[ale] OT vision computers etal

[Christopher Fowler]

On Fri, 2006-02-24 at 07:56 -0500, Geoffrey wrote:
> You're not going to get that from Dell.

If your business you can.  I've installed Linux on PE's and have had
issues.  Dell did support Linux for those servers _but_ they suck at it.
As always I ended up having to figure it out on my own.  Our software
requires FC2 and all Dell support I believe is RHEL 4.  Every time I
needed help getting the PERC controller operational they kept pushing a
RHEL 4 driver down my throat.  2.4.X driver is useless on a 2.6.X
machine.  Past that they were pretty much useless.

I've been to Dell's corporate in Austin and have worked with a
department that is responsible for UNIX and Linux.  Dell will sell you a
SUN box if you require it.  Whatever it takes to get the business.  This
group was also responsible for the Linux cluster support on their server
equipment.  The problem is that this is a specialized group at Dell.
Could be called SpecOps.  If you were not a large 3000 node customer or
a branch of the military then you never talked to these people.  They
were more there for doing tests, research, setup, and finally support
for some of the large accounts running stuff other than Windoze.  These
guys and gals were very knowledgeable. Unfortunately a casual company
that needs Linux and buys a few PE2850 only gets to speak to bots.
They'll end up being on their own if they want to install anything other
tan RHEL 4.