odd' promotion on too.



Hang on no its not.... thats a poxy celeron!!

Outrage back on.... >:O

Although when i actually went to the site and built the pc from scratch it was different...

the plot thickens.

Heh - although with ubuntu a 1.86ghz celeron would probably give as good performance as a 1.6Ghx dual core running windows :D

(Half) Joking aside its still NO excuse! :(