On Fri, 10 Apr 2009, Kilian CAVALOTTI wrote:
They do already. Well, except maybe for the dumb-dumb GUI and the games. But pretty much all wha'is required to make your servers run (including their OpenManage suite, drivers and firmwares) is available in RPM repositories. I understand it's not very much advertised, but it's there: http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository
"not very much advertised" = "incredibly self defeating, for a corporation providing a service". I'll look there, but as I'm typing this on a Dell M1530 that even as of Fedora 10 still has non-functional hardware components and marginal hardware components, forgive me if I'm a bit cynical. I'll believe that Dell is properly supporting linux when: a) Linux is available as an install for all platforms without paying the Windows tax and without having to order from a University. Simple configurator option, always present; b) All hardware in a standard Dell configuration "just works" with at LEAST a "Dell Linux" installation if not the current Fedora/Debian/Ubuntu/SuSE, or at the very least works as a standard install plus a "yum install dellrepo" followed by a "yum install dell". On the good side, in F10 NEARLY all of the hardware works. I'm down to no fingerprint scanner and some sort of problem with the system microphone (and the fact that the XPS M1530 is scorchingly hot under normal operating conditions and goes molten when I actually do a computation or run the Windows VM, so my wrists have perpetual first degree burns:-) but in the first pass I had no webcam, I had to work on sound quite a lot, the usual. Dell could make me happy if they simply make full linux support a STANDARD, GUARANTEED REQUIREMENT instead of a six month after you buy it, somewhat painful, process especially for laptops. rgb
Cheers, -- Kilian
Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:r...@phy.duke.edu _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf