I found this interesting. I am a fairly average home computer user. I have never received any formal training, self taught. Use the computer for home use, photography, music, bit of video editing.

I am becoming more and more disillusioned with Microsoft products. It seems hard to believe that a company with this much of the market share, amount of money, amount of resources still puts out products with poor security and loads of bugs like Vista.

I am now certain after recent developments with Vista, and the huge expense of purchasing it along with extremely high system requirements required to run it, and my experiences with Apple after owning two iPods is that my next computer purchase will not be running on Windows.

I feel that it will probably be a Mac but now there is a very real chance of it being a Linux box.

I wonder how many other home users are thinking the same? Is the tide beginning to turn against Microsoft?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6506027.stm

Dell gives the go-ahead for Linux
Larry Ellison of Oracle stands in front of a linux poster
Large firms like Oracle use open source Linux software
Computer giant Dell will start to sell PCs preinstalled with open source Linux operating systems, the firm has said.
The second largest computer maker in the world said it had chosen to offer Linux in response to customer demand.
Earlier this year, 100,000 people took part in a Dell survey. More than 70% of respondents said they would use Linux.
Dell has not released details of which versions of Linux it will use or which computers it will run on, but promised an update in the coming weeks.
"Dell has heard you," said a statement on the firm's website. "Our first step in this effort is offering Linux preinstalled on select desktop and notebook systems."
Currently the company only offers Microsoft Windows on its computers, but sells servers running Linux.
Members of the Linux community welcomed the move.
The fact that Dell is offering a desktop with Linux is no surprise
Nick Veitch
Nick Veitch, senior editor of Linux Format magazine, described it as "significant".
"I think it sends a message in two ways," he said.
"One is that a major company is confident enough to be able to offer Linux preinstalled on a desktop - that sends a signal that Linux is usable to the average user - and I think it shows that there is a growing demand for an alternative to Windows."
'No surprise'
Microsoft is the world's largest software maker and its proprietary Windows operating system is found on nine out of every 10 personal computers.
Dell laptop, Getty
Dell currently only offers Windows software on its laptops
While companies such as Microsoft earn money by licensing and charging for use of their products, Linux code is freely available.
That means anyone can modify it or develop applications for it. As a result, there are many different types, or distributions, of Linux operating systems that offer different functionality.
As Linux is free to download and distribute, the exact numbers of users is difficult to quantify.
However, analysts believe that approximately 6% of computers users run Linux, similar to the numbers choosing Apple Macs.
Big business and governments, particularly in the developing world, are also starting to exploit the flexibility of open source code.
The UK Cabinet Office recently evaluated the operating system and approved it as a viable alternative to proprietary systems. Car manufacturer Peugeot has also rolled it out across its employees' desktop computers.
But until now there has not been a major computer manufacturer willing to preinstall Linux on consumer computers.
"The fact that Dell is offering a desktop with Linux is no surprise," said Mr Veitch.
"The surprise is that it has taken them this long."

Some of us switched quite a while ago......

I don't really have much of a quarrel with XP, despite its insecurities and quirks - my own installations, with a bit of care and feeding, have been very stable - but I really do have a problem with Microsoft's greed, arrogance and truly unpleasant and antisocial business practices.

arcniz put it very well in a previous thread.

<snip> "The net-net-net reason that history will not remember Bill Gates fondly is... that he used the early success of his company to capture and hijack the entire destiny of computing for a period of decades.. the echos will continue into the next century, for sure. In the process he directed a program of obfuscation, disruption and proprietisation of the whole of computing technology - for no purpose other than the financial and commercial benefit of Microsoft. This continues into the present day.

