Dell and linux
On the subject of Dell and Linux, which has been much in the news of late, due to the high ranking of linux-from-the-factory on Dell's IdeaStorm website. Most recently I read Glyn Moody's piece A Modest GNU/Linux Proposal for Dell wherein Glyn takes Dell to task for not responding in a more direct manner, and suggest that a new, separate company be erected to explore the Linux-on-Dell space.
Meanwhile, Doc Searls has posted Can Apple clear the way for the Linux desktop?. Truth be told, I pointed him to the RoughlyDrafted piece, but only with a, "there is something to this" appended. It was 3am, and I was too tired to puzzle it out, especially since I had to be back up at 6:45 am.
Folks, Michael Dell isn't stupid. Most people seem to have forgotten that Dell was started in Michael's UT dorm room in 1985 on a shoestring ($1000) budget and that Dell had an internal Unix group for many years.
Dell's real brilliance, the driver for their success, was in two areas: The first was throwing away the idea that you had to sell PCs through channels (retail or not). Second (and later), to completely modify the manufacturing process in terms of "Just in Time" in order to facilitate Dells "Build to Order" philosophy.
Unless things have radically changed in the past six years, Michael Dell is a decent guy. Approachable, and curious about new technology. I'm fairly sure he's actually open to the idea of Linux-from-Dell.
Back in the early-mid 90s, I'd occasionally run into Michael if American Airlines would "bump" me into a first-class seat. I was flying a lot then, and had the dubious honor of being an AAdvantage 100k mile/year flyer. I was never much for the whole 'miles' thing, since I believe that the truely smart and/or powerfull make people come to them, but I digress.
One of the times I ran into Michael, I was working for Tadpole, back when Tadpole was building the SPARCbook and some very early Pentium-powered notebooks. This while Dell was still shipping 486SX-based notebooks and Pentium desktops.
He was plesant, and asked a few questions about the machine, and wished us luck, which we never received in sufficient quantities to last, but that is another story.
More recently, when Wayport was courting Dell's endorsement in 1999, my CEO gave Michael Dell my cell phone number, so I could be Michael's personal support person, in-turn, I got Michael's cell number.
Post-Wayport, when I was doing Musenki, I got called-in by Dell to make Wi-Fi work in his house. (You have to sign an NDA just to get in the gate...) MSD Capital also looked at investing in Musenki, but Michael had no involvement in that, as far as I know.
I can say that the guy is entirely reasonable and personable. He seems bright and eager to understand "new" things. Please note that I am not claiming to be a friend, or even that Michael would remember me.
Many people think a Linux-powered Dell machine should be less expensive than one with Windows XP (or Vista) on it. I fundamentally disagree. I think it should be priced exactly the same for a couple reasons:
1) Support costs money, even if you host it in Bangalore.
2) I think every Dell "linux box" should include a licensed copy of Windows XP.
I think the cost of support is obvious. Nobody both scales to volume and gives away support for very long. Even if the majority of (early) Dell/Linux customers don't need support, they still bought it, and
this will serve to make Dell is more profitable with Linux than without.
Assuming the market 'likes' a Dell/Linux machine, then as the customer base for these machines grows, the support load will tend to grow (linearly) with the customer base. At the same time, if Dell/Linux machines are more stable, and result in lower support loads, then the writing will be on the wall.
"More money via Open Source", wasn't that the promise that ESR made?
The second reason is likely somewhat jarring for anyone reading this. "Windows? Why do I need that, I've got all of this FOSS on my machine, I've eliminated all Microsoft products from my life?"
Well sure you have. But has your accountant? Your mother? "Aunt Tillie"? Until these people can run their existing applications on their new Dell/Linux box, they're going to be very resistant to trying it.
Now sure, Vista's launch has been problematic and lackluster, and its true that from all appearances, Microsoft, while not on the ropes, is tired of the fight. We get lots of press verbage about how the
company and its executives are still in it to win, but the Vista release, with all the important technologies of "Longhorn" stripped out, shipped four years late. Microsoft is also suffering a continual barage of high-profile lawsuits, which can only distract its senior management. (Seriously, $1.5 billion for patents on mp3?)
But nobody wants to go to work and take a beating when they have millions, if not bilions sitting in the bank. Not for long, anyway, so as rats leave a ship due to sink, I predict a huge exodus of talent
from Microsoft, just as soon as they can find something else "interesting" to do.
So, Dell ships a licensed copy of XP with every Dell/Linux machine, but lets not do something dumb like "dual boot" the two operating sytems, hell, even I hate that shit, and I'm a geek.
And lets not saddle even techno-savvy customers with something like Xen, which requires multiple-key sequences to shift between the various operating systems running over the hypervisor. Don't get me wrong, Xen is great for server work-loads, but in its current form, its not an appropriate technology for what I propose, a transparent "Windows Desktop", running over a Linux Desktop.
To accomplish this, Dell need merely reach out and buy Parallels (the company *and* its technology, not just a simple license.) Once it purchases Parallels, Dell would port (or have its new division port) the Coherence mode from MacOS X to linux. First, lets stop to understand what Coherence is. Quoting from the Parallels website:
Coherence is new, unique view mode that enables users to work with
Windows applications on their Mac without seeing the Windows
operating system. In Coherence mode, the entire Windows OS is
running, just like it would in windowed or full-screen mode, but
the user doesn't see it, eliminating the confusing and sometimes
jarring switch between the Windows and Mac desktop.
