[Beowulf] Repenting for sins against Dell (on good Friday, no less)

[Kilian CAVALOTTI]

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Kilian CAVALOTTI
<kilian.cavalotti.work at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> http://linux.dell.com/projects.shtml#dkms
>>>
>>> I understand Jeff is relatively new to Dell. Maybe in the future we'll
>>> see his influence improve Dell's clustering situation.
>>
>> I'm sure that he will!  And Linux in general.  This is potentially a
>> brilliant move on Dell's part.
>
> Matt Domsch has been doing a *lot* of work at Dell on the Linux front

[stupid keyboard...]

for over ten years. He's a member of the Fedora board and is behind
most of the projects linked on http://linux.dell.com/monitoring.shtml
(DKMS, efibootmgr, libsmbios...)

So even it's not very well known, Dell has been doing a lot not only
supporting Linux on their hardware, but also making sysadmins li'fe
easier (DKMS). Upgrading a BIOS version from a Linux shell is not
something you want to give up after you tried it.

> If they set up their own private yum/RPM
>> repository set and preinstall linux with auto-update and a dell.repo for
>> device drivers, special kernels, a pretty GUI tool that lets dumb-dumb
>> new clients shop for free applications and games, and maybe actually
>> build a way for customers to buy proprietary linux apps (e.g. games) via
>> authenticated/keyed access to yum repos, he could singlehandedly create
>> a serious userland linux market.

They do already. Well, except maybe for the dumb-dumb GUI and the
games. But pretty much all wha'is required to make your servers run
(including their OpenManage suite, drivers and firmwares) is available
in RPM repositories. I understand it's not very much advertised, but
it's there: http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository

Cheers,
-- 
Kilian