Of all the profit taken in by MSFT, only a tiny fraction - say ten or fifteen percent (of the net profit) has been used to actually make software more productive, more reliable, and more useful. The remainder of those vast profits applied to development have been directed to creating and amplifying methods for making present and future computer programs more dependent on technology owned or controlled by Microsoft. This leads to greatly inferior software, but software that makes its customers totally and perpetually dependent on MSFT for tools, methods, and applications that can only be used under the intellectual property rights controlled by MSFT. One can say much about why this is bad, but in the interests of brevity I will just sum up as follows:

Bill Gates did not single-handedly invent modern computing. In fact, he waged business warfare on other innovators and companies in the early days of computing to the extent that most were effectively prevented from operating in markets that Gates sought to control. The business practices of Microsoft, guided by Bill Gates, have deliberately, methodically, and unnecessarily wasted the time and diminished the efforts of every one touched by them. The social and economic cost of his self-serving (and largely unnecessary) actions has been to deprive humanity of (at least) hundreds of billions of productive work hours, expended for totally unnecessary and wasteful work by the planet's best educated and potentially most productive citizens... for no purpose except to serve the greed of Gates and his cohort. The effect is equivalent, in economic and social cost around the globe, to exterminating millions of people. No small beans. To make recompense for that He'll have to feed a great many orphans."

By all means get a Mac (they're brilliant), but with every passing day Linux (my machines run either Kubuntu or Mepis as "best of breed" distros) becomes an increasingly compelling (and significantly cheaper) alternative.

:ok:

I run a Dell 9400 lappie...

If i'm honest i'd probably swap to Linux...



...if I knew how and wasnt scared of ballsing up the set up I have now!

Anything not MS must be good though. :ok:

It'll be interesting to see what this does pricewise.

Dell don't need to licence M$ Vista and install a free Linix distro instead = cost reduction that can be passed on to the customer in part or in full.

Dell can't bundle loads of "limited trial period" products 'cos linux users don't need / want this rubbish = revenue reduction that will be passed on also?

RC

I run a Dell 9400 lappie...

If i'm honest i'd probably swap to Linux...

...if I knew how and wasnt scared of ballsing up the set up I have now!

Anything not MS must be good though. :ok:Just download the 6.10 version of Ubuntu, burn it to a CD, and boot it. Will not affect your windows at all and you can see if it 'just works'. I cannot see any point in replacing your windows with linux though, you have already paid for it and I am guessing it already does what you want. If you want to mess about, buy the components from a web store, build your own pc and stick linux on it. Make sure you do your research first though and get hardware that linux works on.

Dell can do this as they control the hardware and have the resources to make it 'just work'. Good for them, competition is always good, and I am sure it will put pressure on microsoft to bring down the licence fee that Dell pays.

I guess it all boils down to how much Dell pays for their windows licence, and how much of the savings they want to pass onto their customers, and how much to their shareholders.

I am sure Dell will use this as an opportunity to heavily brand the desktop, try and lock you into their services, and make more money off you in an innovative way. For Dell are just as bad as MS, Oracle, Sun and the rest of them. They all want to 'own' your desktop experience and make it difficult for you to use anybody elses software.

Good advice there from slim_slag

Microsoft will surely attempt to punish Dell in some way for this move. They certainly have a long history of gutting businesses that stray from the party-line. These companies work on razor-thin margins and even a few percentage points increase in the fee that Dell pays for its OEM Windows license could really hurt.

"I am sure Dell will use this as an opportunity to heavily brand the desktop, try and lock you into their services, and make more money off you in an innovative way. For Dell are just as bad as MS, Oracle, Sun and the rest of them. They all want to 'own' your desktop experience and make it difficult for you to use anybody elses software."

A very astute observation. Happily even GPLv2 makes this quite difficult. Of course Dell plans to make money from this and the GPL does not forbid profit at all - it only blocks certain kinds of exploitative behaviour.

Personally I'm not comfortable with the FSF's (Free Software Foundation) political stance [I'm more of an OSS guy myself] and thought that the proposed GPLv3 was ludicrously (and fatally) business hostile. The most recent GPLv3 draft seems to have eased off a bit and hopefully will allow the industry to successfully commoditise Linux on the desktop (as Dell hopes to do) while blocking an effectively proprietary Dell Linux.

While I'm a firm supporter of FOSS (I contribute financially and on various groups) and in particular of open standards (like ODF) I'm not that fussed by proprietary drivers like nVidia and I will buy and use proprietary Linux apps if they work better for me than the FOSS equivalents. Sometimes FOSS coders need a kick up the arse too!

