No FOSS drivers for Dell e521 / Nvidia MCP51 High Definition Audio

Michael ODonnell michael.odonnell at comcast.net
Tue Jan 30 11:56:46 EST 2007



> Also: Please forgive me, but I can't resist pointing out that you
> bought a $450 computer and got exactly what you paid for.  ;-)

That's debatable, though it's true that I could have had a fine
machine for the same (or marginally less) money if I'd purchased
the components separately and assembled it myself, which I've
always done in the past.  But I felt like treating myself to
a fully configured system for once and, since the price was
attractive and the Dell server boxes we OEM have been pretty
decent I thought this e521 wouldn't be too much of a risk.

And don't get me wrong - this is not a bad machine, overall -
it's just that (as I said) I'm irritated with myself for not
having done my homework.

The last time I assembled a machine from parts (several years ago)
there were a number of vendors like Asus and component mfrs like 
Promise and VIA and KTI(?) etc, so I'm sorry to hear that the
market has shaken out to the extent you describe.

> There are plenty of vendors which offer excellent Linux support.
> Buy from them, rather than Dell.  You'll get proper support and
> a real Linux company gets the business.  If enough people do so,
> Dell will get the message.  As long as people put up with what
> Dell offers now, they won't improve.

That's all Truth And Beauty, and it's certainly how we deal
with Dell at work WRT the servers we OEM.


> Which is not say that Dell is the worst company I've dealt with.
> They do put some good money into Linux on the server side, and
> I'd term their Linux support there as "fair" to "good", depending
> on what you want.  But I'd characterize Dell's workstation Linux
> support as "non-existent".

There are persistent rumours of no-Microsoft-tax workstations available
from Dell, though that's not the same thing as Linux "support"...
 


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