Slashdot was beside themselves yesterday with news that Dell’s new Digg-like community called IdeaStorm was loaded with people dying to have Ubuntu / Fedora/ OpenSUSE as a pre-installed OS choice on their new Dell computers. At first blush, this would be a good story, but it doesn’t take long to see that the stories started out as some kind of agenda by the same guy with some kind of strange quote at the bottom of his posts.
Check out the first one clammoring for OpenSUSE, Ubuntu or Fedora:
Offer the 3 top free Linux versions for free pre-installation on all Dell PCs.
Quality free and open source software drastically lowers the cost of new PCs, and helps prevent software piracy. For example OpenOffice.org, the Microsoft Office alternative, can shave hundreds of dollars off the price of a new PC. Cast your vote for OpenOffice and other free software.
Offer easy multi-boot options with Windows Vista, Windows XP, or NO Windows (yes, Linux can entirely replace Windows!)
Offer trade-ins and Linux CDs for older model Dell PCs. Cast your vote for the mini Linux Dell PC and the Universal Education Dell PC, both utilizing free software.
Would you try Linux if it were this easy?
CHOICE is what consumers want on their new PCs, not annoying surprise circus-ware (the typical smattering of confusing 3rd party popup-infested software found on most new Dell PCs). Quality free and open source software is well behaved, and may be legally pre-installed on PCs, and legally shared with friends and family, sharing is encouraged! Cast your vote for consumer CHOICE and public transparency at Dell.
Weird… Doesn’t look like some random fan starting a thread… Then there’s another thread asking for Dell to make the shitbox known as OpenOffice available:
Provide OpenOffice.org for free pre-installation alongside Microsoft Works and Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org is more capable than Microsoft Works, and a serious competitor to Microsoft Office, at a fraction of the cost (it’s free!)
OpenOffice.org can open, create and save Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.
Provide as OPTIONS for pre-installation many other high-quality free software programs such as:
- Firefox (web browser with popup and privacy controls; say goodbye to Internet Explorer infections!)
- Thunderbird (email program with free anti-spam and privacy controls)
- GAIM (instant messaging all-in-one program for popup-free MSN, Yahoo, AOL and others)
- PDFCreator (creates Adobe PDF files from any program)
- Scribus, Inkscape & GIMP (desktop publishing, freehand drawing & powerful image editing)
- Audacity & VLC (multi-track audio editing & universal all-in-one media/video/movie/DVD player)
- Stellarium & Celestia (planetarium viewer & outer-space mapping, like Google Earth, but for our Solar System)Pre-installed quality free and open source software drastically lowers the cost of new PCs, and helps prevent software piracy. Cast your vote for Linux and other free software. Cast your vote for the Universal Education PC utilizing free software.
CHOICE is what consumers want on their new PCs, not annoying surprise circus-ware (the typical smattering of confusing 3rd party popup-infested software found on most new Dell PCs). Quality free and open source software is well behaved, and may be legally pre-installed on PCs, and legally shared with friends and family, sharing is encouraged! Cast your vote for consumer CHOICE and public transparency at Dell.
Okay, this is starting to get weird. It’s almost cookie cutter to the first one.
It goes on and on and on…
Here’s one asking for an open source education PC.
Here’s one asking for an end to PC Payola (whatever the hell that is).
Here’s one asking for a trade in program for PCs and a mini greener Dell PC.
Not that his ideas are bad in any way. I wish a major manufacturer would take open source on as a viable alternative and offer it from the factory with support at the consumer level. I just don’t think that this campaign on Dell’s website represents the grassroots lobbying effort that Slashdot seems to think it does. I could be wrong, but I think this guy is one of those open source fanatics that think anything commercial is bad, but who knows.
[tags]slashdot, dell, open source[/tags]