Sure, We’d Be Happy to Pre-install Some MSN.com Links on the SUSE Desktop
by John Paczkowski
Posted on May 7, 2007 at 11:11 AM PT
Whatever goodwill Dell open-source community gained after selecting Ubuntu as its desktop Linux distribution just went up in smoke like an Incenderon laptop. This morning the PC maker joined the controversial Windows-Linux partnership established last year by Microsoft and Novell. Under the terms of the deal, Dell will market and provide migration support for Novell’s SUSE Linux software. Which is interesting because Dell already offers a competing version of Linux from Red Hat to corporate customers. But I suppose things like that are easy to overlook when Microsoft and Novell are talking up their big Wal-Mart deal. Tough break for Red Hat. “From Novell’s perspective, I think it’s fair to say that having Dell on board does give the whole relationship [with Microsoft] more credibility,” IDC analyst Al Gillen told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “At some level, it puts a certain amount of subtle, but slight, pressure on Red Hat.”
Anyway, the move will likely be viewed with some distaste by the Linux community, which has denounced the Novell-Microsoft deal as a sort of Hitler-Stalin alliance against Oracle and Red Hat or, worse, as undermining the open-source movement by pitting one Linux distributor–Novell–against the rest of the Linux community.
Comments
Perhaps obvious bias seeing as I work at Dell but feel it’s important to point out the real focus here, whether it is Red Hat Linux, Ubuntu Linux, Novell Suse Linux or Microsoft that Dell is offering – it is about customer choice. Joining the Microsoft/Novell alliance simply gives enterprise customers who want increased interoperability and IP assurance in their heterogeneous data center environments a targeted solution from Dell. This in no way undermines our very strong partnership with Red Hat – if an enterprise customer wants Red Hat support, Dell offers great solutions there as well (same with Microsoft Windows Server, etc.) In the same vein, this doesn’t change anything around our Ubuntu offering on desktops and notebooks for consumers. Choose your OS – Novell, Microsoft, Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc or application – Oracle, VMware, SAP, etc and Dell can provide an outstanding solution to meet a customer need. In the end, Dell’s joining the MSFT/Novell alliance as with all our other Linux support efforts, all leads to two very positive outcomes for the Linux community- 1) driving greater awareness and possible adoption of Linux overall, and 2) choice for customers in the OS they deploy.
Posted by David Lord at May 9th, 2007 at 2:08 pm