Dell gets its mojo back with Linux move

BEWILDERED OLD MAN of the office, Andrew Thomas continues to get it wrong with his latest rant about Dell's decision to preload Linux.

Blame his age or the habit of pouring Special Brew on his cornflakes but Thomas is blowing smoke by suggesting that this is Dell's suicide note. In fact, it's a carefully thought-out move that could add to Dell's bottom line and inject some much-needed vigour into the firm's flagging geek appeal.

The key paragraph to note in Dell's famous blog entry is here: "[The] majority of survey respondents said that existing community-based support forums would meet their technical support needs for a tested and validated Linux operating system on a Dell system."

In other words, we build it and you lot will support the software. At a stroke, Dell can rid itself of a ton of concern about support costs wiping margins. And remember, you're the ones who voted for it that way. Dell promises to fill in the gaps in the “coming weeks”. Does that mean when the fuss has died down and details such as support Ts and Cs might not be so closely examined?

I don't mean to suggest that Dell is being purely Machiavellian here and there is plenty to suggest that it has thought out issues such as driver support very carefully indeed. But if it opts for a hardware support-only strategy, it can have its cake and eat it. Nice work if you can get it. µ

See Also
Dell Linux support promised
Almost all Linux users will buy Dell