faq  flatforty  contribute  subscribe  configure  search  rdf  main  parent	Distribution in Europe... by Charles de Miramon on Thursday 09/Sep/2004, @02:34 You are mentioning that the localization work for Europe was too much for HP. Did you consider selling the nx500 with a blank hard disk to local partners like Mandrake Linux in France and leave to them the work of installing their tailored Linux Distribution and then distribute it through their online store and maybe HP online store ? All in all, it is a great move. The Gnu/Linux/KDE market is still quite small and fragmented but I believe that if HP offers the possibility to sell be OS agnostic desktop systems, it can help it regain some market and differentiate itself from Dell. In French Research institutions and Universities, Dell has lately won most of the procurement contracts. But these institutions are slowly moving to Linux and HP move could certainly help the company regain some market share.	Related Links  ·   Articles on Community and Events  ·   Also by Charles de Miramon  ·   Contact author Thread Threshold: 10 comments 20 comments 30 comments 40 comments 50 comments 60 comments 70 comments 80 comments 90 comments 100 comments 110 comments 120 comments 130 comments 140 comments 150 comments 160 comments 170 comments 180 comments 190 comments 200 comments 300 comments 400 comments 500 comments 1000 comments
	The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. ( Reply ) Re: Distribution in Europe... by Sjaddow on Thursday 09/Sep/2004, @22:55 I second that. Mandrake is the way to go. RedHat/Fedora is too focused on Gnome, which in my opinion falls short on the desktop. SUSE have choosen KDE, but are too focused on enterprise, which is hurting their desktop profile. Mandrake on the other hand has always had a strong desktop profile, and has been the best choice for desktop Linux for years. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Distribution in Europe... by Ingo Klöcker on Friday 10/Sep/2004, @01:05 And Mandrake has a sad history of breaking KMail by backporting unfinished features from the development version to the stable version (on-the-fly spellchecking was backported and we received crash reports, the anti-spam wizard was backported and we received crash reports). And then Mandrake thought it would be a cool idea to use ~/.Mail instead of ~/Mail for storing the mail. Well, there's nothing wrong with that if it's done right. But guess what, we have received multiple bug reports about this because apparently Mandrake didn't manage to do it right. The result of this is that I don't trust any bug reports coming from Mandrake users until they have been confirmed by non-Mandrake users. I'm sorry about that, but I really don't have the time to investigate whether such a bug is Mandrake-only or not. I can't remember any other distribution causing us, the KMail developers, comparably much pain. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Distribution in Europe... by Carlos Woelz on Friday 10/Sep/2004, @08:24 On the other hand, they put a lot of effort into integrating Kolab. I believe Mandrake mistakes are past. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Distribution in Europe... by Juanjo on Friday 10/Sep/2004, @15:02 >I can't remember any other distribution causing us, the KMail developers, >comparably much pain. It's probably also because Mandrake is the most downloaded distribution and so probably the most used on desktops, almost doubling the next non-live distribution (Fedora): http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Distribution in Europe... by John SUSE Freak on Friday 10/Sep/2004, @08:35 In fact all I see as a result of that is better and simpler support for some tasks in suse. That includes instalation of Software (nvidias drivers for instance, check the specific SUSE instructions on their site), profile management, etc. What exactly were you thinking about? How do you think it hurting their desktop profile? Could you give examples? [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Distribution in Europe... by Juanjo on Friday 10/Sep/2004, @15:06 Mandrake (powerpack, which is the distribution that would surely go in a laptop) also have nvidia drivers and install them by default if your computer needs them (so no instructions are needed.) It also have profile management on drakconf (and I use it a lot.) [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Distribution in Europe... by Thomas Schneller on Friday 10/Sep/2004, @00:57 >Did you consider selling the nx5000 with a blank hard disk to local partners like Mandrake Linux in France and leave to them the work of installing their tailored Linux Distribution and then distribute it through their online store and maybe HP online store? Distributors are invited to contact us any time if they want to develop an own pre-installation. For cooperate customers we have a version available with freedos pre-installed. For legal reasons we can not ship units without OS. So this is our solution to address this kind of requests. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Distribution in Europe... by Guy Passail on Friday 10/Sep/2004, @02:39 >Did you consider selling the nx5000 with a blank hard disk and the AZERTY keyboard? >For cooperate customers we have a version available with freedos pre-installed In practice, where to get such offer? [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Distribution in Europe... by Alex Fernandez on Friday 10/Sep/2004, @03:57 Why not? A lot of white-box manufacturers sell systems without OS. Does HP have a different regime, or are those manufacturers doing something illegal? [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Distribution in Europe... by Thomas Schneller on Friday 10/Sep/2004, @04:13 I am not familiar with the details. Usualy developers don't deal with this kind of stuff. But other manufacturers might not have this requirement. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Distribution in Europe... by Nicolas Goutte on Friday 10/Sep/2004, @13:27 Big selling manufacturers have contracts for the OS. So they get the licenses for much less than retail price but they have to sell it with every new computer. (Some find that they can afford the way of having another product number for the OS-less model and that they consider that it is not against their contracts.) Small seller (for example single shops or small groups of shops) do not have any license contract and they (and their clients) pay the full price of a license. But that allows them to sell the computer without any OS or directly with a Linux. (The same applies for the computer's CPU.) Have a nice day! [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Distribution in Europe... by Nicolas Goutte on Friday 10/Sep/2004, @13:33 To be more precise: as the contracts are secret, it is well possible that one manufacturer having a contract can do it and the other one cannot. [ Reply To This | View ]   The Fine Print: The previous comments are owned by whomever posted them. ( Reply )

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