Print - It's Official: Dell Offering Linux on Select Notebooks, PCs

Dell has responded to overwhelming feedback from its IdeaStorm customer feedback site this week by announcing that it will soon begin offering the open source operating system Linux on select Dell desktop and notebook PCs. The announcement comes about a month and a half after IdeaStorm was first brought online. The availability of Linux was, overwhelmingly, the number one customer request.

"We have heard you and appreciate the direct feedback," Dell wrote to customers in a posting to its corporate blog. "We will expand our Linux support beyond our existing servers and Precision workstation line. Our first step in this effort is offering Linux pre-installed on select desktop and notebook systems. We will provide an update in the coming weeks that includes detailed information on which systems we will offer, our testing and certification efforts, and the Linux distribution(s) that will be available. The countdown begins today."

Dell's sudden fixation on customer feedback comes in the wake of a disappointing year in which it fell from its perch atop the PC industry, ousted its CEO, and saw founder Michael Dell retake the reins of the company. Mr. Dell feels that better connecting with its customers--and delivering exactly what they want--is the key to future growth.

That said, it's unclear how offering a free OS--one that Dell will need to support--will dramatically improve the bottom line. In the battle for the desktop, Windows remains the overwhelming champion, with over 95 percent of the market. Of the remainder, Apple's Mac OS X accounts for about 2.5 percent of the worldwide OS market.

what the heck is Linux? that is what the rest of the not so tech savvy world is saying

If Dell executes this right, it would definitely give them an avenue to get the crown back from HP (especially if they offer the more exotic GUI functions of Linux like Beryl). But I've got to say that this is masochistic. They now have two options for support. (1) Hire an army of linux competent call support staff, which is going to cost millions annualy. Or (2) make a very robust recover CD and instil the carpet-bombing mantra of "would you please insert the recovery CD" into their existing call support staff's list o' things to say. Comes down to either spending millions a year, with moderately happy consumers; or, angry consumers who want to customize but are locked in. Either way, Dell has did _something_, we'll see what happens. I assume they are banking on the fact that once their details are ironed out, there will be only one retail source for linux.

OK. I think it's good to offer choices but I don't see this helping them somehow. HP has done a lot to improve their design and customer service in the last couple of years.

"OK. I think it's good to offer choices but I don't see this helping them somehow. HP has done a lot to improve their design and customer service in the last couple of years." True, this one only give Dell a feature point that HP doesn't have. What success comes out of it is entirely open-ended. Now if Dell had true gall, they'd do what HP did and invent their own distro of linux (paralelling HP-UX unix variant, and make it not suck). They could DeLux or something snappy like that. It would pull in all the linux kiddies to try and rip it apart... o' course the GPL people would probably go crazy.

I still don't see this helping Dell much. People who use Linux are DIY geeks. I can't see many Linux users paying Dell to install Linux themselves since that would, as many Linux users have told me, "Take the fun out of it." After the initial 6 months of Dell offering Linux desktops/notebooks I'd be very curious to see the numbers. (I assume the numbers will be high for the first few months and then drop off)

The problem is, Dell needs an OS preloaded on the machine so they can put pre-installed crapware on the system image. The crapware drives the price of the PC hardware down. Crapware on a preinstall of Windows is an industry standard. What Dell is trying to figure out is, if they can preload a nice distro/cocktail of Linux and get advertisers to buy crapware space on the system image. I'm sure companies like Novell (owners of SUSE) and Sun (StarOffice, Sun Java) are genuinely interested in such a thing. What Dell's non-Windows-using customers really want is the ability to buy a Dell PC for the price of a Windows/crapware-loaded machine, but without paying the Windows tax and crapware. I'm not sure we'l see that happen unless Dell tries to go after NewEgg and opens a Do-It-Yourself PC parts business .

Yes. That is exactly why Dell is doing this. And we never landed on the Moon, and Bigfoot is really the president of Mexico.

I predict that the model(s) that this crapware is going to be pre-installed on will be a HUGE success. The only downside is all the inquiries they will receive for customers looking for Windows drivers! :D

@KingBuzzo - Actually, they'll probably also get a ton of calls saying things like: "Where is my Office 2007?" "How do I get iTunes to work with this?" "Where is Internet Explorer?" You get the picture. --tayme

no doubt the clucker's over at BadVista.org are cheering Dell on. i hope Dell goes back to including MyWay spyware in their PC's - MyWay now has Linux software. ;) XP

Wow, how many chairs went out the window today in Redmond? You can't blame Dell, they had to make the move or risk losing boxen sales to the goverment. If the FAA or the DOT jump to Linux then Dell is in place to retain their business. Overall this is good move for almost everyone in the industry. Vista (SP1)

"Overall this is good move for almost everyone in the industry." Meanwhile Dell will continue to lose market share to HP and won't know why. "We listened to them and offered Linux. Why do they continue to buy our competitors' products?"

"We listened to them and offered Linux. Why do they continue to buy our competitors' products?" I find it funny that Dell listened to the 2,000 people who wanted linux, but ignore the 100,000 people who want their tech support to not suck.

1) anybody who wants to have a dell pc pre-installed with linux doesn't really need to have an OS installed at all. Dell should just offer that. NO OS!. 2) I can just imagine the confusion of linux distros and supported hardware/software...The end consuer will just get annoyed and just put windows on, which works with everything dell pre-installs. 3) here is some fud: dell hacks the distros to include their own bundles of dell crap, such as google toolbars, aol/earthlink icons, antivirus crap etc etc. 4) it's a good time to know linux if you live in india. they will sure plenty of non english speakers to support the mess of distros.

"it's a good time to know linux if you live in india." maybe for them....for end users who can't understand them by their thick accents already, it's going to be an even worse nightmare. XP

"for end users who can't understand them by their thick accents already, it's going to be an even worse nightmare." [insert "like buying from a Canadian" joke here] ;-) DOS!

"DOS!" so you've upgraded eh losta? good for you - that's a major step up from the PoS that is OSX! maybe when you get a bit more coordinated, you can join the rest of the world and learn how to use a second mouse button. XP

Waethorn: Not if he's too busy trying to get his mouse cursor back from the latest Windows bug. ;)