Now imagine if this was available for the GNU/Linux desktop. Suddenly Microsoft Office, and those 10,000 applications that people need "just work". In coherence mode the Windows desktop disspears, so the customer isn't presented with "two desktops". With a bit of work, Windows installers will simply "do the right thing" as well.
(Apple must be planning something similar for its Leopard launch, btw.)
In so doing, it would wreck havoc with Apple, asit would take away the "best" way for MacOS X to host other operating systems. Oh sure, people would have Bootcamp and VMware, but Parallels and its Coherence mode would be at the end of the tracks on MacOS X.
But back to supporting legacy Windows applications.
Dell already buys XP licenses in bulk. Microsoft can't turn them off due to both contractual isses as well as the simple fact that you simply don't disable your biggest customer. While Vista has some licensing restrictions against running in a VM, XP has none. All applications targeted against Windows XP, must, by defintion, be able to run on Windows XP, and few (if any) applications are targeted at Vista today. Certainly none are targeted at the Enterprise (or even SME) markets with a requirement that Vista is the base OS.
With judicious use of filetype bindings and browser settings, many many things that are assumed to workin the Windows environment would suddenly also "work" over a Linux image.
This is sort-of Eric Raymond's vision of binary userland blobs (codecs, etc) legally running on Linux, but with a new 'shim' inserted. That shim is, of course, WinXP over Parallels. Incidentally, the whole "Click-n-Run" from Linspire would die a quick painfull death should this happen.
Here are a few more areas/ideas where a Dell-tweaked distro could shine.
Dell helped drive fast resume" for Windows XP. If you read that link, its got some helpful (guru-level) hints on how to enable similar for Vista, but I have to ask, "Why doesn't Linux do this now?" (Hiroki Kaminaga from Sony wrote a paper (PDF) for last year's Ottowa symposium on exactly that topic, though it produced suspend and resume times over twice that of Windows XP.
Dell could offer full-support of power management in its Linux device drivers. In fact, Dell could, via its market power, demand Linux drivers from the chipset vendors who supply the components for its notebooks as a condition of sale. Dell could further demand that any driver that it (nominally) pays to have developed (even by the chipset vendor) will have the copyright assigned to it, and as such, it could legitimately display a copyright message during the boot process, even though the code is subject to the GPL. Can you imagine a HP machine display "Copyright Dell, 2008" over and over during boot? What message does that send to the "propeller heads" at any Fortune 1000 company?
Dell might also do more traditional things to support and promulgate a Dell/Linux platform. For one, it could engage its marketing machine, ("Dude, you're getting a Dell") and actually advertise (print, TV, billboards) that such a thing exists. They could even bring back the "Dude..." campaign, brightened up for new exposure. With a smart/hip guy/girl. Play up the "more secure than Windows, no viruses, etc" campaign like Apple does in its ads for MacOS. Show off Compiz/Beryl on TV, and openly ask people if the Mac can do something similar. This is even better if it shows commonly-used Windows applications (Word, Excel, Photoshop, iTunes, etc.) running natively on a secure, "open" machine.
Dell could partner with some major retail presence (I suggest McDonalds) to offer kiosks where folks can get a pre-made Knoppix "Live CD" that knows how to look-up the Dell service tag and uses that information to correctly configure the machine, as well as gathering up the existing Windows data and applications, and transporting them into a Parallels "coherence" environment. Presto, Dell "ugrades" your existing Dell machine to a new, highly-secure, higher-performance environment, and you get to keep all your Applicaitons and data. Suddenly Dell is your friend. Dell could also develop tools to make it very easy to move this new linux-powered environment to a new (presumably Dell) machine. I'm sure some will scream "lock-in", but frankly, its 100% false. You can always take your data and applications and move them by hand.
The same Install CD could also be given away (or the ISO downloaded). This would be a great "try it" method for spreading the Dell/Linux desktop to previously-owned Dell machines.
Point-in-fact, though I type this on a MacBook, my "desktop" is a previously-owned Dell Optiplex SX280 (the SFF model). I traded an old Apple Airport Extreme (the 11g model) for it and a Dell 1905FP monitor. When I got it, I had to re-seat the DIMMS before it would boot. Once the machine would POST, I found out that the primary cooling fan had failed. Several calls to Dell and a tech was dispatched with two new fans and a new heatsink. (The previous owner had paid for an extended "next day, hands on" service contract.) In the meantime, I'd loaded Kubuntu on it with nary an issue until I connected it to the dell 2405FPW monitor that I prefer to use. The eventual solution was to download a new X driver for the (Open! Free!) 910GL Intel video part found on this machine, but in the meantime, Kubuntu tried to screw me into 800x600 several times.
Dell could have saved me several hours on this one, if they had a Dell/Linux variant that properly supported their hardware. I think that such a 'distro' should be a virtual distro on top of Ubuntu or(better) Kubuntu, of course, but thats my opinion. A 'virtual' distro would use the Ubuntu/Kubuntu repositories, adding a couple so Dell could supply updated versions of its software (including the drivers for the machine, utilities, etc.) independent of the Ubuntu project.
Dell has made a start here, and here, but it can do so very much more.
Jim on 03.04.07 @ 10:36 PM PST [link]
