Michael Dell Using Ubuntu Linux At Home

whoever57 sends us a link from the Dell site noting that Michael Dell is using Ubuntu Linux at home (7.04, Feisty Fawn) on a Precision M90 laptop loaded with Openoffice.org and Evolution. If one were betting on which distro Dell will eventually ship pre-installed, this factoid might be food for thought. Oh, and Micheal Dell's gaming system uses XP Media Center edition.

Comments

Just an advert

[LiquidCoooled]

It looks like a normal posted flyer.
Given all the other stuff he has I bet the baseline Linux machine will be the toilet one.
Or the one he threatens his kids with:

"Screw around on teh internets and you will use Linux for the rest of the week"

Having said that, its REALLY good Dell are actually selling machines, the specified model just looks crap compared to the other kit on the page.

Re:Just an advert

[Rukie]

nonetheless, YAY for linux supported hardware.. (I'm still trying to find a bluetooth PCMCIA card thats supported..)

Re:Just an advert

[BecomingLumberg]

No, you are missing the point. He had to use the monster PCs for the ones running vista just to get it on the web. The Ubuntu lappy runs fine without a supercharger...

Re:Just an advert

[Anonymous Coward]

You call this shit:

* Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 Processor
* 4GB DDR2 667Mhz DRAM
* 17" WXGA+ Widescreen LCD
* 160GB 7200rpm SATA hard drive
* 8X DVD +/- RW optical drive
* NVIDIA Quadro FX 3500 512MB That is hardly a damn baseline machine. It is a mobile workstation for crying out loud with a QUADRO! Yes, not great for 3D accel, but they have caught up and I think great 2D accel might be more warranted in Linux anyway. Most people using it that I know are not running crazy 3D games in it. Yes, most the other systems on the page would smoke this, but that hardly is saying much.

I also wouldn't start assuming what systems will have Linux installs, but I will put money that there will be workstation systems, both portable and desktop based, as well as, at least one user grade desktop. How much 3D support it gets will probably depend on what kind of support they really want to give for nvidia drivers in Linux.

Re:Just an advert

[gerrysteele]

Or he's just created a ton of buzz and talk about his company for free.

Re:Just an advert

[somersault]

Yeah, because a laptop with a Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM and a Quadro graphics card is utterly crap.. pfft.. I had an M60 for a while and it was great, that M90's specs look pretty awesome to me, and it probably costs more than £2000.. not that I'd want to swap my MacBook Pro for it at the moment anyway.

Re:Just an advert

[MindStalker]

Nope, every computer besides the Ubuntu one runs XP or XP Media Center. They are almost all "Vista Ready" though.

Re:Just an advert

[nine-times]

Well you have to figure that the reason to use Windows is for games, or having MCE to interface with your XBox360-- or other things of that sort. At this point, most people will find Linux most appropriate for their work machine. You have OpenOffice, Evolution, Firefox, etc. Your "productivity" apps. Those things are far less resource-intensive.

Re:Just an advert

[scrondle]

Actually I have that machine and it plays games just fine. It also does the heavy duty computing applications pretty well too. The M90 is their solution for mobile workstation/technical computing applications. Personally I think that is the most appropriate machine for running linux that they have.

Re:Just an advert

[hswerdfe]

yah, but it would be nice if google earth would work right.
I have a newish dell laptop with and intel Graphics card running Ubuntu and google Earth has masive drawing errors and is unstable.
I have a 4 year old desktop with as 32Mb NVidia card running Ubuntu and google earth works perfectly.
I don't need 3d for games, but I do need some small amount of 3D. for simple stuff.

Next laptop I buy will have an NVidia card, I hear they are power hungry, and expencive, but at least I will have some form of 3d working.

Re:Just an advert

[Creepy]

For clarification/expansion on the original poster's information, the Quadro series is used for 3D accelerated graphics, just not so much games - it is nVidia's chipset for OpenGL acceleration aimed primarily at the Workstation/CAD market and is essentially nVidia's answer to the FireGL cards from ATI (AMD).

Seeing that Linux uses OpenGL for 3D, those cards probably offer better overall performance, at the price of being a bit behind the technology curve from a gamer perspective.

This thing would smoke my desktop and I work for a CAD company (though I am due for a refresh this year - hopefully something a lot better than the junk Quadro 440 I've got in there now - they buy dual 3GHz chips [fastest available at the time] and stick in a 440 [cheapest available at the time]... sigh...).

Re:Just an advert

[jgc7]

He probably doesn't even like linux. He just decided it is easier than uninstalling all of the crapware that came with the computer.

Re:Just an advert

[Dan Ost]

Is there some reason you can't use a bluetooth USB fob?

Re:Just an advert

[krakelohm]

Since he is saying PCMCIA I am guessing that he does not want a bluetooth dongle hanging off the back of his laptop. Its a lil too easy to break them limited usb ports on laptops.

Re:Just an advert

[Anonymous Freak]

Well, he must have just updated it, because now they all say Vista Ultimate (other than the Ubuntu.)

Re:Just an advert

[MindStalker]

Thats freaken hilarious, I'm gonna look through my cache and see if I can find the previous version.

Re:Just an advert

[MindStalker]

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:pabzdwl1ISIJ: www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/biogr aphies/en/msd_computers%3Fc%3Dus%26l%3Den%26s%3Dco rp+what+kind+of+computer+does+michael+dell+have&hl =en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a

A version similar to what it looked like this morning, except this version doesn't have the Ubuntu on it at all. I seriously doubt he installed Ultimate on all these computers just this morning. Got to wonder the motives there..

Re:Just an advert

[Anonymous Coward]

However, as a Dell employee, what's not mentioned here is that using non MS Windows machines can be a fireable offense at Dell, as with connecting anything else that has a network connection but not an official corporate sponsored MS Windows OS. (Disclaimer: many of us engineers run Linux on the sly, IT has thus far overlooked this, but we are technically in violation and CAN be fired) Now add to it that our IT infrastructure is totally MS 0wn3d, performs like a ten day baked turd and is barely functional chaos, and you'll have no wonder why we don't ship Linux except on enterprise stuff where we HAVE to (apparently our customers are smarter than we are).

It's probably no secret there's often a huge divide between what Michael says and does, versus what his corporation does.

Posting anonymously, since the last guy in the company who said anything remotely anti-Microsoft was fired. You can be totally incompetant, hurtful to your team and generally a pain in the ass to everyone (esp if you are old, a woman, or a minority) and even get promoted, but so far trash talking MS, and trash talking offshoring have resulted in the ol' insta-ban.

Re:Just an advert

[kjart]

I don't know about you, but I consider the M90 with a Core 2 Duo T7600 and 4GB of RAM to be fairly powerful.

Re:Just an advert

[mabinogi]

What's the battery life like?

We've always used the Inspirons, but I'm considering getting a Precision next time I'm up for a new one...
(Currently using an Inspiron 9300 and get 2-3 hours from it)

Re:Just an advert

[somersault]

*wonders how on earth this was modded as offtopic* - it's directly relevant to someone saying that Dell only uses this as a punishment, when in fact it is a great machine, and should show that he takes Linux seriously.

Re:Just an advert

[Anonymous Freak]

Probably not that this page is actually kept up to date every day. More like it hit /., and some Dell webmaster saw it and went "Oh, crap! We need to say he's running the latest and greatest."

M90

[G3ckoG33k]

Is the wonder machine, I also use... :)

However, I am not allowed to use Linux. :(

Dell support would be fine, but corporate policies need to change too.

Re:M90

[sirmonkey]

live cd/dvd my friend :-) thats what i do at school, it's quite fun to because people think i've cracked the comptuer. All i do is reboot when i leave and its normal :-) no one knows(even tho i've tried to explain that an OS can run from a cd).

Re:M90

[Workaphobia]

My friend had that problem. He couldn't convince the students sitting next to him that the games he was playing and the desktop environment he was using weren't installed on all the machines.

He is not the only one - Happy Feisty Fawn day!

[Marcion]

The statistics are biased towards how you buy your computer, rather than what people actually use. How many of those other machines dual boot also?

Businessmen & Their Customers

[eldavojohn]

If one were betting on which distro Dell will eventually ship pre-installed, this factoid might be food for thought.

I'm going to discard this assumption that because Michael Dell uses Ubuntu that's what they're looking at.

The simple reason being that a good businessman never assumes what's good for him is good for his customer.

Re:Businessmen & Their Customers

[capt.Hij]

I was going to disregard the assumption because I assumed that the page was set up by the Dell marketing droids and was the subject of many many exciting meetings. Imagine the discussions on which distribution they should say based on the perceived nerdiness vs coolness factors. Riveting.

Re:Businessmen & Their Customers

[Aladrin]

No, he merely said that he never ASSUMES it is. It might very well BE the best thing for the customer as well as the businessman. You've taken the point in reverse.

He's saying that the fact that M. Dell is using Ubuntu should not play a major factor into what distro Dell decides to ship to its customers. The opposite is not true... If he were to pick a distro AFTER the decision had been made, he may very well choose to use the same distro his company is shipping.

