David Brown stated in post (e-mail address removed) on
9/6/11 2:10 PM:
As you say, there is little doubt that such illegal deals did happen.
Without getting too philosophical, I would be willing to say there is no
doubt.
There is little doubt that MS have always considered it better for
someone to use /their/ software without paying, than to use software
from somewhere else. There is also little doubt that MS continues to
engage in behaviour that is at best ethically questionable, and at worst
directly illegal. Big examples involve their influence behind the SCO
farce, and the OOXML "standardisation" - practically destroying the most
important international standards organisation to protect their near
monopoly.
I think the OOXML complaints have been overblown in COLA. For example, look
at the Wikipedia page and see the list of complaints:
The "windows tax" continues to exist - it is rare to find someone who
has successfully got a refund for an unused Windows license.
As long as you do not open the box, you can return most software just fine.
So it is not hard to get a refund on Windows. Where people get bent out of
shape is when they buy a *system* and then want to return parts of the
system and have the company they bought it from set a price on that part.
Alone. And often they want the full selling price of that part. That is
just silly.
Licensing deals between big OEMs and MS are all closed-doors deals.
As are the deals for most of the components of a computer. How much does
Dell pay for memory? How about for the drivers they include?
All in all - no, I have no evidence to claim MS forces (or just
encourages) OEMs into licensing deals that make it hard for them to
offer non-Windows systems.
Ok: fair enough. There is no evidence of the accusation. This I can agree
with.
But I can see it would be /very/ easy for them to get away with such deals -
all in the interests of saving the OEMs money, of course.
Given the level of trouble they got into last time, and the bad publicity, I
would not blindly assume such.
And I can see it would be in MS's interests to make such deals. And I have
seen no evidence of a change of heart in MS leadership suggesting they shy
away from any tactics that help crush the competition.
Whether you agree with that or not is up to you.
I can see saying you would not doubt it. I have no problem with that. To
claim it as something that *is*, however, is wrong. As you noted, you have
no evidence to back it up.
....
To be honest, I expect that most people that were interested in looking
at the site already had PC's running Linux. At that time, Dell was not
a particularly popular choice of OEM for home users - at least, not the
more knowledgeable ones.
I believe at the time it was the #1 choice of OEMs. It no longer is.
They had a bad reputation for customer support for small users in many
countries. And business users looking for professional Linux machines would
be looking for different sorts of models - and an outdated version of Ubuntu
is unlikely to be their first choice of distro. So my guess is that Dell
didn't sell many Linux systems.
There is little demand for Linux on the desktop - and those who do want it
do not need it pre-bundled, by and large. As such, when thinking in terms
of the quantity of computers Dell and HP sell, there is essentially *no*
demand for desktop Linux being pre-installed. What minimal demand there is,
of course, is split between distros: so the only way to meet the demand is
to have multiple distros: Ubuntu and Mint and PCLOS and Debian and who knows
how many others. Then you have to market each type and explain the
difference... and support them.
A mess. A money-losing proposition. Why would Dell or HP even consider
this? The fact that they *have* is a good sign for desktop Linux - but it
would be rather surprising to see it work. As even Shuttleworth has noted:
Question:
-----
What do you see as the main obstacles holding back the
success of the Linux desktop?
-----
Shuttleworth:
-----
I think we don't yet deliver a good enough user experience. I
think we deliver a user experience for people that have a
reason to want to be on the Linux platform, either because of
price or because of freedom. If that was your primary reason,
Linux is the right answer.
But if you are somebody who is not too concerned about price,
who is not too concerned about freedom, I don't think we can
say the Linux desktop offers the very best experience. And
that's something we have to change, that's something I'm
committed to work on, focusing increasing amounts of
resources of Canonical on figuring out on how we actually
move the desktop experience forward to compete with Mac OS X.
-----
And while I do not really like Unity, I think it is hard to argue that
Shuttleworth has not been working very hard to do that - things have gotten
a lot better on desktop Linux in general since he made those comments (to be
clear, not all because of him, in case it sounds that way!).
Recently Roy and I talked about PCLOS. He made claims about current and
past versions and was pretty far off the mark. But, to be fair, I had
underestimated the distance that PCLOS had come (I had not used the current
PCLOS distro, but it really is indicative of the ecosystem).
To show the facts about PCLOS (old and new) I gathered images and linked to
older ones. Roy and I were talking in terms of OS X (as was Shuttleworth) so
that is my comparison for the new version of PCLOS. Here is the PDF:
<
http://tmp.gallopinginsanity.com/PCLOS-OSX-comparison.pdf>
Now simply looking at those few tidbits of the user experience is, alone,
not that informative... but it is indicative of the level of detail
competitors to desktop Linux are giving their experiences. Desktop Linux
must rise to that level and perhaps even beat it if it wants people to seek
it in large numbers. The good news is if you look at the links to older
PCLOS at the bottom of the PDF you can see PCLOS has come a *long* way in a
relatively short period of time. Night and day difference. I was
pleasantly surprised and it re-invigorated my advocacy. It is good to get
some eye-openers from time to time.
