Published at LXer:

By now, many of you may be wondering why Dell is passing up such a great niche market by not offering Linux as an alternative OS option to Windows. We have talked about how this would only prove to benefit a company like Dell, but we have also acknowledged the fact that it will likely never happen.

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I'm starting to get a little tired of the Dell bashing going on because they are not offering Linux right this very second. I'm sure they were as surprised as anyone by the results they got, but the fact of the matter is that Dell absolutely must have reasonable Linux support staff in place if they offer Linux as an alternative. Dell has way too many computer unsavy customers to have it any other way. As for saying that they can outsource this support, I am still waiting for someone to point to a viable provider for this. The author of This Fine Article leaves it at "Linux vendors". Who exactly would this be? Red Hat? Suse? Ubuntu? Debian? Only Red Hat and Suse have anything approaching a customer support model, and I seriously doubt that either of them could support the kind of volumes that Dell would need.

The bottom line is that Dell can't piss off its customers any more than it already has, and jumping into the Linux market with not even half-baked support would do exactly that.

I agree with everything you said. Dell stated they were CONSIDERING offering Linux as an alternative. At the end of the day if Dell's analyses conclude that offering Linux doesn't make money for Dell's owners, then Dell ain't offering Linux. It's still a good thing that Dell is going to study the business case.

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