We don't know if that decision has been made, what it is, or why M. Dell chose Ubuntu. Making assumptions on any that is foolhardy at best. But then, that's what journalism means today. Making half-assed assumptions and printing them as fact. When you're wrong, you just write the retraction in tiny print on the billionth page.

Re:Businessmen & Their Customers

[msouth]

ok, you do that. I'm going to discard the idea that he is a good businessman. (Not necessarily for any other reason than that you sounded so cool when you discarded yours, I wanted to discard one, too. And maybe because he said that if he was running apple at the time Jobs went back there that he would shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders. But, seriously, I might just be bringing that up because it's so funny.)

Re:Businessmen & Their Customers

[Mister Whirly]

No, he's really not. He is a visionary and great at motivating others, but no, not a very good businessman. For god sake he was fired from the company he started! But he is smart enough to realize his limitations, and hire the right people that are good businessmen.

Re:Businessmen & Their Customers

[shaitand]

'For god sake he was fired from the company he started!'

Yeah, the company he led to massive profits. He was fired by VC's and investors who thought a slick oldschool CEO could do better. After nearly going bankrupt and being bailed out by Microsoft of all people they finally brought jobs back. Jobs then led them to the iMac the multi-colored top selling personal computer (to this day as far as I know) and then the IPod and the intel macs.

Yeah, Jobs is a terrible businessman who accidently drives massive profits where 'good businessmen' can't seem to make it fly.

Re:Businessmen & Their Customers

[Mister Whirly]

If you had asked Jobs what he hoped to be back in the early 70s, I'm sure his answer would have been "a good businessman". He may have invented the iMac, but he also invented the Lisa and the NeXt Cube. And if you are giving Jobs sole credit for building Apple back up, you are slapping the face of the other actual "good businessmen" at Apple. Jobs never set out to make a profit, by default that makes him a poor businessman. Great inventor, creator, motivator, and marketer, but not businessman.

"In 2001, Steve Jobs was granted stock options in the amount of 7,500,000 shares of Apple with an exercise price of $18.30, which allegedly should have been $21.10, thereby incurring taxable income of $20,000,000 that he did not report as income. Apple overstated its earnings by that same amount. If found liable, Jobs may face a number of criminal charges and civil penalties. Apple claimed that the options were originally granted at a special board meeting that may never have taken place. Furthermore, the investigation is focusing on false dating of the options resulting in a retroactive US$20 million increase in the exercise price."

A good businessman would have found a much better way to hide his income.

Re:Businessmen & Their Customers

[shaitand]

'A good businessman would have found a much better way to hide his income.'

A good businessman doesn't know a damn thing about hiding his income. That is what good accountants do.

'Jobs never set out to make a profit, by default that makes him a poor businessman. Great inventor, creator, motivator, and marketer, but not businessman.'

You don't seem to know much of the history at hand. Or you have confused your Steves. Waz was the inventor who didn't want to make a profit. Jobs is the one who pushed to make kits and market the computers. Waz was the first of many brilliant and creative inventors that Jobs flayed with a whip to make his ambitions unfold.

Jobs didn't invent the iMac, another brilliant employee within Apple invented the iMac. That employee probably made $100,000 that year for the trouble. Steve Jobs filled the role of a good business man and motivated that employee, recognized the profitable product out of the dozens of duds (you mention a couple small duds that failed but nobody has a perfect track record), and made sure that the proper marketing gimicks were used to generate a sensational buzz.

Jobs knows how to hire brilliant people, crack the whip until they produce results and to recognize the right results. He does the same with the inventors, designers, and marketing people. He also knows how to use his cape and wand to great effect and gets a good deal of free marketing from media attention because of it. Sorry, but that is the very definition of a good businessman. You seem to think that the bean counters and suits are the good businessmen, they aren't, they are the droids and anyone can suffer through business classes and learn to show up early and leave late until they become one.

Re:Businessmen & Their Customers

[Mister Whirly]

I know my history, and I am not confusing "Woz" (not Waz) with Jobs. Wozniak was the hardware engineer genius.
Jobs hired Nolan Bushnell and Regis McKenna who were brilliant marketers and had all the right connections. Especially Bushnell who put Jobs in touch with Don Valentine, a venture capatalist who invested a big chunk of money in Apple, and also told the president of Intel that Apple was worth looking into. After the success of the Apple I and II, Jobs rolled out the complte disaster that was the Apple III, and followed that with the Lisa. After he was stripped of power at Apple by the man he brought on board, he founded NeXtStep to design hardware to compete with Apple and IBM. After 4 years and $250 million of resarch and development, he closed down the hardware side to concertrate on software. He then decided that he COULD build a computer aimed at college students. After some delays the NeXtStep computer was finally released in 1989. It was a monochrome system with no floppy drive and no useful applications with a price tag of $7000. Guess what? College students didn't jump over themselves trying to buy one. Jobs is an egomaniac who doesn't consider what his cutomers want, only what he wants to design. He drove many brilliant people out of Apple due to his "unique" management style. I think Jobs is a genius personally, but not a good businessman. He may have had some luck in the business world, but I believe a portion of it was incidental. He has got tons of charisma and can make people believe anything, to the point of the "reality distortion field" he is credited with creating around him. Leader, visionary, pioneer, entrepeneur are all fitting titles. I guess we are basically disagreeing on the definiton of "businessman". I didn't mean it as a slight - to me a "buisnessman" IS the stuffy suited bean counter worried about only turning a profit for the quarter and not the "big picture". I don't see Jobs poring over the P&L statements and wondering what he is going to say at the next stockholder's meeting.

MS tax

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if he can get it without the MS tax?

Re:MS tax

[brunascle]

oddly enough, the no-OS laptops dell is offering cost the same or more than the equivalents with Windows. :-/

i'm looking into getting a linux laptop, and the best deal seems to be to get a dell with windows and load linux onto it yourself (make sure you configure it with linux-friendly hardware, though).

Re:MS tax

[Mountaineer1024]

The reason for that is simple.
Due to Dells volume deal with Microsoft, they get windows cheap.
Dell then bundle all sorts of little apps that they are paid to put on the desktop (and that we power users hate so much we uninstall them immediately).
The payment they get for these apps cancel out the cheap cost of windows.
Therefore, to Dell, windows on a machine is free.

Re:MS tax

[Xtravar]

Exactly. I'd gladly pay less for a computer preloaded with crap and then format it! At least you get Windows in case you really need it for whatever reason. I'm not quite sure why people are pining for Linux pre-loaded, since it will most likely cost as much or more than a Windows system.

The only advantage I can see is guaranteed hardware support, and maybe a greater adoption rate (but probably not if there's no price advantage). I mean, the pre-loaded Linux will probably be out of date by the time any consumer buys the machine - which is fine for some people, but I like the bleeding edge packages.

So instead of playing these little games, how about the OEMs just make sure their machines work with Linux, and give it a little "Linux compatible" logo? They can still package Windows and spyware to keep the price of the machine down, and then we can just format them and install whatever Linux we want.

Errmmmm

[morgan_greywolf]

Wasn't Feisty Fawn just released this week? If he's been using it, he's either been using the beta or else he just installed it, right? And if Dell were really in talks with Canonical to distribute Ubuntu 7.04 on Dell PCs, wouldn't we be hearing about it from Canonical and/or Mark Shuttleworth?

Re:Errmmmm

[fl!ptop]

yesterday, there was posted an interview with mark where he alluded to dell running ubuntu, but he shied away from completely admitting it.

Re:Errmmmm

[billcopc]

I hate to feed the rumors, but what other distro would they possibly use ? I don't know of any other that pulls off the user experience schmoozing as cleanly as Ubuntu, seeing as it's one of their main goals. As funny as it would be to toss a Gentoo boot disc in the box and watch the call center agents as they commit suicide one after another:

Joe - " I setup Portage to run off a CDB backend, and now my metadata is corrupt. Fix my box, bitch!"

Kerpal - " Ok, sir, please turn off the computer and remove the power cord for 2 minutes. "

Joe - " No, f*** you that won't fix it. I need a tarball of this and that, and a custom shell script to reindex those..."

Kerpal - " Ok, sir, I am going to put you on hold... (hold music) AAAAAAAAAH *BOOM* *SPLAT* *CLICK*"

Ultimately they want a nice easy distro to appeal to the masses, because that's the business they're in. I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with a nice idiot-proof restore CD as well, because the expensive part is training the thousands of tech support people worldwide. Having them pop in a restore disc is an easy way to deal with it, because ultimately that's what a lot of techs end up doing when Windows acts up too... just blow it away and start over. That's how they're trained. Advanced software troubleshooting is a luxury billed by the hour, not covered by the puny hardware warranty.

Re:Errmmmm

[Frosty Piss]

Dell probably has a lot of OSs installed on various computers. I had Ubuntu installed on a laptop for a few days a few months back (wasn't for me). Like many people, he probably thought :this is interesting, let's have a look". It certainly doesn't mean it's his only or primary system.

