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

[Matt Domsch]

On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 12:33:47AM +0000, Kiat Huang wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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.

Working on it, as I alluded to in my direct2dell blog post this week.
 
> - Inventory management tools. We have built some that get BIOS info using 
>   dmidecode, but would be interesting to see a Dell offering.

libsmbios can do this today.  Also firmware-tools and related
fwupdate.com web site works for all known Dell laptops made in the
last several years.
 
> - Better Linux support for the Dell installed winmodems: dialup in some 
>   countries (esp. developing ones) is still very useful.

winmodems traditionally have had limited Linux support.  Closed-source
drivers are available if we wanted to post them on support.dell.com,
though that's less than ideal.  Fortunately with the widespread use of
wifi, fewer people actually use the winmodem anymore. Or at least
that's our impression.  We'd like to hear from you on this.
 
> - Linux hardware diagnosis tools (porting the Dell Diagmostics CD?)
>   similar to the server diagnostic tools.

The currently available bootable diagnostics CD isn't Linux-based;
need a bootable diagnostics CD *be* Linux-based?  Yes, it'd be nice to
have the tools available for a Linux runtime, but doesn't seem
critical.  Again, I'd like to hear more from you on this.

> - 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

Haven't heard these requests before.  Will look into them...

Thanks,
Matt

-- 
Matt Domsch
Software Architect
Dell Linux Solutions linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux
Linux on Dell mailing lists @ http://lists.us.dell.com