It has always been the case that most Linux users are happy to install their
own choice of distro themselves. What they want is systems that the OEMs will
sell without an OS, with a statement of the exact hardware and an indication
of the support in modern Linux distros, and an assurance that the OEM will not
consider installation of Linux as an evil act of vandalism that voids the
warranty.
Can you find any OEM whose warranty is dependant on keeping Windows on the
system? They will not, of course, support software they do not sell... but
that makes sense.
And they want that as a choice on standard models - not just the
occasional outdated and underpowered system.
In order for desktop Linux to gain a real foothold it will have to earn it.
The OEMs do not owe it to the open source community to sell them systems at
a loss.
Unfortunately, these mostly either have a similar attitude to Dell
(again, I am referring to desktops and laptops here, not servers), or
they are small, specialist OEMs - most are only a good practical choice
if you happen to live in a particular region of the USA where they are
based.
I have not purchases a computer in a brick and mortar for years... at least
the last decade. If you know what you want, ordering online is just fine.
Full disclaimer: that "last decade" means my last three computers... I have
one that is about a year old, one that is about four and another which is
eight or nine or so. All still in use on a daily basis (the oldest might
get skipped on occasion, but pretty much daily - it is being used right
now).
I didn't know that (I am not in the USA - we don't have Wal-Mart).
There is a corner of the world they have not tried to take over? Wow.
[Sarcasm... they are *everywhere* in the US]
And I certainly didn't know Dell sold through supermarkets.
Well, I'm not sure it made sense for them to try at all - I think their
limited effort was perhaps worse than useless. I would have preferred
that they simply made "no OS" an option in their standard system
configuration.
If they were to do that they would likely end up with higher support costs.
Right now their support is largely: rest to factory default and let your
data die. With a no-OS computer they would get a lot of calls from people
trying to install all sorts of stuff... and running into troubles (that is
inevitable, I am not saying Linux is hard to install). So then they likely
would have to charge *more* for a system with no OS, or at least as much
(and that does not even take into consideration the garbage-ware that they
get paid to include). So they would have the option to buy a full system
for X dollars or an incomplete system for the same amount or perhaps even
more.
Not exactly something one can make a good case for.
Since the no-OS option is not likely to be cheaper than than the Windows
version, and the included copy of Windows does nothing to make it harder to
install Linux, there really is no need for a no-OS version.
We use pdfcreator as standard on all Windows PC's for general pdf
"printing". But pdf export directly from OpenOffice is much better than
just a printout - the pdf file is smaller and faster to use, tables of
contents give you proper bookmarks, and links and cross-references all
work. For structured documents, you get a much more professional result.
Hmmm, I know OS X's print to PDF includes a lot of that... I would have to
play with CutePDF and Word. I thought it did, too. I could be wrong. If I
am, then yes, that is an advantage of OpenOffice / LibreOffice.
I don't have any experience with Pages, but I can give you a hint for
OpenOffice - hold shift down when you resize, and it will keep the
aspect ratio.
I *expected* that. It did not happen. I was surprised. Here, with the
shift-key being shown by an arrow when it is being used:
I'd agree that this is perhaps not intuitive, and that it should be the
default behaviour, but it /does/ work.
If that did work it would not be that big of a deal - that is the norm for
many image programs and it could even be argued that while that is less
intuitive it is a benefit because of the consistency.
And the "original size" button also works - but like the other sizes in the
properties box, it is not real time - it doesn't take effect until you click
OK.
Just tested and you are correct... but the percentages are messed up, as
shown in the original video.
Can you not see why, after working with a modern and professionally designed
package, how LibreOffice would seem a bit... primitive, for lack of a better
term? They YouTube video really is quite telling.
Well, as I say it's a lot to do with taste and how you like to use the
program.
I think I have given some very definite areas where OO.o/LibreO are just
objectively inferior. You have given one where they are better at least out
of the box... though you can pretty easily upgrade MS Word to include pretty
good PDF export support (and if you need more you can get Acrobat plugins
which give you a *lot* of power with PDFs - they are not free however).
I think my LibreOffice / Pages comparison is just striking - LibreOffice is
just primitive by comparison. I really think that is hard to argue against.
To me, the idea of visually modifying margins by selecting bits of text and
then creating styles out of them is working backwards - I set up my styles the
way I want them, and use them consistently in a document. If I want to change
the appearance of a style, I'll modify the style - not manual modification of
the document. OpenOffice suits my way of working here.
If you can show an example of OpenOffice (or LibreOffice... just assume that
when I say OpenOffice!) doing what I show MS Word doing I would love to see
it. I cannot get it to work (I have not tried in a while... maybe it has
been fixed?)
(Actually, I prefer to write serious documents with LaTeX, but I have to make
/some/ sacrifices for compatibility with other people.)
But you can do that on any OS.
....
)