FIVE?!

[ArtDent]

I can't even imagine why one person would want five PCs.

How much time does he spend applying patches and updating software? Transferring data?

THREE different laptops? Doesn't he realize that the whole appeal of a laptop is that you can take it with you wherever you go?

Re:FIVE?!

[Helios1182]

Given that he runs one of the largest PC companies in the world he may just enjoy them and working with them.

Re:FIVE?!

[faloi]

I can't even imagine why one person would want five PCs.

I can... One PC to act as my home theater, another PC acting as a big ol' server, a corporate approved box that I can use to work from home, a gaming rig, and another laptop to do normal computer-type stuff. And that's not even counting any machines that would be for other people in the house to use.

Re:FIVE?!

[tijmentiming]

One word: Marketing.

I bet you buy washing machines, micro waves and home cinema sets because the guy in the store "Uses this brand at home" as well.

Re:FIVE?!

[CastrTroy]

I can see the need too. Unfortunately I don't have all that much space at home. So, I have to have one computer that does absolutely everything I need. That means for right now, I'm running Windows. I would love to be able to run a Linux Server, A Windows Gaming machine, and have a Linux Media centre, and well, for office/internet, I don't care, either one is fine, so I'd probably go with Linux.

Re:FIVE?!

[Themer]

That's like asking how long it takes him to clean his 15 bathrooms... /sarcasm

Re:FIVE?!

[penp]

I read that as "warshing machines" for a second there. What am I turning into?!

Re:FIVE?!

[Khomar]

I can't even imagine why one person would want five PCs.

Easy. I have five computers in my house including two laptops. One laptop is for work. One laptop is for my wife, and I also use it when I am watching the kids (I don't usually watch them in my office). One is my file server. One is my primary home machine for things like Quicken and hobby development. My last computer (the admittedly frivolous one) is basically just used for LAN computer games. Here very soon it will be setup to host my children's computer games.

There is also another old computer currently sitting in my closet that once was (and hopefully will soon be again) a little web server.

If you own a computer hardware company and can afford to have five high quality computers in your house (especially considering he would get them at almost no cost), why not have five computers?

Re:FIVE?!

[quarrelinastraw]

The three laptops are optimized to do different things. Some are bigger and have more power some are smaller. I have several computers each doing different things. Data syncing isn't a problem because I just put everything I work on in subversion and then 'svn update' whenever I switch computers.

I don't do any gaming, but I have several computers. If I had the money, I would have several more. For example, I would have one computer for running mathematical simulations and other number crunching, another one for programming and writing things (since the math computer would run at around 100% CPU all the time), a laptop for mobility, and another laptop that runs OS X for compatability. This doesn't even mention servers etc, or the possibility of having a desktop machine at home.

Re:FIVE?!

[lanswitch]

Laptop with XP and Linux. (useful for about anything.)
XP Workstation (used as harddisk recording system)
Linux workstation (for fun & profit)
Linux server (for fun&profit)
HTC universal pda (web-browsing, e-mail, pda)

so... 5 pc's seems pretty standard to me.

Re:FIVE?!

[Lumpy]

Let's see. 1 video editor, 1 Gaming PC, 1 kitchen Tablet PC, 1 media center, 1 Toshiba Toughbook cf-30, 1 Latitude 131L, 1 Dell D600 1 MSI laptop for my daughter (in pink)

1 Security camera DVR PC 1 server pc.

Oh I forgot, another toughbook cf-28 in the garage for car tuning and diagnostics.

so I got 11 computers, 1 wife, 1 child. I have the parts to build 2 more... Looking to make a pair of mythbackends to reside at a couple of friends houses to record TV illegally for me.

except for the Toughbooks, everything else is chump change computers that cost less than $600.00 each when new. (a lowly out of date Pentium4 3ghz machine can edit HD video just fine as well as play every new game there is just fine)and all have their own jobs.

Re:FIVE?!

[elrous0]

How much time does he spend applying patches and updating software?

Come on, man. Do you think this guy does this on his own? The guy probably has a team of people who just change light bulbs.

Re:FIVE?!

[DoctorPepper]

Five? Eh, well, I guess the five desktop systems and four notebooks on my home network are a tad out of the ordinary?

Re:FIVE?!

[swillden]

I resemble that remark, though I use my company laptop for "normal computer-type stuff", and don't play games much. Throw in a couple computers for the kids and another laptop for the wife and the numbers edge back up.

Re:FIVE?!

[sjvn]

Heh. I've never had less than 20 in my home at any one time for more then a decade. The current count is 24.

And, yes, I use all of them.

And, yes, I could use more. For example, I don't have an Intel-based Mac or a recent SPARC box.

Steven

Re:FIVE?!

[joey_knisch]

Probably because there is no "observant" category.

Re:FIVE?!

[TeknoHog]

One PC for name service and in the darkness BIND them.

Re:FIVE?!

[disasm]

lets see...
Ubuntu Laptop
Debian Server at House 1 (too much of a hassle to bother upgrading when all it runs is ssh/screen)
Ubuntu Server at House 2
Ubuntu Server at Colo Data Center
Ubuntu on Media computer (freevo)
Knoppmyth on other media computer (mythtv of course) - May possibly be upgraded to ubuntu in the near future
Ubuntu Desktop at House 2
debian laptop at house 1 (no battery left, 1998 thinkpad)
netbsd 486 router at House 1

Should I keep going? And updates to debian/ubuntu computers are automatically done /w error checking script that e-mails me if I have to intervene. When a new release comes about (once every 3 years for deb, 6 mo for ubuntu), it takes about 5 mins per computer to get them all upgraded. This isn't including my work computers/computer I manage at work, just personal machines.

Sam

Re:FIVE?!

[Paulrothrock]

Let's see, I've got my Powerbook, my wife has her iBook. There's the Mini in the office acting as a file and print server, and we've got my old Power Mac in the basement that's simply waiting to be sold. And if you include my web host, which I use to do offsite backups, that's 5 "PCs." I'm also thinking about setting up a MythTV box.

And I don't spend much time applying patches or transferring data. That's what scripts are for.

Re:FIVE?!

[staeiou]

I can't even imagine why one person would want five PCs. How much time does he spend applying patches and updating software? Transferring data? THREE different laptops? Doesn't he realize that the whole appeal of a laptop is that you can take it with you wherever you go?

He's Michael Dell. I'm pretty sure that he doesn't even wipe his own ass, much less patch his own system. When something breaks or needs a replacement/upgrade, do you honestly think he'll do it himself? Well, he might still tinker with systems as a hobby, but I bet there are one or two backup models of each system which get rsynced (or whatever the Windows equivalent is) nightly just in case something breaks and he needs it fixed NOW.

The different laptops are for different things. At work, he doesn't need a kickass graphics card; at home he doesn't need EVDO (cell-phone internet); on the go, he doesn't need extra weight. I've got an IBM x41 (2.7lb ultraportable with no CD-ROM), and I'm thinking about getting a 17" MacBook Pro for those times when I don't care about weight. The IBM would become my work-only computer, while the Mac would be more general purpose.

Also, there is an appeal of having three different laptops: you lug the work one around work, the home one around home, and the travel one around the world. You don't have to lug anything between work and home, for example. As long as everything important is backed up to a central server with version control, it really isn't a problem. Plus, the different laptops would put you in different moods. Ever tried to work in your bedroom or relax in your office? It just doesn't work (for me at least), because I've conditioned myself to be in work-mode when I'm in the office. I don't see why this would be a bad thing for computers.

Re:FIVE?!

[misfit815]

One PC to run Product A, which only works on XP, one PC to run Product B, which only works well on Linux, one PC to run Product C, which crashes the system and needs its own little sandbox, one PC to run Product D...

That's how you end up with 5 computers in your house.

I want one black box that's a cross between a LAMP Server, MythTV, the Wii, and an AM/FM/XM/Satellite/Cable/Whatever's-Next receiver that plugs into my TV and just WORKS! You plug it in, and it WORKS! No driver hunting, no recompiling kernels, no virtual duct tape.

Sorry... my Win2k box blue-screen'd last night... I'm a little bitter...

J

Re:FIVE?!

[billcopc]

That's funny, I have six PC's tightly packed in and around my desk. Hell I even have one I built last week, I didn't have an empty ATX chassis so I just built it right into my desk with some carefully trimmed cardboard panels. Let's see... one Linux iptables box, one web server, one media server, a gaming rig, and a multicore opteron beast running Gentoo where I get actual work done. Number six is an old Pentium-150 with a 3Dfx card for classic gaming. Fun stuff!

Then there's the wife's computer, and the modded Xbox, and the laptop, and the three currently unbuilt rigs I've got sitting in a parts bin right now. One of them will hopefully end up in my car's boot, hooked up to the stereo and GPS. The other two I might just sell off to clear some room.

