I read this article about Dell acting like they are going to start seriously engineering their hardware to be more Linux friendly. Which is good news for Linux in terms of it actually building larger user base of non-geeky computer users. I myself being a Windows free (I say Windows free, because I still use a Mac) computer user; I still have trouble getting everything working as I need on Linux (and I have been running Linux in some form for over six years). And until Linux can fundamentally do everything right out of the box, the average computer user is still going to keep Windows.

I do enjoy hearing when a larger technology company at least starts to embrace choice when it comes to operating system software. I know Dell has offered Linux on their servers for some time but it is exciting to hear them talk about offering it on the end user computer.

This article specifically talks about Dell trying to get its various hardware certified by SUSE and also offering SUSE as an installed option out of the box. Which I have always wanted the option of an operating system free home purchase simply because I really don’t want to pay for a copy of Windows that I am just going to uninstall and then leave on my shelf.

It does however bring up an interesting point about how it is hard to create a truly Linux friendly machine because there is just so many distributions. However I would agree that there are some ‘difficult’ distribution nuances; but I think they are using that excuse as more of a blanket to hide under rather than it being a real unsurmountable issue.

Here is the full article.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8995206909.html