:ok:

Mac

effectively proprietary Dell Linux

I have had the feeling that Linux has been teetering on the brink of the same problem that beset UNIX last century, when several proprietary flavours of UNIX evolved, making development, portability and interoperability a real pain.

On a different note, I recently tried an experiment to see if I could configure a laptop for work with Linux (Kbuntu) as the OS. Most things I could set up to work (after a fashion), but I was completely stopped by the VPN solution. Yes, I could get a VPN client, but the gateway enforces software compliance, and BlackIce is not available for Linux - yet (I know, it's in Beta, but a very limited Beta).

And while many of our corporate apps have been developed for browser-based access, they only work properly with IE6, not Firefox etc.

Still, it's about 80% there!

"I have had the feeling that Linux has been teetering on the brink of the same problem that beset UNIX last century, when several proprietary flavours of UNIX evolved, making development, portability and interoperability a real pain."

Linux can't become proprietary, the GPL blocks this absolutely. Dell cannot produce a proprietary Linux. What they MAY do is release binary (non-open-source drivers) to optimise Linux on their hardware. These would be unacceptable to hard-line open-sourcers but of little consequence to Joe User. They might also tweak the kernel to better cooperate with their drivers, but under the GPL any changes would have to be released as source code. The big Linux houses usually tweak the kernel to work better with their releases and this is perfectly legit so long as the changes are freely released and documented.

The sort of proprietisation that nearly killed UNIX just can't happen.

By its very nature GNU/Linux is a do-your-own-thing animal, but most coders/vendors are coming, often reluctantly, to the realisation that working towards a fixed set of Linux standards is the only way to go.

The Linux Foundation set up the Linux Standard Base organisation - http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/LSB - to encourage vendors to follow their guidelines.

"The Linux Standard Base delivers interoperability between applications and the Linux operating system. Currently all major distributions comply with the LSB and many major application vendors, like MySQL, RealNetworks and SAP, are certifying. The LSB offers a cost-effective way for application vendors to target multiple Linux distributions while building only one software package. For end-users, the LSB and its mark of interoperability preserves choice by allowing them to select the applications and distributions they want while avoiding vendor lock-in. LSB certification of distributions results in more applications being ported to Linux and ensures that distribution vendors are compatible with those applications. In short, the LSB ensures Linux does not fragment."

Actually mainstream Linux is quite rapidly evolving towards these standards.

Mac

:ok:

With MS ending support for Win2000, a place where I sometimes work is replacing the machines that run Win2000. They are all pretty old. There is a blanket contract with Dell. There are a number of hardware choices and one may choose either WinXP or Linux as the operating system.

The establishment forbids the use of VISTA on any machine connected to the in-house network for the time being. They expect to approve of VISTA "someday" after they have verified that the main in-house applications can be made to work correctly with it.

Hi eveyone,

I just did a search on this and found that Dell has tried this before and previously took LINUX PCs off sale in 2001 becuase of low sales.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/08/03/dell.dumps.linux.idg/index.html


I'd love to use Linux, out of a bloody minded desire to break my dependance on Windows. But of course it worries me all the same, do you think mainstream software will work seamlessly with it or are there issues that need to be taken into account?

Also I've always wondered how much PC makers pay Microsoft for their bulk purchases of Windows, seeing as you can pick up a PC these days for £200 how much of this do you think is the Windows licence?

Cheers,

MrSurrey

Linux was a VERY different beast in 2001. I spent days getting Debian up and sort of working! I remember Dell's dabble and I'm not surprised they let it slide. Modern mainstream Linuxes are a world away from what it was then.

Best way to try it is to get hold of a live CD (which you can boot from), try it and see what you think. A live CD runs off the CD itself, doesn't touch you current HDD and although its pretty slow (as you would expect) will give you an idea of what its like and how it picks up your hardware.

"....do you think mainstream software will work seamlessly with it or are there issues that need to be taken into account?"

Windows software doesn't work natively with Linux - it's a completely different operating system. There ARE ways to get an increasing number of Windows applications to run but its still a bit of a fiddle. Linux comes with its own big bunch of applications for free to do pretty much anything you want (burn CDs, play music, email, office suite etc etc) and these are generally very compatible with the files/document formats that Windows uses.