Let's not forget to mention I'm a broke ass just coming off of 6 months disability ? If it hadn't been for my accident, I'd probably have a second laptop, a Mac (for kicks) and an expansion card with 4 more Opterons and Ram for the beast; 8 cores is so last year! :P

Now I'm a die-hard computer freak. I'm most definitely a minority. Michael Dell may or may not be a computer freak, but one thing I'm 100% sure about him, he's the head of the world's largest computer distributor and every single one of those machines has his name stamped on the front. Even if he didn't like computers, he'd still have a showroom in his home with one of each model, as props for doing interviews and photo-ops at the very least. Everything this man says and does is very carefully thought out and calculated. Every word he speaks has a multi-million dollar effect on his business. I think even if he weren't a computer enthusiast, he would at least fake it where it matters, and more importantly he'd never let anyone think he didn't love his own products.

Re:FIVE?!

[mgv]

I can see the need too. Unfortunately I don't have all that much space at home. So, I have to have one computer that does absolutely everything I need. That means for right now, I'm running Windows. I would love to be able to run a Linux Server, A Windows Gaming machine, and have a Linux Media centre, and well, for office/internet, I don't care, either one is fine, so I'd probably go with Linux.


Perhaps a mac mini or two would meet your space requirement. It works for me. You could even go the full monty and put linux on them, although the make a good (low power) small server for low volume use just fine under mac os x

Michael

Re:FIVE?!

[garcia]

I have three laptops, a Mac Mini, and a Linux server. I also have two Windows machines in various stages of disrepair that because of the laptops and their comparatively low power consumption, will probably remain that way for now.

One of the laptops is my wife's but the rest are used by us both in various ways. Why do I have so many? Because they all serve a different purpose and they are necessary?

Just because YOU can't understand it doesn't mean it isn't viable. How many TVs do you have operating in your home? I have one and in this day and age, that's just as strange as having 5 PCs.

Re:FIVE?!

[bytor4232]

I can't even imagine why one person would want five PCs.

He only has five PCs? What an amateur. Off the top of my head, I have a server/workstation. My wife has her own workstation. My daughter has her own workstation. In addition, we have a laptop, and a media center PC. I also have five servers in a test lab that I use for educational purposes.

Re:FIVE?!

[ArtDent]

I should clarify that I read "these are the systems and peripherals Michael is using right now" to imply that these are his, not his family members', personal machines.

I also chose the term "PC" intentionally, to indicate machines that sit on his desk or lap and with which he interacts *personally*. I see no sign of a file/print server there, just three laptops, a gaming desktop, and yet another desktop at work. Never mind the web host; none of those machines powers www.dell.com. ;)

So, what I see is that you have *one* such machine, your Powerbook. Your potential second one is sitting in the basement waiting to be sold. And that's kinda my point.

Re:FIVE?!

[MBGMorden]

All depends on how much you want to segment stuff out. I keep a home theater PC next to the TV, a Windows machine, a Linux machine, a Mac Mini, and a laptop (Windows Vista). I've also got another PC that houses a local SAN (4 500gb drives in a RAID5), but I never really use it directly - it's just a file server.

The Windows, Linux, and Mac desktops are all on a KVM. I like playing with different OS's and such. I had even considered getting another one and putting BeOS or SkyOS or the like on it, but they are largely not really "everyday" OS's so I've settled with using VMWare for trying things like that out these days :).

Re:FIVE?!

[forgotten_my_nick]

I've got two laptops (Thinkpad, XPSM170), two desktops (Dell XPS), one tablet pc (Samsung Q1) and a crappy PDA. And thats just my stuff at home. :)

They all get used for different things.

Re:FIVE?!

[mhall119]

How much time does he spend applying patches and updating software?

On this Ubuntu Laptop at least, very little. It tells him there's updates and asks if he wants to install them. He says "yes", gives the machine his password, and he's done.

I can't speak for the Windows boxes though.

Re:FIVE?!

[fitten]

Including two laptops, my wife and I have seven between us (all of them running as we speak). This is down from nine because I scavanged parts from one of our SFFs a while back and gave another one of our SFFs to my mom. Granted, last week we only had six running (and for a long time before that) but last Tuesday, I set up another small Linux server for some specific tasks that I didn't want on my 'main' server.

Re:FIVE?!

[th3rmite]

Wow, I thought I had enough with four for home and three for work. I guess I have a lot of nerd cred still yet to earn, and I thought it meant something when I bought my four year old her own computer.

Re:FIVE?!

[jedidiah]

Calm down and go get a clue somewhere.

The media server is not going to be in the theatre room. A media client will be.

However, you still don't want your media server cluttered with anything that might tend to subject to the odd distributed DoS attack. Besides which, you probably want every unused cycle in your media server available for transcoding recordings and such.

It's more likely to work better the other way around where your media server is separate from your other server and you somehow exploit the unused cycles on the "other server" to the benefit of your media server (myth slave backend transcoder).

In my house it's combined desktop/network server,media server, media client (living room), terminal (living room), wife's work machine & my work machine.

Re:FIVE?!

[Mister Whirly]

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home" - 1977, Ken Olsen, president Digital Equipment

You really can't understand why the top man in a computer harware company would want 5 different models to play around with? I mean christ, I have 3 desktops and a laptop in my house and I don't even work for a computer hardware company...

Re:FIVE?!

[pyrbrand]

I imagine if you're Michael Dell, you can't anyone having less. You have to set an example after all!

Re:FIVE?!

[Mister Whirly]

Just out of curiosity, what does your electric bill run a month?

Re:FIVE?!

[jcgf]

do you actually use all 24 or are most of them sitting and compiling custom kernels most of the time? Or do you have a large family? or are you counting your ti85 as a computer? Are any of them rack mounted? I'm genuinely curious as I've never met anyone that actually used that many computers.

I'm always amassed by the number of computers people have room for. I am currently running 2 (an athlon64 3500 pc that I built and a sun blade 100) and I'm debating whether or not to sell the pc when I buy a macbook this year.

Re:FIVE?!

[PitaBred]

A Arkansan. You still have too many teeth and too few guns and broken pickup trucks, though.

Re:FIVE?!

[retro128]

It's not out of sight. I've got 5 PCs.

-One is my Windows box, for gaming and Windows-specific stuff (Photoshop, etc).
-One is my Linux server, running CentOS, which hosts my email, file storage, wireless gateway, DHCP, etc.
-I have a "play box", on which I load different distros of Linux to play around with them. Went from Fedora Core 1, to Gentoo, to CentOS, to Ubuntu, but I don't really like Ubuntu that much, so I'm going to try Fedora again.
-Laptop, with both Windows and Linux. I use it for security analysis and maintenance of networks out on the field, as well as to establish an encrypted tunnel back home to check my email, browse the web, etc. (I don't always know what's on someone's network or who's watching)
-A legacy box with a CM-32L for all the old sk00l Sierra games I still like to play

Re:FIVE?!

[ucblockhead]

The same reason someone who is really into cars might own five even if he can only ever drive one at a time.

At my house, there's five working computers, though only three are mine.

Re:FIVE?!

[shaitand]

I have six pc's + a dd-wrt router and no laptops. 2 Servers (1 Ubuntu, 1 Windows 2003 Server), 4 Desktops, two for my wife (she likes to run two WOW accounts) and two for me (I'm a tech so I have an Ubuntu desktop for my personal use and a windows desktop for a testbed).

Re:FIVE?!

[dmnic]

having 5 or more systems is not that out of the ordinary.

* on KVM at my desk
*Mac Mini(G4) - audio server; connects to Airtunes Express in living room and bedroom
*Linux NAS - file server
*Linux firewall/router
*Windows 2000 - remote to office only
Powerbook - my main comp
eMac - fiancees comp

remote desktop/VNC runs on each machine so I can access from my Powerbook as needed

Re:FIVE?!

[slapout]

I can't even imagine why one person would want five PCs.

You're new here, aren't you?

Re:FIVE?!

[that this is not und]

I am limited to four PCs at the moment, because I only have a 4-way KVM on my desk. But that means four PCs that can all be on and in use simultaneously. I don't dual boot on any machine, anywhere. That's just a stupid practice in a modern networked environment. You're always gonna want x which only runs on Y. Booting is a monthly activity if that.

Re:FIVE?!

[mgv]

Did you miss the part where CastrTroy wants a gaming machine? The Mac mini's graphics (mobile Intel GMA 950 with 64MB of memory leeched from system memory), CPU (Merom-based Core Duo), and even hard drive (5400rpm notebook drive) are insufficient for a "gaming machine."

Yes, I did get that. Did you notice that the reason he couldn't have two machines was not due to cost, but due to space requirements?

My point here was that if you can't have two big machines because it takes up too much space, maybe a mac mini is worth considering.

I wasn't suggesting that it replace the windows gaming system. Perhaps I should have been more explicit, but the stated issue was space, not cost or number of machines. You can put alot of mini's into the space of one desktop, or alternatively stick it out of sight to do the server things and just get your windows box for desktop use.

A mini takes up about twice the footprint of a microsoft mouse. And it will save you a fortune compared to using a top end gaming system as a server, which is what was suggested was the only option here. Not to mention that its maximum power usage is 110 watts, compared to the gaming systems that now come with 1000 watt power supplies.

