Dell Linux Survey has Fedora as an option

[Michel Salim]

2007/3/14, hymno3 <crazymulgogi at gmail.com>:
> Indeed, tiresome to see all the fanboys trying to impose what they feel
> is "the best thing" as the standard for the yet-to-see Dell preloaded
> Linux distro.
>
It is rather disheartening. Linux distributions are (mostly)
cooperating with each other, but some of the users are definitely
doing each other more harm than taking away from Microsoft.

> Sure, Fedora had and continues to have (minor) bugs, just like any
> distro, but I can't help thinking that much of the anti-Fedora prejudice
> is pure hearsay. Have the Fedora-bashers ever used it?
>
Most of them, probably not. There's the fantasyland of Red Hat being
the next Microsoft (this dates back to even before RHEL's launch).

> In the end, to a lot of people it doesn't matter what Dell preloads
> because they will install their own favourite distribution instead. Yet
> much is, theoretically, at stake here. If people, especially those new
> to Linux, try it out and buy such a Dell machine, and they like what
> they see, they won't uninstall it.
>
> Anyway, we all know it will be either Suse or Ubuntu, unless Red Hat is
> going to subsidise Dell a little, which I don't think is their business
> model. (?)
>
> If Dell preloads Ubuntu, it will be blob time soon. What has the
> Linux/FOSS world gained then?
>
I commented on the blog, advocating that making Linux drivers
available is more important than what distribution is shipped by
default. Considering Dell just switched their supported Linux
configuration to SLES/D, I do agree with you that they'd probably go
with either SuSE or Ubuntu .. hopefully, if it's the former it's
openSUSE (no silly Microsoft extortion money), and if it's the latter,
we'll still get free drivers.

Dell's computers can normally be configured to use components with
free drivers (e.g. for wireless, you can choose between Dell Wireless
and Intel 3945 -- the latter is *almost* free; for graphics you can
choose b/w Intel and nVidia), so the only two things we need is
1) Linux certification: the hardware works without non-FOSS drivers
2) BIOS updates, etc. are released in a way that they can be applied
without Windows onboard

I made these points on the blog; please add anything else you could think of.

-- 
Michel Salim
http://hircus.wordpress.com/