I am thinking of building a home server/media centre on the cheap and since my obsession with building computers has somewhat died (too much else going on in my life at the moment), i thought to look at Dell.
However despite hearing many good things about Dell's commitment to the linux market, i was unable to configure the computer of my choice for Linux. I was forced to look at a limited and slim set of computers with their approved ubuntu compatibility. Personally i probably would put ubuntu on but given that in the past i've custom compiled kernels, and wasted many a day fiddling with compiling Gentoo, i consider myself capable of tweaking ubuntu (which i've done on more than one occasion) to work with odd hardware.
I don't see why its not a viable option to buy any dell computer free of the Microsoft tax. I'm sure there are some who would argue that Linux isn't as compatible as windows with hardware, but this isn't 5 years ago, there is nothing that Dell sells that would be unsupported by Ubuntu. Also i have to point out that dell's linux options have their price inflated by use of intel processors, while this isn't such an issue today it seems odd when they are willing to sell AMD processors in their lower end Windows boxes.
The day's of Dell's dominance of the computer market are long over and they are on the downward spiral, but mistakes like this make it more difficult for them to save themselves from the abyss.
Comments
Annoymous
Thu, 03 Jan. 2008 10:12 GMT
I build my own machines; usually about as cheap, you end up with the exact hardware you want, and no software you don't. Debian and Ubuntu work fine on most mainstream hardware.
However, although that's fine for competent home consumers like ourselves, dell is secure thanks to the corporate market, who lack the resources and/or the skills to build hundreds of machines at a time, and who like the way you can ring up and get an engineer on site to fix any problems.
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