Using a high end windows gaming system as a server leads to a)Expense b)Energy consumption c)Exploits. Of all the reasons listed in the post, doing it because you don't have space for a second server is nuts. You wouldn't use a gaming system as a high end server, and if you only want a low end server, well.. there is your mini. Even if you install linux on it, which would be an entirely reasonable thing to do, and would maximise the hardware as a server by not wasting cpu cycles or disk accesses on the GUI if you didn't want it to.

Michael

Makes perfect sense to me

[Colin Smith]

It's the easiest to use of the PC based desktop operating systems.

Re:mikey likes it...

[Paulrothrock]

It's not OS/X. It's OS X. And it's not "oh ess ex" it's "oh ess ten"

However

[Colin Smith]

The simple reason being that a good businessman never assumes what's good for him is good for his customer. If you don't eat your own dogfood, how can you expect your customers to.

Re:However

[networkBoy]

Ahhh,
But the distro isn't the dog food, the notebook is.
In this case I would think that the LT release would be the ideal distro for them to distribute to customers, but hey...
-nB

not bad

[phrostie]

i'm not an Ubuntu user, but it is a choice.

Feisty released

[bignickel]

Although it's not officially announced yet, the Ubuntu Feisty Fawn torrents are live:

Desktop i386

Desktop AMD64

Server i386

Server AMD64

The more exotic torrents (and the directly downloadable ISOs) can be found at the official release site but I thought we'd try to save their servers a bit of pain and heartache.

Re:Feisty released

[MichaelSmith]

I thought we'd try to save their servers a bit of pain and heartache.

Indeed. Thanks a million.

Re:How did he download the release so fast?

[Tx]

Here you go, these links came from linuxtracker, they are definitely the final releases, not the beta.
CD - ubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso.torrent
DVD - feisty-dvd-i386.iso.torrent

Seriously?

[CastrTroy]

I really want to know what it is that makes people think Ubuntu is the best thing since sliced bread. I've tried it out, and it's not any better than a lot of other distros. Actually, I find that because they aim too much towards the home user, that it makes it difficult to do more advanced things. Personally, I use Mandriva. I have used it since version 7. I don't see Ubuntu doing anything that Mandriva (or Mandrake) wasn't doing 3 years ago.

Re:Seriously?

[FKnight]

Who are you to say that Ubuntu is aimed "too much" at the home user? Did you ever think that maybe that's who they're targeting? Every other Linux distribution isn't aimed at all at any variation of a home/average user. The folks at Ubuntu are probably going "gee, duh. Maybe we should make a distribution that you can use without having to have 6 years of sysadmin experience" You're doing the right thing by using a distribution you prefer. It's just a little off base to say that Ubuntu's distribution is aimed "too much" toward home users. Or do you prefer the days when you had to be a computer geek in order to use a computer?

Re:Seriously?

[budword]

I used Mandriva 3 years ago, and some since. Ubuntu got quite a few things right, with ease, that I couldn't find a way to do in Mandriva, even given the large amount of time I spent on those tasks back then. Installing Ecipse and Java for one, were a real pain in the ass. Ubuntu, it was a 3 minute job. I like Mandriva, and I think it was great for it's time, (back when I used it daily), but I've reached the point I want to work with my system and not work on it. Ubuntu gets so much right hassle free that no other distro I've tried comes close. And the community is willing to help newbies without yelling RTFM. Throw in it's debian (read apt) based instead of rpm based (bad bad memories from my red hat trial years ago), and I have a clear choice. It's not for everyone, but it is for me.

Re:Seriously?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I don't see Ubuntu doing anything that Mandriva (or Mandrake) wasn't doing 3 years ago.

Windows Migration Assistant?

Re:Seriously?

[disasm]

Really? I find the opposite. I find ubuntu to be a distro I can give to anyone, and they can figure out how to do almost anything they need to do on it. Then when I want to get to work, I can install fluxbox/aterm/dev libs/etc... And can do things the hard way without the hassle of getting the dependencies I need installed thanks to my good friend apt...

Now my question for you is what specific things are in Mandriva that make it easier for you to get things done than in ubuntu?

Sam

Re:Seriously?

[porkThreeWays]

Yes, the secret is out. High quality Linux distributions aren't that much different from each other. I think Ubuntu has come to the forefront because they've got the right advertising, were in the right place at the right time, have a very dedicated community which wants Ubuntu in the most hands, and because it still is a pretty good distribution. That's not to minimize all the hard work that has gone into Ubuntu, but everyone is working hard. Ubuntu just did a lot of non-technical things right as well combined with a little luck.

Re:Seriously?

[servo335]

The point is it is easy for a home user to use. The biggest draw back to users installing any distro is difficulty of use. If your tired of removing spyware from mom and das pc the best alternative to offer them is Umbuntu.

Re:Seriously?

[CastrTroy]

I haven't had to deal with dependancies in a long time, thanks to my good friends PLF and URPMI. Thanks to them, I can install just about any program you can think of with a couple clicks of the mouse, or from the command line if you prefer that method. Mandriva's partition manager is probably the best thing available on any platform. I'm found that it includes a lot of packages on the CD(DVD) that aren't available from Ubuntu because Ubuntu fails to acknowledge that they should ship more than 1 CD. Mandriva has great GUI administration tools that make configuring a system very easy. The installation is very well laid out, giving you the option to configure everything, or just keep on clicking next and having it figure out everything for you.

Re:Seriously?

[CastrTroy]

You see, that's what I thought. There's a lot of good Linux distros out there. Ones I've noticed as being pretty good include Mandriva, Suses, Fedora, and Ubuntu. I just find it really weird that Ubuntu gets so much attention when it's not really that much better than most of the other distros. What I find even weirder is that Mandriva gets almost no attention, when they've been doing things well for many years.

Re:Seriously?

[TobascoKid]

Every other Linux distribution isn't aimed at all at any variation of a home/average user.

Linspire????

Re:Seriously?

[malevolentjelly]

I don't see Ubuntu doing anything that Mandriva (or Mandrake) wasn't doing 3 years ago.

Windows Migration Assistant? I tried to use Ubuntu to bail out a system with a messed up bootloader. The new installer is a joke. It only claims to have that functionality, everything is still just as *unfinished* as it was 3 years ago. It even used auto-update to ice my nvidia drivers that I'd used Restricted Drivers Manager to install with some sort of dummy package. Yeah. They're really moving forward...

Re:Seriously?

[TobascoKid]

I really want to know what it is that makes people think Ubuntu is the best thing since sliced bread.

I think there are several reasons -

* It has more of an community feel than some distros, where the company supporting it isn't as in your face as in some other distros.

* It's based on debian so you get all the goodness of debian, but with timely releases.

* There's a stronger commitment to software freedom than some other distros (even more so in Fiesty with gNewSence inspired super-free version), while at the same time taking a pragmatic approach.

* I think the giving away of CDs helped, especially in the earlier days.

* There isn't open and closed versions (ala Fedora/RedHat, openSuse/Suse, etc), there is just Ubuntu.

It's not one thing, it's the combination of several things that makes Ubuntu compare well against other distros. It's like how in some sports if you can consistently come in second, you can end up first overall.

Re:Seriously?

[TobascoKid]

because Ubuntu fails to acknowledge that they should ship more than 1 CD

But is there really much point to having more than one CD? The versions of software on CD are going to fall out of date. Other than for users with slow network connections, there isn't that much advantage in having several CDs or a big DVD. If anything, it's a disadvantage, as it means you're downloading a lot of software you're never going to install.

Seeing as Debian has both a minimal install CD and an "everything including the kitchen sink" install CDs, it would be interesting to see which is more popular. If somebody were taking bets, I'd place my bet on the minimal install CD.

Re:Seriously?

[Locklin]

they aim too much towards the home user,
Thats exactly the market Dell is looking to target. Corporate customers have always been able to purchase whatever they want.

Yes Ubuntu is often overrated. But there realy are only a couple realy good, easy to use for novice, commercial Linux distro's (that don't have legal issues in the US.) I'm sure their decision makers are concentrating on SUSE and Ubuntu.

Re:Seriously?

[CastrTroy]

Mandriva has the same options. You can either download the kitchen sink version, or the minimalist version. There are several minimalist versions depending on whether you want to run KDE, Gnome, 32-bit, 64-bit, and a couple other options. Personally, I download the kitchen sink version. Because I usually only download a new distro once per year, the extra time to download isn't really an issue, and I'd rather have too much than not enough.

Re:Seriously?

[ericrost]

(I know I shouldn't jump into this debate, but here I go)

If you have the bandwidth to d/l everything and can spend that time on it, why do you object to the packages you want being readily available through the repos and only d/l'ing a bootable iso with a barebones system on it (granted, nothing's as barebones as the gentoo livecd, but come on).

