Dell Inc, the US-based computer manufacturer and vendor, departs from its tradition of shipping all home and business desktops with a Microsoft operating system. Now Dell also offers systems with a ‘free’ pre-installation of an open source OS.

Will you make the switch to open source?

Reason for Change

It is speculated that the change is due to two major reasons:

1. a large number of petitions for open source software; and
2. to recapture Dell’s (slight) sliding market grip by making an offering to consumers who do not want Windows with their new computer.

Open-Source e-Store

A new niche of Dell’s US e-store offers business desktops with a choice of:

1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS Version 4 (Red Hat Enterprise); or
2. FreeDos (an open source MS-DOS similar to that found in Windows 98).

On the other hand, Dell’s home desktops are only available with FreeDos pre-installed.

Linux = Free?

At the time of this article, Dell only offers business systems pre-installed with Red Hat Enterprise, a commercial version of Linux. There is no option to have a popular free distribution such as Ubuntu, Fedora Core and SUSE. Red Hat Enterprise is under a 1 year subscription (at minimum AUD$102 per year) which may mean at the end of that term, the purchaser would need to renew or face the pain of migrating to a different OS. Therefore Dell’s Linux appeal may be limited to enterprise level businesses that would otherwise use Windows Server.

Price Impact

One might assume that for the person ‘upgrading’ their system or intending to use a free OS, Dell’s home desktops which were already value for money are now even a greater steal without being forced into buying Windows. This does not appear to be a consistent truth. We compared two identical systems - one pre-installed with FreeDos and the other with Windows Vista Home Premium. The price of the systems were exactly the same and the customer would be foregoing Vista with no return benefit.

We also compared systems bearing Red Hat Enterprise with those of Vista Home Premium (in pictures). For certain systems, we found the Red Hat Enterprise system was even more expensive than the Vista counterpart! But in others, there was a possible saving of between AUD$10 and $100. This might mean that Dell does charge for the ‘free’ pre-installation; uplifts the price to offset lost Windows OEM sales revenue; or has such a good arrangement with Microsoft that shipping any other OS (even if free) is less economical.

Final Impact

Dell may have deviated slightly from a pure offering of Microsoft OS computers, but it has not completely embraced open source software.

The pricing seriously requires review as currently it conveys little of the economic advantage that is associated with open-source. There is no option of pre-installing a free Linux distribution, the Firefox browser, or OpenOffice. Instead, Dell offers FreeDos, which is destined to be deleted and installed over. In most cases for the end-user, it isn’t really open source. It is just purchasing an OS-free computer, but worst of all - sometimes at the same price of an equivalent Vista system.