SMB IT | Curtis Franklin » Dell and Mandriva Update

September 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Dell and Mandriva Update

TAGS: Reader Posts

Being as us bloggers are not only broke but sleep deprived, too; I do a lot of surfing late at night. On some Penguin site somewhere was an announcment that Dell was pre-installing Mandriva Linux on its notebooks.

Seeing as how SMB and Linux have long sought a suitable partnership, I was intrigued. But after querying our Dell press rep, the talented and dedicated Marco Pena, on the subject, I got this reply:

"Got some info on the Mandriva thing. This is really nothing new. Dell installs any distro or software that a customer requires through our CFI (Custom Factory Integration) program. This is usually for larger customers with very specific needs rather than your typical consumer. In this case, Dell won a bid with the French Ministry of Education. Based on the needs of the end-user, Dell opted to leverage its CFI capabilities to offer French students the 'n-series' Latitude 110L notebook with Mandriva Linux pre-installed. [So] the Latitude 110Ln with the Mandriva OS is limited to a French Ministry of Education program available only to students. When Mandriva saw this they quickly put out a press release without Dell's authorization or knowledge which made it appear as if Dell was pre-installing their OS on Dell systems [in general] rather than the more accurate CFI story."

Thanks Marco. Not exactly what we wanted, but there you have it. Close call for the Penguin, still no cigar. But it's nice to know that Dell has the capability. Especially concerning CFI in general. May not help a lot of the SBs, but there are plenty of MBs out there who may have need of custom software images in the future.

Now where's my DJ Ditty?

Posted by Oliver Rist on September 22, 2005 01:08 PM

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