If you have that bandwidth, just d/l the 300 meg iso, install, then synaptic/apt-get/(insert other distro package manager here) all the packages you want. That way everything's up to date when you're done and you didn't waste the time d/l'ing 8000 out of date when they're burnt packs....

Anyhow, not trying to troll this, just curious about the difference in attitude. When I d/l a new distro cd, I want to see the out of the box hardware support before I mess with anything else. The best way to do that is a small livecd.

Re:Seriously?

[CastrTroy]

I don't have the bandwidth to download all the packages very quickly. What I do have is the available throughput to download all the packages over a day or two. The difference here, is that once I got to install, the entire system is up and running in about 30 minutes. If I had to download the majority of the packages at install time, then I would be waiting several hours. I'd much rather download everything, and have the install go really fast, so that my system is down for a minimal amount of time.

Re:Seriously?

[TobascoKid]

I'd much rather download everything, and have the install go really fast, so that my system is down for a minimal amount of time.

You could boot from the Ubuntu Live CD and install from that (while still carrying on with other tasks). Then your system is only down for the amount of time needed to reboot.

Re:Seriously?

[Chandon Seldon]

Don't look at it as "Ubuntu is the best thing since sliced bread, way better than Mandriva". Look at it as "Ubuntu is really nice, as is Mandriva. Ubuntu is just more popular because they've made their free-as-in-cost business model clearer."

Re:Seriously?

[shaitand]

Compared with Ubuntu, Linspire sucks.

Re:Seriously?

[shaitand]

'Mandriva, Suses, Fedora, and Ubuntu'

I've used all of the above within the last three years. Ubuntu tops the list, hands down. They are all fine distributions and you can use any of them but Ubuntu gives a much smoother experience out of the box. The available documentation for Ubuntu is much more complete, the software base available is beyond compare. With Fedora or Suse you are always hunting for packages because the particular solution for x you've found isn't in the reponsitory. If you enable the additional respositories in Ubuntu you pretty much never have that issue.

Apt + Synaptic is beyond compare for software and package management. Even after adding those to rpm-based distros you never have the sheer volume of readily installable software. You are always missing software or dependencies.

I have never had to do any manual x configuration using Ubuntu to get full functionality from my cards and displays. That includes setting up tv-out and dual displays. I can't say the same of those other distros. They have display configuration utilities but they either aren't feature complete or are buggy and you have to drop back and edit files by hand again.

That is the biggy. Ubuntu finally succeeds where no other distribution has for me as a power user. Using Ubuntu on the desktop, I don't have to edit any conf files, do any package management, or drop to the CLI at all. The others have solutions but they never completely eliminate the need. Ubuntu does for me. On the server I edit everything by hand but even there Ubuntu uses sane defaults and I have to adjust a couple settings instead of me saving confs I've hand written on floppies to use as a base.

I can't imagine what advanced stuff you can't do on Ubuntu. There is nothing you can do on Mandriva that you can't do on Ubuntu. If you want a GUI you can alter until you are blue in the face you might like Kubuntu but I personally don't waste time configuring my desktop to match whatever I learned once upon a time. Instead I learn the way the default environment functions, in two weeks you are equally productive either way and on next release/the next machine I am fully productive on day one where you have hours of tweaking to do.

Oh Boy

[pembo13]

Now we'll never hear the end of the "Ubuntu Rocks" guys

Re:Oh Boy

[Aladrin]

That's okay, they're not going to be nearly as bad as the 'Kubuntu is better' guys. ;) Which reminds me...

KUBUNTU! WHOO!

Re:How did he download the release so fast?

[Zonk (troll)]

Use the Swedish mirror. I switched to that a while ago since the us servers always seem very slow. The Swedish one is usually very fast.

http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04/

The iso's are on that site now.

Support......

[The Diver]

How much time does he spend applying patches and updating software? Transferring data?

None. He has support take care of it.

Re:Support......

[MoronBob]

"Thank you for to be calling Dell Computer" "My name is John Smith How can I be helping you" "Mr Doll I will check to see if that machine is warrenty under still"

Re:Support......

[Anonymous Coward]

None. He has support take care of it.

You laugh, but Michael Dell does call Dell tech support. Rather frequently for a CEO, actually.

It's not what you think, he doesn't call in order to get help, but rather he impersonates customers and sees how a random call goes.

Him (and Kevin, before the outster) would also listen in on random calls to see how they're going.

One relevant anecdote is that Michael hopped into Dell's Consumer (India) tech support (although the story sometimes goes that he hopped into the Dell Web Based eSupport chatroom) and had such a bad experience with Dell's policy of asking for Name, Email, Phone Number, Address, and Company before the Techs will even start helping you that that was IMMEDIATELY changed to "Hi, This is Blah From Dell, How can I help you today?"

Which is pretty cool, I suppose.

Re:mikey likes it...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's probably just sick of all the bullshit that is microsoft windows. Windows is such a pushy and intrusive user experience IMHO, and there's a trust factor.. He certainly isn't tired of all the money he gets from the tons of boardline malware that comes preinstalled on most Dells running Windows.

Re:mikey likes it...

[FKnight]

"Forced to use Windows"

Grow up.

Maybe he ist looking at a course change?

[Lonewolf666]

In the past, sticking to Windows seems to have worked for Dell. There are obvious reasons (need to support only one OS) plus maybe a very favourable volume deal by Microsoft.
But as Linux gains more market share, it is time for Dell to re-evaluate this position. Michael Dell using Ubuntu may be part of such research. If so, he is acting with more foresight than some managers I know ;-)

Re:Maybe he ist looking at a course change?

[prelelat]

You know I don't know if he would go with Ubuntu on the consumer side, it would be nice its what I use for a regular desktop. But you have to consider that some of their servers ship with Red Hat Enterprise and ask yourself "If I ship a Red Hat type OS with my consumer computers could I get my Enterprise people to train my Consumer call centers?" I don't know if this will be a deciding point, but the fact that he does have call centers trained in RH might factor in.

Re:Maybe he ist looking at a course change?

[Dan Ost]

From the stats I've seen, Linux seems to be stuck between 3-4% market share and has been for some time now.

Has Linux adoption suddenly increased and I missed it?

Re:Maybe he ist looking at a course change?

[Chandon Seldon]

How do you even start to generate stats like that? Market share for what?

You could generate meaningful stats for questions like "Market share of desktop PCs sold at Best Buy". Trying to generate stats for the whole "computer" market at once is probably a waste of time.

Re:Maybe he ist looking at a course change?

[milkman_matt]

Very good point I think. I think it'd make most sense for them to use RHEL Workstation maybe, since the OS isn't free and they can resell it the way they resell RHEL Servers. I do think that'd be a big mistake though since after using it for a while, Ubuntu seems -very- userfriendly and good for beginners in ways that RHEL WS would not be.

No Vista

[yuna49]

While it's interesting that he has an Ubuntu laptop, I'm more surprised that none of the four other machines are running Vista. They're all still using various flavors of XP.

Re:No Vista

[mastergoon]

Very interesting, it looks like the page has been updated so all his computers but the Ubuntu laptop are now running Vista Ultimate!

Re:No Vista

[yuna49]

Maybe somebody there was reading Slashdot?!

Re:No Vista

[Orestesx]

That's some fast upgrades! I hope they did the clean install.

He's smart, why shouldn't he run linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Just made a living out of selling cheap windows boxes. You seriously think the owners of Mc.D. eat the burgers themselfes aswell? ;-)

Re:He's smart, why shouldn't he run linux

[LardBrattish]

You seriously think the owners of Mc.D. eat the burgers themselfes aswell? ;-)

Well, funny you should say that. The last CEO of McDonalds did eat McD every day.
He died of colon cancer at 44.
http://www.newstarget.com/003232.html

Big Deal.

[crhylove]

This is /. I'm not going to be impressed until he has them all synced up into one contiguous cockpit in some flight sim.

On a serious note though, he would probably sell more computers (eventually) if he DID switch a majority of his machines over to Ubuntu.

A. They'd be cheaper.
B. They'd work better.
C. They could have Beryl eye candy.

I mean, those 3 things are enough to easily make a Feisty machine sell more than a windows machine for 90% of the users out there who don't REALLY need DirectX.

rhY

Re:Big Deal.

[pipatron]

This is /. I'm not going to be impressed until he has them all synced up into one contiguous cockpit in some flight sim.

No no no, you're doing it wrong. I'll fix it for you:

This is /. I'm not going to be impressed until he has them all turned into a beowulf cluster.

Re:Big Deal.

[crhylove]

Well naturally, I would assume that was the goal AFTER the flight sim for jpg bragging rights... :D

Just sounds like a plug for Dell systems nothing

[ScrewTivo]

more... How much does he use the systems? What are his comments on the various systems? Big whoop he has a computer with Linux on it. He is Mike Dell for gosh sakes.

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OS by Ubuntu

[Billosaur]

Watch by Cartier

Desk by Ethan Allen

Suit by Armani

Who cares what Michael Dell has on his laptop? How many people who work for "American" car companies drive "Japanese" cars? Just because his company has a deal with Bill Gates doesn't mean MD has to run Windows on his laptop, nor does it mean that what's on his laptop is going into production laptops. Talk about creating a stir over nothing...

