[ltp] T40 / Pentium M and Linux

[D. Sen]

When IBM advertised Thinkpads with Linux pre-installed, the choice of 
hardware was very limited....and that is an understatement. For every 
linux pre-installed machine there was 5 windows pre-installed machine 
with choices of peripherals. While I would have loved to have bought a 
linux pre-installed machine, I would not have had my choice of 
peripherals (screen size & resolution, CPU speed, etc). It was quite 
ridiculous as it seemed like the marketing people were telling us: "You 
can buy a linux pre-installed machine but this is the choice of CPU 
speed, screen size, peripherals that you will be forced to use". This 
pretty much forced me to buy a windows pre-installed machine.

My point (if its not already clear) is that if IBM didnt have much 
success in selling Linux pre-install, its not necessarily a reflection 
on a lack of linux market. Give us the same choice that windows users 
get and you might see a totally different result.

DS

Greg Herlein wrote:
> I have an R32 and it's great, and the one time I called in for
> tech support they were helpful and when I said I had linux
> installed the support engineer said "cool!"  Now, my issue was a
> question of some BIOS settings to try to make vmware happy, so
> having linux was not an issue.
> 
> But, we in the linux community should chill out a bit when it
> comes to demands.  Frankly, support call centers are expensive,
> and tech support is often a thnakless job that is hard to get
> good people for.  
> 
> Places that do provide linux support have a challenging
> task.  Every damn distro does things differently.  I personally
> can't stand Red Hat - I'm a SuSE fan.  I've seen Mandrake, RH,
> SuSE, Debian, etc all on this list, all with various kernel
> levels.  That variation alone is nearly as bad as the whole Win32
> family of variables - that's a lot of different systems to expect
> a tech support staff to keep track of.
> 
> Now, add the notion that linux folks often compile thier own
> kernels and install their own system-level libraries.  Gee, now
> how do you support that?  Having tries to support linux drivers
> in the past, that gets complicated.  It often boils down to "send
> me your .config file and I'll see if I can reproduce your
> kernel" - which gets really ugly if the user patched the kernel.
> 
> This is why vmware, for example, will only support it if you are
> on a certified linux distro.  If you are on your own kernel or
> customized system, they can't promise they can help you.
> 
> That said, I think that companies need to hear that we *are* a
> market for them.  Any time you interact with these companies you
> need to tell them that you are a linux user.  Only when the
> marketing droids hear it often enough will they suddenly say
> "gee, we have to take care of this market."
> 
> Greg
> 

-- 
D. Sen,
http://www.auditorymodels.org/~dsen