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The whole juggernaut that is now Linux on Dell started as the brainchild of two core individuals, Barton George (Senior Principal Engineer) and Jared Dominguez (OS Architect and Linux Engineer).
It was their vision that began it all back in 2012. It was long hours, uncertain futures and sheer belief that people really did want Linux laptops that sustained them. Here is the untold story of how Dell gained the top spot in preinstalled Linux on laptops.
[...] This first attempt at Linux on laptops failed mainly because most non-technical users were blinded by the cheap price and didn't understand what they were actually buying.
[...] This time the duo had the right initial market. It was big, commercial web-scale operators and their developers who were crying out for a fully supported Linux laptop.
People who do technical work, like Linux. People who don't, don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @03:50PM (1 child)
I think you're missing at least two other reasons Linux isn't cheaper than Windows at Dell:
1. Dell sells millions of Windows PCs per year, so their internal costs to configure, package, and install a Windows image for each hardware skew on a per-unit basis probably amount to less than a dollar. Since Linux sales are dramatically lower, the the per-unit costs of building and maintaining the install images is probably $20 or even $50. If sales go up maybe that price could come down.
2. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft negotiated some kind of deal that allowed Dell to sell alternative operating systems provided the sticker price was never lower than the Windows sticker price. It's the kind of thing they did in the past.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday November 20 2017, @03:25PM
Your reasoning on #1 is wrong, I'm pretty sure. If this were actually a factor, then the vendor could offer the FreeDOS or barebones option (no OS) for significantly less. But they don't.
As for #2 (which you'll inevitably use to say my line above is wrong), first any such deals should be leaked at some point by a disgruntled employee (that's not something only a few people would know about), and second, how do competing brands compare?
It would be really interesting to get access to a line-item breakdown of costs in a modern laptop, including the crapware and Windows OS.