Re:OS by Ubuntu

[ergo98]

How many people who work for "American" car companies drive "Japanese" cars?

Michael Dell isn't some random employee. And it would be very big news if a Ford executive drove a Toyota, or a Toyota executive drove a Ford. If it were the CEO, founder, and chairman...well there would be a shareholder revolt.

Of course the story isn't that he's using Gateway computers, so your analogy is irrelevant to begin with, but it is yet another indication that we live in a very different world, where people like Michael Dell no longer fear Microsoft.

The atmosphere is a complete 180 change from just a few years ago.

Re:OS by Ubuntu

[billcopc]

Hey, lots of people who work for Dell have Lenovos and HPs. Heck I think even Dell has (or had) HP servers at the call center where I once worked. The thing is, the worker drones aren't the ones in the TV spots selling the product. I really don't think William Ford would be caught dead driving a Nissan, then walk onto a stage set to shoot an ad for the F150. The boss of any company needs to project an image, a very strong one. They might not be movie stars, but they still get their share of voyeurs watching for any opportunity to stir controversy. What if Michael Dell walked around with a Lenovo ? People would say 2 things: 1. He doesn't even use his own notebooks, they must suck ass. and 2. This rich dude uses a Lenovo, they must be awesome! And you watch a ton of Dell customers defect over to IBM's chinese bastard cousin.

Re:OS by Ubuntu

[Billosaur]

It was actually an obscure reference to commercials I remember as a child, for I believe, watches. The point being, it doesn't matter much what Michael Dell has on his person, let alone his laptop... I suspect he's better dressed and his house better furnished than your average geek... if he chooses to putter around with Ubuntu or any other Linux distro, it's not that much to get excited about... now if you'd seen Ubuntu on Bill Gates' laptop, that might be interesting...

Re:OS by Ubuntu

[Billosaur]

That's why I put the nationalities in quotes. After all, wouldn't it behoove the CEO of Ford to drive a Toyota and see what his competition was up to? Wouldn't it make sense for MD to give Linux (any distro) a spin on his laptop, to see if he can steal a march on his competitors? Even his having a Gateway on his desk wouldn't be that newsworthy -- he's a proactive CEO, and he won't simply take other people's word for what others products could do. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have a MacBook somewhere in his house.

What?

[wild_berry]

Why didn't you let the GP read their own interpretation to Mark Shuttleworth's exact words:

derStandard.at: So are we going to get pre-installed Ubuntu on Dell computers?

Mark Shuttleworth: Well - time will tell.

derStandard.at: Are there active talks on that?

Mark Shuttleworth: I would not comment on any conversations underway.

I can see that this isn't (i) a definite 'No' (and nor would it be); (ii) "We'd be delighted if the Dell team want to get in touch"; (iii) "I have their Cease & Desist and Restraining Orders on my office wall -- we'll get Dell to ship Ubuntu, just you see"; or (iv) "We're integrating Wine and Launchpad to track users via the default-installed Dell add-ons". However, I don't think that there's enough there to be sure that it is any hint of talks, as Canonical's and Ubuntu's status would rise if Mark Shuttleworth could give the impression that Dell were interested.

Or...

[anti-human 1]

...given that he owns/runs Dell, he has plenty of backups if one craps out (or bursts into flame, rumor du jour).

Re:mikey likes it...

[billcopc]

Maybe IBM's been doing stealth OS releases all these years... OS/2 Warp Version 10. :P Now that would be one ugly Dos Shell.

Gaming rig?!

[Dachannien]

Oh, and Michael Dell's gaming system uses XP Media Center edition.

Get back to work, you slacker!

What he said

[babbling]

"I certainly would not push the large IT companies to put Linux on consumer PCs, because I understand that in their business, the cost of a user accidentally getting Linux, thinking that they get cheap Windows would be a problem for the companies selling the computers. So I don't think it is really ready yet for mass consumer sales of Linux on desktop. But I think in strategic target markets, like workstation or in emerging markets, there are good opportunities and we work with the companies in those markets to execute on those opportunities."

and...

derStandard.at: So are we going to get pre-installed Ubuntu on Dell computers?
Mark Shuttleworth: Well - time will tell.
derStandard.at: Are there active talks on that?
Mark Shuttleworth: I would not comment on any conversations underway.

My conclusion is that they are in talks with Dell. If they were not he would have given a simple "no", but the fact that he said he wouldn't comment suggests that there are some sort of talks going on that they don't want to announce just yet.

Re:What he said

[morgan_greywolf]

Or, he wanted to give the impression he was in talks with Dell without explicitly saying so. He might do this even if it weren't true, because just implying that Shuttleworth and Dell were in talks about Ubuntu being pre-installed on Dell computers gives Ubuntu some extra cred, at least temporarily.

Re:What he said

[shaitand]

'So I don't think it is really ready yet for mass consumer sales of Linux on desktop.'

I hope he isn't talking to Dell. Those are precisely the kind of sales Linux needs.

I used to support executives

[gelfling]

At a rather large tech company. A small cadre of top honchos had their own groupware server(s!), their own email server(s!) and their own dedicated VPN. They also had instant 24/7 unlimited support wherever they were for any of the multiple home or office machines they used. Their support ratio headcount was 1:1, e.g. each supported person had one FTE dedicated to them.

They simply did not acknowledge that anyone in the organization had any sort of technical problems at all and chalked it up to nerdy whining. Our budgets were routinely slashed, hardware and software was left running long past end of life, capacity planning was a joke and the internal costs for help desk calls and deskside visits were jacked up to absurdly high levels so that no managers would permit their own people to use them. Complaints to senior management were met with not so vague threats of termination, STFU, GBTW!

So if Mike Dell uses uBuntu it's probably because he's imperially disconnected from the realities in his own company. To him, I'm sure he feels that everyone has 5 PC's and full time free dedicated support from the best brains in the industry and what on earth are these peons complaining about now for God's sake?

Re:I used to support executives

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true in Michael's case. I work at Dell and a couple of stories I heard...(posting AC) (1.5 years ago) IT team is having a meeting and Michael happens to drop in... They are discussing why/ what of some web application. Michael questions why Firefox is not supported...--End result, the whole of Dell has an option to use Mozilla as a supported app. second one, at a newly set-up facility a midlevel manager is showing michael around the lab. we have 5 of these latest computers, 5 of that etc. etc. Michael proceeds to completely open up one of the servers and proceeds to ask "Why are you using test systems on production environment?" turns out that the machines indeed were pre-production...and michael figured it out from the connectors used!!

Re:I used to support executives

[atamido]

I'm going to skip out on using my mod points for your post and add some more related stories.

I've known several people that have spent some time with Michael Dell, including my father who has had some group sit downs with him. Every one of them has commented on how connected (opposite of disconnected) he was to the business, both management and technical wise. He may not make a great sysadmin with his current knowledge, but he's no slouch either. If you think for a minute that he doesn't know what's going on, you've sorely underestimate him. (Also have stories about how funny/nice he is.)

On a related note, I've talked to Kevin Rollins (ousted Dell CEO) a couple of times. He doesn't have all of the technical background that Michael Dell has, but he's no idiot. Kevin is a real sharp guy, and super nice to boot.

Soft

[mattr]

I'd rather see several detailed screenshots per machine with detailed info on exactly what software packages are used, how he likes them, and how, and how much, they are used.

I must be the only one who thinks displays look cooler with something displayed in them.

That said it is almost enough to get me to buy those dual 30" ultrasharp displays. I mean they must be readable if Dell has them at home, right? Just how much do those suckers cost I wonder.. Quality of LCD display is pretty important to me as my eyes need rest.

more facts

[ElephanTS]

The really big news though, is that so does Billy G! But he likes it to keep it real quiet. Balmer tried it but didn't understand it and went back to Workbench 3.9.

You all fell for it: this is PR at work....

[postbigbang]

Oh, gee, Michael Dell, running dog lackey Microsoft/Intel fanboi now uses Ubuntu! See? Dell is really trying to those pesky Linux people! See? Mikey uses one at home, although there is the altar of XP Media Center there just to make sure that Bill's not pissed.

C'mon, folks--- this is PR working at its finest and you're getting sucked right into the nozzle. Dell support for Linux has been scant and waffling for years. Now you're being seduced by the fantasy that The Big Dell actually uses an OSS system. Get real.

Re:You all fell for it: this is PR at work....

[watergeus]

It makes me wonder how /. stories come to life.

Re:You all fell for it: this is PR at work....

[kisak]

I agree completely, it has PR written all over it. But then again, it is PR that might as well back-fire on Dell. If Ubuntu is good enough for their boss, why can't we buy it pre-installed from Dell? It is PR to make us linux-fanbois happy, but it can just as well makes us more vocal and bothersom.

From the drug world

[Bullfish]

It is well know that a successful dealer doesn't use the drugs he sells.

2007WFP, eh?

