Fedora - DELL ?

[David G. Miller]

"Paul Osunero" <esiex3 at gmail.com> 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