Compatibility, especially for MSOffice documents, isn't perfect (complex documents often display differently and macros may fail), but this is hardly Linux' fault - Microsoft keeps their file/document formats a big secret to prevent people switching and to force you to go on using MS. But considering that everything is reverse engineered, the compatibility is remarkably good (and you can save in .doc/.ppt/etc. format so that Windows users can use your documents).

"Also I've always wondered how much PC makers pay Microsoft for their bulk purchases of Windows, seeing as you can pick up a PC these days for £200 how much of this do you think is the Windows licence?"

PC makers actually don't pay MS that much - FAR less than the cost of buying Windows in a shop. Still, there are enough of them to make MS very rich! But part of the agreement in their bulk purchase of Windows is a clause that says that all PCs they sell MUST have Windows installed - they're not allowed to sell PCs either with no operating system installed or with another OS. This dodge is one of the ways that MS has maintained its unlawful monopoly on operating systems and its stranglehold on the industry.

Linux is, can I say, "different" - modern Linuxes generally install seamlessly and for quite a few folks it just works "out-of-the-box" - for many a bit of tinkering is requires, but the reward for a few days messing around is a fast, flexible, stable OS that is very secure and works well on older hardware too.

Oh, and it's all FREE....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6144782.stm

Thanks Mac the Knife,

I think I'll be supporting LINUX the next time I get a computer then, provided I can find a way to run Dreamweaver on it! It's great to see the project gaining momentum and if it can reach critical mass on the PC I guess there's little reason for people to turn back to Microsoft in the future?

Progress :)

MrSurrey

Here you go mrsurrey, Codeweavers, - http://www.codeweavers.com/main/ -who make Crossover Linux ($39), have supported Dreamweaver and Flash since 2003.

http://www.dmxzone.com/ShowDetail.asp?NewsId=5796

http://www.codeweavers.com/site/about/general/press/?id=20031027

Not free, unfortunately, but you get the ability to run an awful lot of other Windows apps and games as well.

:ok:

Thanks a lot Mac the Knife! :} Goodbye Mr Gates :p

Today's statement from Dell on the subject can be found here:

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/ideastorm/ideasinaction?c=us&l=en&s=gen

Not just Dell. Today one of the sidebar news items on Groklaw reported that Toshiba Italy is considering Linux for a range of their products.

From the Times:

Microsoft in Linux warning

Microsoft has stepped up its campaign against free and open-source software by claiming that the Linux operating system and other popular open-source products infringe more than 235 Microsoft patents.

Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez made the claims in an interview with Fortune magazine, published yesterday.

"This is not a case of some accidental, unknowing infringement," said Mr Gutierrez.

"There is an overwhelming number of patents being infringed."

In a subsequent interview with the US business magazine, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer pulled back from saying that it would pursue individual users of open-source software for royalty payments.

Mr Gutierrez's comments have surprised some, as Microsoft appeared to be thawing in its attitude to open-source software in recent years.

Last November, it entered into an agreement with Novell, a leading provider of open-source software, which both sides said would improve interoperability between open-source software and Microsoft's products, as well as providing assurances over patent issues.

Con Hennessy, chief technology officer with Irish open-source services firm OpenApp, described the Microsoft comments as "sabre-rattling" designed to sell more software through its relationship with Novell.

"If you did a real analysis, a lot of the Microsoft patents would be thrown out," said Mr Hennessy. "They are either really obvious or you would find that someone else had created the same thing before it."

Mr Hennessy pointed out that Microsoft holds the patents in the US and said that software cannot currently be protected by European patents, so Microsoft's threats would have no impact in Europe.

Microsoft itself has fallen foul of US patent law recently.

In February, a San Diego court awarded $1.52 billion in damages to Alcatel-Lucent after it found that Microsoft had violated patents it holds related to MP3 digital music technology.

But of course, they won't specify which patents GNU/Linux/OpenOffice is supposedly infringing....oh no.

Just noise and FUD, hoping to scare companies away from Linux.

"No, we really don't want to litigate, just make a deal with us and we promise not to sue."

Path-etic!