[1019]

Michael's Home Computer ...
        * UltraSharp 20-inch widescreen flat-panel monitor, 2007WFP I bet Mr. Dell's display doesn't have ugly gradient banding...

But in the programming world

[Yosho]

It is well known that any good software vendor uses the software they sell (if possible). It's called eating your own dog food.

He's also got a Dell DJ

[sootman]

C'mon, Mike, you quit making those POSs months ago. Treat yourself right, get an iPod. You know you just look like a tool when you bust that thing out at the airport. Instead of looking like the head of a major computer outfit, you just look like some dork who can't afford or, worse, doesn't know about the iPod.

At least he doesn't have a Zune. Michel Dell and Steve Ballmer squirting in an airport terminal... *shudder*

Nice

[sootman]

Seriously, this is cool in several ways. And given his past with MS, it takes guts to post that in public... or will we read in two hours "Update: Michael Dell's bio on Dell website hacked by Ubuntu fans"? :-)

Seriously, though, look at how often over the years he said he'd make AMD boxes, but always stuck with Intel (after another round of extorted price cuts, one imagines) and now they're finally offering AMD CPUs in several lines. Maybe this really is the start of offering a line of supported Dells with Linux.

Think!

[grnrckt94]

Think how many computers you have in your house already! You probably have a cell phone, some digital cable, a stereo system, maybe some of those new fangled washer/dryers, all of which can be considered "personal computers". We all have different needs. Besides, I don't know of any good game that runs in Ubuntu? Do you?

Vetted

[fwarren]

Seeing that Michael Dell uses Automatix2, I am sure he has had it vetted by his lawyers. It is nice to know all the codecs and software in it are legal to download and run in the United States

Yes that was meant to be funny.

Ian Murdock

[quakehead3]

What I also found interesting is that Ian Murdock, the founder of Debian, has a screenshot in his blog whith ubuntu in it: http://ianmurdock.com/2007/02/26/google-calendar-a dds-freebusy-scheduling/

Re:Ian Murdock

[TobascoKid]

It'd be more interesting if he was using something like Fedora, Suse, FreeBSD, or (until a few weeks back) Solaris. The founder of Debian using what is still, fundamentally, Debian isn't that interesting.

Re:Ian Murdock

[petrus4]

The founder of Debian using what is still, fundamentally, Debian isn't that interesting.

It is when you consider how much bitterness apparently exists towards Ubuntu among a lot of the Debian crew.

I've written before that Ubuntu's success highlights the twin points of Debian's high code quality on the one hand, and the abysmally low value of Debian's ideology/culture on the other, while forcibly ramming said facts down the Debian developers' throats. I can barely describe how intensely viscerally gratifying for me that is; it's bordering on orgasmic. ;)

Overclocking ?! :)

[ardmhacha]

I notice for his at home machine he is an overclocker.

"Dell XPS 710 H2C
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 processor overclocked to 3.2GHz"

Re:Overclocking ?! :)

[byjove]

That's their watercooled offering that comes from the factory overclocked.

Re:mikey likes it...

[Mister Whirly]

Thank you raving anti-MS lunatic. If you hate Windows and MySpace so much, don't use them. Nobody is "forcing" you to use either. Or does the Adult Film Producers Guild require the use of Windows and MySpace??

Re:Seems just an ad

[TobascoKid]

It looks unusual to me that a big corporation exec installs the latest Ubuntu distro on one of his laptops even before the news of its release hits the press

Unless he didn't install it and decided to try out one of the new Dell Linux laptops before they hit the streets, so it had Ubuntu on it before it left the factory floor. Which is why there's the speculation that Ubuntu will be the distro used in Dell's consumer Linux machines.

Then again, seeing as the guy got rich from building PCs in his bedroom, I doubt he's a usual corporate exec when it comes to technical matters. Hell, he could be a /. reader for all we know.

Easy enough

[blueZ3]

1. My PowerBook
2. My wife's Dell laptop
3. Mac Mini HTPC
4. Server/Firewall box
5. Gaming box

And I don't feel like that's an unreasonable number of computers for even a fairly non-technical household like mine. Heck, my folks have four: both mom and dad have a laptop and desktop -- and they're about the most un-technical people you could imagine.

so?

[katsklaw]

I fail to see how this is news .. Who cares what OS Michael Dell uses at home? He's using his own products YAY! pfft. Michael Dell is using a Dell laptop with an OS that his company supports .. Big flipping deal! That's like reporting that the CEO of Ford drives a red Jaguar .. Since Ford owns Jaguar, it's no big deal ..

It's not like it was reported that Bill Gates uses Ubuntu at home.

What does Ubuntu have? Critical mass

[KWTm]

If I understand you correctly, you're not saying that Ubuntu is bad, just that it's not better than the other distros. Fine.

Part of the reason I went with it, though, is because they have acquired a good rep, from their marketing and their community (including the IRC community). They've got a philanthropist businessman making a firm commitment to fund the distro, they're taking advantage of the Debian system which had been languishing about 3 years out-of-date previously, and they've got enthusiasm from the Open Source community. They did not abandon their desktop version to concentrate on selling the server version to big business, they did not file for bankruptcy protection, and they have more perceived reliability than a distro that is singlehandedly supported by one person.

In short, it is not the technical aspects of the distro that make it appealing, but its context in the community. I chose it because I felt that it could achieve critical mass: I continue to hope that everyone will switch to it because everyone else will switch to it. This will give Ubuntu enough clout to, say, oh, I dunno, maybe get into talks with Dell? The next frontier in Linux development is to get the hardware manufacturers to recognize it, and Ubuntu looks like it's in the best position to do this.

I don't claim that Ubuntu is better than any other distro, but I do hope that it acquires a certain level of popularity. Don't begrudge it for that. Mandrake had their chance to shine; let Shuttleworth see what he can do to promote Linux.

Gamer?

[stewbacca]

Uh, how does the CEO of one of the biggest tech companies in the world have time to play video games? I'm a lowly graduate student with a full time job in Education (with plenty of income and not much responsibility) and I can barely find time to sneak in a Hold 'Em Poker Tournament on my computer from time-to-time.

Re:Gamer?

[ross.w]

Yet you have time to hang out on Slashdot? :)

Just because he has the PC doesn't mean he uses it regularly. He can only drive one car at a time too, but I bet he's got several. Part of the lifestyle of the mega rich. Loads of toys you never get to use.

Re:mikey likes it...

[stewbacca]

Not when it comes to Brand Identity. Unless you live in America for 35 years, shopping at TJ Max, only to find that it is called TK Max in England (not that I really shop there, but..)

For the record, Oh Ess TEN is pronounced the same way in the UK, even if they do botch Nike (Nigh Key, dammit, say it with me!)

consider the human to computer ratio

[teh_chrizzle]

in my family (three adults and two children) i am down to 4 computers personally (windows media box, linux VMWare box, WinTendo, linux file server) plus, my wife has one, my daughters share one and my little brother has one, and my wife and i share a laptop. that means in a family of 5 there are 8 computers. all of us play PC and console games, but the PC games are ruling the roost now (lord of the rings online, city of heroes, the sims2) so we are holding off on next generation consoles for the forseeable future. once the funds permit i will assemble a machine for my oldest daughter to play the sims on since the competition for computer time is getting out of hand. we are in a similar situation with the laptop since both my wife and i will be in school this fall.

they're called PC's... personal computers. most of the time they are used by only one person. it's fairly logical that a household with 5 humans in it would have at least 5 computers.

Yep, ordinary

[r_cerq]

Five isn't all that much, and neither are multiple laptops...

I have 2 media-centers (in separate divisions), 2 desktops (1 for me, 1 for my wife) and 3 laptops (wife's work laptop, my work laptop, and my personal 12" laptop that follows me everywhere), plus 1 "server" (actually a desktop that's used as the home gateway and file server).

So, overall... that's 5 desktop computers and 3 laptop computers usually inside the house, for 2 people. Not average, I admit, but they're all actually used.

Re:mikey likes it...

[markdavis]

It's not OS/X. It's OS X. And it's not "oh ess ex" it's "oh ess ten"

I find it much more descriptive, logical, and accurate to just call it "MacOS 10", because that is what it is- version 10 of MacOS. If you want more detail, just tack it on: "MacOS 10.2". Nothing looks more insanely stupid than someone saying "MacOS X version 10.2".... it is like saying "Linux 2 version 2.6" or perhaps "Linux II version 2.6"

Besides, does that mean there will never be a version 11 of MacOS? Will it be "MacOS X version 11", "MacOS XI version 11", or just "MacOS 11"?

He just happens to have one machine using Linux

[Master of Transhuman]

All the rest JUST HAPPEN to be running Vista Ultimate.

Oh, please, this is a fucking advertisement for Dell products.

Don't waste my time with this drivel.

Re:Seems just an ad

[Nuffsaid]

Hell, he could be a /. reader for all we know.

Yes, I am.

Re:mikey likes it...

[katsklaw]

ok so they called it System 5.1, Enough of the semantics.