Dell: Linux, "nobody was buying it"
ENT News | at | by Mike
While Dell has announced support for Itanium-based 64-bit computing, Rollins said Tuesday that it's "premature" for Dell to begin supporting 64-bit computing in a big way. Instead, he said Dell would go where the mass market goes. Dell will mass-market 64-bit systems "when customers want it; and when their hardware and software are ready to use it," he said. "It's going to happen, but it's going to be a little slow." He added, however, that in a few years, 64-bit systems might be the norm. "We have no doubt that 64-bit is the wave the future."
Likewise, when it comes to open-source computing, Dell will support whatever the market demands. While Dell ships Red Hat Linux-based servers as well as Windows, Rollins said he still has not seen an appreciable demand for Linux on the desktop side. "We offered Linux as a standard feature in a desktop, but nobody was buying it," he said.