"Paul Osunero" <esiex3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The discussion at the dell blog shows that people really want Ubuntu first,
Fedora second, and Suse third out of the big three. To be honest, Ubuntu
makes more sense because they'll have legal codecs from Linspire's CNR and
they have commercial support. Fedora lacks these things right now...
The best thing Dell could do for FOSS would be to offer systems that are
fully supported (hardware) by open source drivers. This approach would
allow them to just confirm that as many distros as they choose to test
install correctly and work on the hardware. It would also leave the
choice of whether to use proprietary codecs up to the individual
end-user and Dell stays out of the whole licensing, copyright, patent
mess. The plus for FOSS would be increased pressure on various hardware
manufacturers to release open source drivers or sufficient
specifications that the community can develop non-proprietary drivers
(even if Linux systems turn out to be only a small percentage of Dell
sales, the number of people opting for particular hardware because it's
supported by open source would be significant).
If Dell goes with a specific distro, I'd expect it to be RHEL or SLED.
One of Dell's primary concerns will be the cost of support and I'm
guessing that bundling a Linux distro support license would 1) look like
their Windows business model and 2) solve the support problem.
Cheers,
Dave
--
Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
-- Ambrose Bierce
