CH & Dell/Linux 2007 progress...[WAS: Re: Dell posts survey asking about demand for Linux; survey server fails under load]

Wed Mar 14 10:24:38 EDT 2007

Hi, Ben and all my friends in GNHLUG: 

Here is a cut and paste of the free form feedback I just sent Dell after 
reading your note about the Dell Linux survey...

Thought you guys might be interested.... I expect to post my full 
article about my recent 2007 Linux installations on
my www.helmers.com site with  a few more .jpg  images set up / captured 
/ reduced to WWW size then incorporated
in my .odt file with all my current red marks on the hard copy markup 
draft.  I will put on my virtual gas mask and matching
pair of virtual germproof  gloves before I dirty my hands in my present 
WWW development tool MS FrontPage 2003
for the first time since last October or so to post a cleaned up version 
of my Linux review on my site toward the end of
this week.  The condensed conclusions I have are as follows:

Of the four installations I have done so far in 2007 as I get back to 
Linux,  openSUSE 10.2 is by far the best,  from the point
of smoothness, lack of glitches, and knowing about hardware like the USB 
interfaced Sanyo printer I plugged in for the first time
yesterday to print a couple of test documents from Open Writer and Open 
Spread Sheet files within a few minutes.  I have not
yet pursued my Dell Inspiron 600m's test machine's built in wireless in 
this Linux to get out to the internet through my home's
cable modem via that network, but based on how slickly all the other 
built in hardware has been recognized so far,  I am
optimistic about this process...

openSUSE 10.2 is slick, well done and it could even be installed by a 
genuine Newbie.  One caveat however: unlike
Ubuntu or Fedora Core 6,  openSUSE 10.2 presents the user-installer with 
partitions it finds, rather than proposing its
own.  So it requires doing one potentially scary techie thing: figuring 
out and creating like disk partitions.   I just
accepted the existing partitions that I had set up to use with my 
Slackware 10.2 installation at the end of February --
given the several 10's of Gigabyes of the hard disk on my experimental 
machine they are more or less equal in size
after subtracting the swap partition :-)>

Carl Helmers
carl at helmers.com
www.helmers.com
585 . 624 . 9841

TEXT OF A FEEBACK  E-MAIL SENT TO DELL 2007/03/14 AFTER FILLING OUT 
THEIR LINUX SURVEY...

Dear Dell Folks...

I first installed Linux in a Dell Latitude LM Laptop in 1997 by the kluge of
purchasing a second IBM hard disk drive and loading Slackware 3.4 via 
stack of diskettes made from the Slackware  CD-rom distribution that
I made on another desktop machine upon which I had installed a  RedHat 
distribution.  

Then in February 2000 I purchased your Dell Latitude CPx Linux Laptop 
which came from Dell with RedHat 6.1 pre-loaded.  The "LM" is currently 
too flaky in hardware to be useful,  but I am using the "CPx" machine to 
take notes in emacs as I load and try out contemporary linices on my 
experimental machine, a Dell Inspiron 600m that fell on the floor and as 
a result must be plugged into a desktop monitor "boat anchor" once 
installs are done.  Because of this, I call this Dell Inspiron 600m a 
"former laptop" although I use "Ulysses" as its machine name.

I am in the final editing process of my complete review of my 2007 
re-visiting of Linux technology using that damaged Inspiron 600m.   I have
so far installed (then gone to the next) Ubuntu 6.1 [Jan 16-28,] Fedora 
Core 6 [Jan 30-Feb 1,]  Slackware 11.0 [Feb 22-26,] and openSUSE 10.2 
[Feb 28+++ .]   Of the four contemporary distributions,  openSUSE 10.2 
will be my installation of choice for the next few months at least.

By way of CV,  I am the Carl Helmers who thought of the idea of BYTE 
magazine and was its first editor from the first issue until after 
myself and my majority equity owner/operator of the company sold it to 
McGraw-Hill in 1979. I wrote most of the editorials in BYTE from its 
first issue through most of 1980.  In my second company, from 1979 to 
2006,  I started four other extremely successful controlled circulation 
high tech magazines: Desktop Engineering (1995++,) Sensors (1984 to 1999 
when I sold it 
to another publishing company,  Bar Code news magazine [1981] renamed ID 
Systems in 1987, then Supply Chain Systems in 2001 and perhaps no longer 
published circa 2005.  I now live [2003 onward] in the vicinity of 
Rochester NY and attend as many of the Linux User Group of Rochester  
[LUGOR] meetings as scheduling a busy life permits...

Carl Helmers

carl at helmers.com

www.helmers.com

585 . 624 . 9841 

Ben Scott wrote:
>  Note the "Update" part at the end.  Do you think that, maybe, just
> maybe, there might be some market demand for Linux on the desktop
> after all?  :)
>
> -- Ben
>
>> From http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/03/13/7985.aspx:
>
> Dell to Expand Linux Options
>
> Your feedback on Dell IdeaStorm has been astounding.  Thank you!  We
> hear your requests for desktops and notebooks with Linux.  We're
> crafting product offerings in response, but we'd like a little more
> direct feedback from you: your preferences, your desires.  We
> recognize some people prefer notebooks over desktops, high-end models
> over value models, your favorite Linux distribution, telephone-based
> support over community-based support, and so on.  We can't offer
> everything (all systems, all distributions, all support options), so
> we've crafted a survey (http://www.dell.com/linuxsurvey) to let you
> help us prioritize what we should deliver for you.
>
> Taking a few minutes to complete this survey will help us define our
> forthcoming Linux-based system offerings. We will close the survey on
> Friday, March 23. From there, we'll take some time to analyze your
> feedback and work to provide the platforms and options you choose.
>
> Thanks in advance for your participation. More details soon.
>
> UPDATE:  We're overwhelmed by your responses, and we know the survey
> server is overloaded too.  We're working on it, and the survey will
> remain open until March 23, so you'll have plenty of time to make your
> vote count.
>
> Published Tuesday, March 13, 2007 9:00 AM
> by Matt Domsch, Linux Software Architect
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