I offer this as just one example of the variation in the price of PC components; I have dozens more of similar examples. Every time I go to a dealer to buy this PC part or that, it turns out that the profit he/she makes is just a very small amount - a device costing $A59 will be claimed to be bringing in $A4 in profit. One that costs $A63? Oh, that brings in just $A3. I often visit the homes of the same dealers - and see that they aren't exactly living on welfare. They all live in middle-class suburbs.

So if margins are razor-thin, give us some figures. Don't throw out a statement like that and go away. I doubt that many (or anyone for that matter) will question what Shuttleworth asserts - being head of the Ubuntu project does give one a certain aura - but for cynics like me it takes a lot of believing.

Shuttleworth's next claim is that a substantial portion of the profit made selling a PC is generally the Microsoft co-marketing funds and that any dealer who considers installing GNU/Linux on PCs instead of Windows has to tread easily as it would harm the relationship with the company.

Once again, there is no figure to define this "substantial portion" but the latter half of the statement is known by all and sundry. Kiss the right hands (or any other portion of the anatomy) and the discounts will come from Redmond. No secrets there.

The next assertion is that free software users are a fussy crowd. This is then woven into the assertion that anybody who wants a Dell system with GNU/Linux on it would be finicky to the last detail, right down to minor kernel versions. There's a fallacy here - the ones who are at that stage of finickiness are not the ones who need GNU/Linux ready and working on that new box. No, they are the ones who want to tweak things to their own satisfaction. They are the ones who hunt down their own parts and build their own boxes. They are the ones who want naked PCs.

The crowd who want GNU/Linux out of the showroom are the ones who are getting their feet wet for the first time. The ones who don't know how to use the MadWifi drivers or ndiswrapper to set up a wireless card. The ones who can't figure out how to get the nVidia drivers to work properly. They are far from fussy - if every device on that new box works with the GNU/Linux supplied by a vendor, they will just go home and start using it happily. Is it then so difficult for a vendor like Dell to offer GNU/Linux (any distribution) on a line of PCs?

Again, here's one of my own experiences. A few years back (the pre-Fedora, pre-Ubuntu days) an American programmer who had come to Melbourne posted a message to a local Linux user group, asking if someone could help him install the operating system on a laptop he had just bought. When nobody responded, I invited him over. He had bought an IBM laptop and was looking for any Linux distribution to be installed on it along with the existing Windows; he needed a few development tools to use at work. He said he had heard that GNU/Linux provided a better development environment compared to Windows and wanted to test it out.

My limited stock of distributions weren't of much use; after trying Red Hat and Slackware, we drove down to a Linux dealer nearby and picked up a copy of Mandrake. It installed without a fuss and he had what he needed. He wasn't particular about kernel versions. He just wanted a few development tools and a little help on how to access them. He was happy to fork out the $A40 for the CDs.

When a major hardware seller makes a marketing move, trying to portray itself as an "open" vendor, one doesn't expect any of the major operating system providers to come out and unleash a barrage of invective against the provider. That would be downright foolish. But one doesn't expect fallacious arguments in support of the vendor either.

Dell is using this whole Ideastorm thing to try and gain some good karma. Getting stuck in the middle can be a disadvantage.

{moscomment}