infoworld.com— "The company does not say what version of Linux is on the PC. A Dell spokesperson could not be reached for comment."
Mar 21, 2007View in Crawl 4
Snore .... I don't get the big deal about Dell shipping Linux preinstalled on PCs in China. Wake me up when they start shipping them to the US. Oh wait a minute, Dell hardware blows and I wouldn't buy a machine of theirs even if it had the HAL 9000 OS running on it. I thank Dell for making other manufacturer's more efficient and bringing the prices of hardware down across the industry but they've always had inferior products. Will they cause another industry adoption towards preinstalled Linux if they start doing it? They may contribute to a quicker adoption but it will happen sooner or later with or without them. Again, snore....
"Another imposter? Does it make you the 5th?"WTF are you talking about??? Why are you using my avatar and a similar nickname?I'm reporting you to Digg staff!!!
Contrary to popular belief, and their self-naming, China practices Socialism, and still does, as any decently large company with headquarters in China still has a huge shares belonging to the government. In fact the Chinese government insists it is Socialist and owns almost all of the utilities and other corporations there. Even projects like Red-Flag Linux has heavy government support and financing, and has lots of staff that are also government employees. Lenovo's board includes various top government officials. The list goes on that proves that China has not been Communist in decades.With slight changes nowadays, its leaning more towards Fascism than anything. Fascism does allow for certain modes of capitalism, although at the point of the gun. As for being capitalist, despite popular belief, its far from it. The government still heavily controls the industry, and the detail in which it micromanages is unprecedented. Licenses are required for the production of things divided very finely and not seen in other nations. For example, just because you have a license to produce sterling silver jewelry, does not mean you can just pop in diamonds or any rock; that requires another permit. It also takes over 60 days just to get such a permit or license and an application fee which involves stopping at multiple sub-departments, paperwork, and eventually inspections.Finally, Dell is offering free operating systems, and even XP because in reality, most Chinese will just pop in a warez XP Professional CD and install it.
The direction in Linux is completely different than the direction you get from a proprietary OS. For example, Linux is completely modular, so there are different companies/individuals working on X Windows, GTK, Gnome, KDE, the kernel, various infrastructure, and it's up to a distro to package it all together to suit their needs. There has been progress in making them all compatible however, like <a class="user" href="http://www.freedesktop.org">http://www.freedesktop.org</a> Linux has a historical nature of being source-based because binary compatibility would have held it down for too long.Also, there is one Linux kernel: Linus's branch at kernel.org . There are other branches and forks for different purposes like realtime Linux, or Xen, but these all try to make their way into Linus's kernel at some point (like lots of realtime Linux is in the kernel now).Ubuntu also shows this being based off Debian and the dance between upstream and downstream.There will never be "1 Linux distro to rule them all" and that is a GOOD thing because that means new ideas like Canonical's "upstart" replacement for init or Red Hat's NetworkManager have the ability to start small, thrive and then perhaps make their way upstream or into other distros if they're good enough. The fact that everyone has the source makes this very easy.
Excellent post!!Currently, Linux is like the wild west where everyone is doing their own thing and looking for their 5 minutes of fame.The Linux fanboys hate Microsoft and anything that has to even remotely do with Microsoft.My advice to them is to spend less time whining over Microsoft and more time improving your totally fragmented operating system, with 300+ different distributions before it collapses under it's own weight.
r2proMar 22, 2007
Snore .... I don't get the big deal about Dell shipping Linux preinstalled on PCs in China. Wake me up when they start shipping them to the US. Oh wait a minute, Dell hardware blows and I wouldn't buy a machine of theirs even if it had the HAL 9000 OS running on it. I thank Dell for making other manufacturer's more efficient and bringing the prices of hardware down across the industry but they've always had inferior products. Will they cause another industry adoption towards preinstalled Linux if they start doing it? They may contribute to a quicker adoption but it will happen sooner or later with or without them. Again, snore....
schestowitzMar 22, 2007Submitter
Another imposter? Does it make you the 5th?
greatblackowlMar 22, 2007
An imposter of you on digg...Schestowitz, I think you've hit the big time.
Closed AccountMar 22, 2007
"Another imposter? Does it make you the 5th?"WTF are you talking about??? Why are you using my avatar and a similar nickname?I'm reporting you to Digg staff!!!
kryptobs2000Mar 22, 2007
I think what you were trying to say is: I BELIEVE the submitter WAS TRYING to say: The company does not say what DISTRO/FLAVOR of Linux is on the PC.
shrimpcrackersMar 22, 2007
Contrary to popular belief, and their self-naming, China practices Socialism, and still does, as any decently large company with headquarters in China still has a huge shares belonging to the government. In fact the Chinese government insists it is Socialist and owns almost all of the utilities and other corporations there. Even projects like Red-Flag Linux has heavy government support and financing, and has lots of staff that are also government employees. Lenovo's board includes various top government officials. The list goes on that proves that China has not been Communist in decades.With slight changes nowadays, its leaning more towards Fascism than anything. Fascism does allow for certain modes of capitalism, although at the point of the gun. As for being capitalist, despite popular belief, its far from it. The government still heavily controls the industry, and the detail in which it micromanages is unprecedented. Licenses are required for the production of things divided very finely and not seen in other nations. For example, just because you have a license to produce sterling silver jewelry, does not mean you can just pop in diamonds or any rock; that requires another permit. It also takes over 60 days just to get such a permit or license and an application fee which involves stopping at multiple sub-departments, paperwork, and eventually inspections.Finally, Dell is offering free operating systems, and even XP because in reality, most Chinese will just pop in a warez XP Professional CD and install it.
generalloyMar 22, 2007
The direction in Linux is completely different than the direction you get from a proprietary OS. For example, Linux is completely modular, so there are different companies/individuals working on X Windows, GTK, Gnome, KDE, the kernel, various infrastructure, and it's up to a distro to package it all together to suit their needs. There has been progress in making them all compatible however, like <a class="user" href="http://www.freedesktop.org">http://www.freedesktop.org</a> Linux has a historical nature of being source-based because binary compatibility would have held it down for too long.Also, there is one Linux kernel: Linus's branch at kernel.org . There are other branches and forks for different purposes like realtime Linux, or Xen, but these all try to make their way into Linus's kernel at some point (like lots of realtime Linux is in the kernel now).Ubuntu also shows this being based off Debian and the dance between upstream and downstream.There will never be "1 Linux distro to rule them all" and that is a GOOD thing because that means new ideas like Canonical's "upstart" replacement for init or Red Hat's NetworkManager have the ability to start small, thrive and then perhaps make their way upstream or into other distros if they're good enough. The fact that everyone has the source makes this very easy.
flatfishMar 23, 2007
Excellent post!!Currently, Linux is like the wild west where everyone is doing their own thing and looking for their 5 minutes of fame.The Linux fanboys hate Microsoft and anything that has to even remotely do with Microsoft.My advice to them is to spend less time whining over Microsoft and more time improving your totally fragmented operating system, with 300+ different distributions before it collapses under it's own weight.
luc1972Mar 26, 2007
This seems pretty apt:<a class="user" href="http://naused.googlepages.com/linux.png">http://naused.googlepages.com/linux.png</a>