"Gimme $20 and I'll make sure your nice car's paintwork don't get scratched!"

Faced with major disinterest in their new soopa-soaraway Vista, MS have decided to start waving the big patent litigation stick to try and halt Linux. Demanding money with menaces used to be called extortion.

MS holds thousands of patents, most of them on matters so banal that the patents should never have been granted, like double-clicking a mouse or filling in a HTML form.

In the USA you can more or less patent anything in software, the patent system is so broken. The patent examiners have no time to search for prior art and few of them know enough about programming logic to know what they're granting but they grant it anyway. The status of software patents generally is untested in the US anyway.

Many of these patents are so broad that any one of us probably violates several of them a day when writing a letter!

Most of the patents that MS has scrambled to register in the last 5 years are laughable, like linked-lists (which have been around since pre-VAX days), so MS obviously hopes never to have to actually legislate their claims - it's just something to threaten people with.

What an admission of fear and lost confidence in their own product/s!

My advice? Ignore them and they'll go away (and good riddance!)

Interesting development, along with the news that Dell is again offering XP on new machines, 'amid significant customer demand' (CNet 2007).

As for going over to Linux, it's a really interesting experience, even if you're just a general tinkerer. As mentioned above, I'd recommend a second machine, or a dual boot (not as horrible as it sounds).

When I tried Ubuntu and Debian (two different PC's) I really enjoyed learning something new, but you need to 'un-Microsoft' yourself. For instance, you can't just plug a memory stick or portable CD drive into your machine - you've got to learn how to get Linux to mount these devices, then configure it to do so automatically. Again, not as nasty as it sounds, with a little persistence and some good reference material.

Performance is also excellent.


James

Ubuntu
Does anybody know how well programmes like iTunes, etc run on UBUNTU OS, is there anyone who knows of anything that isn't compatible with UBUNTU, I am about to load it on my laptop and just wondering if something wont work, like my webcam for instance.

Cheers

s2h,
Linux, including Ubuntu, tends to have it's own versions of software rather than a Linux-ised version of something else - so you have to make the links or as JamesT73J said "un-Microsoft" yourself.
A good example is in media players - there isn't an iTunes binary for Ubuntu or any Linux. You could try running the Windows versions over WINE, or I would suggest looking at the various media players that are native to Linux - Rythmbox, Amarok etc and seeing how they stack up (Amarok seems to be a good iTunes alike for Linux)
I would strongly suggest registering on the Ubuntu forums and searching for iTunes there to see how many posts have been made on this subject. The Ubuntu forums are incredibly busy & useful (http://ubuntuforums.org/) - if this question hasn't been answered there, then post it & you're highly likely to get an answer, espcecially on if & how any licence rights could be migrated.
Best answer on your question is at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=442491&highlight=iTunes

"[Microsoft] is no stranger to patent law disputes.

From April 2004 through to March 2007 the company paid

$1.25bn TO Sun Microsystems,
$536m TO Novell,
$440m TO InterTrust,
$60m TO Burst.com,
$6m TO private inventor Carlos Amado,
$115m TO z4 Technologies,
$74m TO Korean company P&IB, and most recently, $1.52bn TO Alcatel-Lucent

over patents allegedly infringed by Microsoft's software."

Infringe patents
Pay off the owners from your vast cashpile
Profit!

:yuk:

Calm down Mac,

Before you go too far down that track it is worth remembering that Microsoft is very acquisative. In that context what would be more useful is a break down of how many of the patent infringements came from products developed directly inside Microsoft, and how many from products aquired and subsequently developed.

Also I wonder how much has been paid by the other technology companies for similar patent infringements.

Knowing one of the patents my last company applied for, and how open ended it was, it would be quite easy to find infrigements against that patent as well - albeit that the companies doing it would probably be completely unware of doing so.

In summary, I'm not saying that Microsoft is blameless, but what I am saying is that patents can be easy to infringe without trying to do so deliberately, or that an attempt to produce something akin to an existing patent could then be liberally interpreted as an infringement (think AMD vs Intel here). I suspect in the numbers you quote as in the numbers for many, many technology companies there will be a mix of all three types of infringment.