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Shuttleworth’s Response to Dell

Mark Shuttleworth has posted a response to Dell’s Linux survey on his blog. He brings up two main observations: the first being “margins on PC’s are razor-thin” and the second being “free software fans are a fussy crowd.” Both of these observations are presented in a way which seems to say it will be hard [impossible?] to make a profit with Linux on Dells. Unfortunately, Shuttleworth doesn’t offer any solutions to these hesitations.

Shuttleworth’s first observation about small PC margins has two premises. He states “Microsoft co-marketing funds are a substantial portion of the profit margins for many large PC retailers.” This is very agreeable. His second premise then states “thin margins mean that any customer interaction or support call can blow away the profit not just on that sale, but on many others as well.” Assuming his first premise is true, Dell has already been providing support under the extreme marginal circumstances of his first premise. Also, I imagine starting support for Linux today will be similar to starting support for Windows when Dell first started up. Dell will be able to work out a way to target Linux to the correct audience just as they’ve done with Windows.

His second observation about “free software fans [being] fussy” is absolutely true except he makes one fatal assumption: Dell is marketing Linux desktops/laptops to users which are already using Linux. I don’t see this as being true at all. It may be current Linux users which are pushing Dell to distribute Linux on their computers, but, us current Linux users are pushing not for us, but for our friends, parents, and grandparents who would benefit from Linux. Again, I think it’s safe to imagine Dell has a competent marketing team which has already thought of the greater target audience than the small amount of Linux users who already exist. I would think something was wrong with Dell if current Linux users were Dell’s target audience.

To conclude, Shuttleworth provided two very good observations about marketing Linux but failed to apply the cases which already exist to answer his own questions. I find it a bit unsettling he’s chosen himself to play devils advocate in this discussion and no matter how hard it will be to make Linux on Dells work, it doesn’t change the fact that Linux is what people want. Whoever can produce results will perform the best.

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  • do choose the cheapest package regardless of the OS and this is where Dell's made most of its money. Right now, I think the biggest market for Linux on Dells will be companies who don't want to make the jump to Vista. It's too resource intensive and will force a lot of companies to buy new computers. With Linux, they will still buy new computers (if not Dells) but they can get cheaper new computers without the Vista expense overhead or keep their current computers (if they are Dells) and have Linux supported on them.

    Also, like I said in my article, I didn't see any advice from Shuttleworth, only observations. Maybe devil's advocate was a bit harsh but you get my point: I didn't like the negative spin on his article.
  • W.r.t. "Dell is marketing Linux desktops/laptops to users that are already using Linux":

    In fact, this is probably true. People won't request GNU/Linux on their computer unless they are familiar with it, or are very daring and cheap like some college students. At work, for example, we want Dell to support GNU/Linux in their diagnostics tools so that we don't have to stick a CD in the tray and reboot -- also, it would get us slightly less runaround when trying to convince Dell that there is in fact a problem if they explicitly supported GNU/Linux.

    W.r.t. "he’s chosen himself to play devils advocate in this discussion":

    Not really. He's trying to give Dell advice about how to market Linux, and what their likely audience will be. When you're addressing a different audience, you have to bend a little and try to meet them halfway.
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