On Wed, 2010-11-17 at 21:53 -0800, kdemarest wrote: > Just wanted to do a brief survey against a hypothesis to see if I'm > crazy or not. Given mainstream computer manufacturers, is the > probability that their desktop and notebook systems will be "Linux > friendly" positively correlated to whether or not they have a Server > line?
I can't speak for Dell or Compaq/HP/whatever, but having worked at IBM as part of the Linux group within System X, there is very little similarity between IBM System X servers and what few desktops they produce, if any. In general, server hardware at the enterprise level is very simple... the only things that MAY trickle down to desktop systems would be things like multi-core processors, memory systems and networking. The other more common subsystems generally aren't really pushed into desktops (back end management systems, hardware RAID device (not that silly HostRAID garbage), high end drives (SAS), peripherals for SAN, Infiniband, etc). There IS some trickle down as mentioned above, but beyond those things, not much in the way of "linux friendliness" comes from servers. In fact, those things that server systems have in common with desktop systems are actually generic enough as to be in the "Just Works" category. Consider the two biggest points of failure for Linux on desktop systems: Audio and Video. Enterprise and even SMB server systems do not usually come with audio at all, not even integrated chipsets, and their video systems are usually very stable, old and reliable chipsets. On Desktops, the converse is true... desktops constantly use newer audio systems and pull from a variety of low to high end video devices to provide graphics far beyond what anyone would want in a server system. Just my $0.02... jeff
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