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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Walt Mossberg
From:       Luciano Montanaro <mikelima () cirulla ! net>
Date:       2007-09-18 16:40:41
Message-ID: 200709181840.42367.mikelima () cirulla ! net
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Il Tuesday 18 September 2007 18:04:15 Aaron J. Seigo ha scritto:
> On Tuesday 18 September 2007, Gary L. Greene Jr. wrote:
> > That, and I hate to say it, but most if not all the issues listed in the
> > article were distribution related issues.
>
> yes, this is an example of Canonical and Dell teaming up to produce a
> product that is not suitable for the mainstream market, though it's
> probably just fine for the niche techie/geek market and for institutions
> already implementing Linux desktops (who are therefore dealing with these
> issues already; this saves them installing things and gets them official
> support).
>
> the problems Walt M. outlined were pretty much 100% system integration
> problems. which means that at the application level, the free software
> world is doing alright. we're just getting screwed by the OSVs and OEMs.
>
> lovely world, that =)

This is actually offtopic on this list, but I have been wondering why people 
has been considering this offer as if Dell actually wanted to offer Linux to 
the mainstream public.

They may do so, in time, but the current offering is clearly aimed at us: they 
make sure only people really determined to have a Linux only PC are going to 
get it -- "normal" users are not confronted with the Linux option, you can 
find the offer only if you know what to search for.

I think it's a very positive signal on the whole -- clearly there is demand 
for Linux systems. And for us geeks, it's nice to know a particular laptop 
model is going to work well with a linux distribution -- if it works with 
Ubuntu, it will work well with any mainstram distro, if not now, in the next 
version.

About the DVD-not-playing-out-of-the-box problem, I cannot see a solution 
given the legal environment (other than including a proprietary player in the 
distro, which would suck anyway).

Luciano
 
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