[ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu on Dell (revisited) ....

[Bruno Girin]

On Fri, 2010-06-04 at 22:19 +0100, Dianne Reuby wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-06-04 at 22:14 +0100, Bruno Girin wrote:
> > On the other hand, Dell could very well sell their hardware with
> > Ubuntu
> > on it but say that they will only support the hardware, not the
> > software 
> 
> My son's friend bought a Dell with Win 7 recently - now everything he
> tries to run crashes; browser, word processor, solitaire. Dell have told
> him it's a software problem, so they can't help. :)

That's always the risk in this case: the hardware vendor goes "it's a
software problem, nothing we can do about it" then the software vendor
goes "it's a hardware problem, contact the hardware vendor", etc.

I've been through this so many times when dealing with several suppliers
that have to work together in providing a solution, it's frightening.
The only way I've found to break the cycle is for one of the sides to
help the user identify the issue and gather evidence. In practice, maybe
it's an opportunity for the Ubuntu community to offer better support
than what's available for Windows by helping users getting to the bottom
of their problems rather than say "it's a hardware problem".

And maybe it's an opportunity to migrate your son's friend's Dell to
Ubuntu ;-)

Bruno