It happened again this week. This time it was Dell, who asked the public what they'd like to see Dell offering. The overwhelming number-one response was "Linux machines".

Then the inevitable foot-dragging began. We don't know if we can support this. We're going to have to train people. Boy, this is going to be really, really difficult. We don't know anything about it. No, just forget it.

Of course, in the case of Dell, it is quite obvious that they got a phone call from Redmond between "You'll get Linux pre-installed" and "On second thought forget it." But just in case, I thought that commercial companies faced with the growing demand from the Linux market could use a few tips:

First off for hardware vendors: Support for Linux customers is guaranteed to be nothing like supporting Windows customers.

More here.