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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.
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.
liqbase
The simple reason being that a good businessman never assumes what's good for him is good for his customer.
My work here is dung.
I wonder if he can get it without the MS tax?
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?
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.
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.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
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
C - the footgun of programming languages
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.
Just made a living out of selling cheap windows boxes. You seriously think the owners of Mc.D. eat the burgers themselfes aswell? ;-)
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?
I don't see Ubuntu doing anything that Mandriva (or Mandrake) wasn't doing 3 years ago.
Windows Migration Assistant?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
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.
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?
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.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
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.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.