N series, inventory & diagnostic tools, winmodems, kvm,...

[Kiat Huang]

Hi,

Not too early for a wishlist I hope ;)

We're running a couple of thousand Linux desktops and laptops in house and 
we've used Dell and other systems for many years.  Currently, from some countries
we already get N series (FreeDOS, not Windows, installed), and this is great.

Although we re-install our build (based on RHEL) it would be good if Dell 
sold Latitudes with hardware that all ran on a modern version of Linux: and 
it surely couldn't hurt sales ;)

Off the top of my head here are a few personal wishlist items:

- Standardization. N series in all Dell markets not just a few.

- Inventory management tools. We have built some that get BIOS info using 
  dmidecode, but would be interesting to see a Dell offering.

- Better Linux support for the Dell installed winmodems: dialup in some 
  countries (esp. developing ones) is still very useful.

- Linux hardware diagnosis tools (porting the Dell Diagmostics CD?)
  similar to the server diagnostic tools.

- What about restoring the ability to look at the BIOS from the OS via
  Fn-F1 (or was it Fn-Esc) on older Latitudes?

- ability to use a laptop's screen to view another system display's 
  output: e.g. as a kvm for a headless server

Cheers,

Kiat


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