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Dell to Sell Machines with Ubuntu Pre-Loaded
kotj.mf writes "Cnet is reporting that Dell will shortly announce a partnership with Canonical to offer Ubuntu pre-loaded on certain consumer-oriented desktops and notebooks. The announcement comes after a groundswell of support for pre-installed Linux on Dell's IdeaStorm site. 'The company is starting its business by trying to appeal to users of desktop computers. From there, Canonical Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth has said, the company plans to head to the server market, where the real Linux bread and butter can be found. [Dell spokesman Kent] Cook wouldn't comment on whether Dell plans to offer Ubuntu on its servers as well.'."
The company is starting its business by trying to appeal to users of desktop computers. From there, Canonical Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth has said, the company plans to head to the server market, where the real Linux bread and butter can be found...
What? If servers are where the money is, why not start there? If I was a stockholder I'd be concerned about that approach.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Nice to hear! My next notebook purchase might be Dell just so I'm guaranteed the hardware will work out of the box without having to use ndiswrapper or any other weird methods to get drivers to work. Cheers!
Bite my shiny metal ass.
i remember seeing dell machines that offered linux instead of windows in the past.. but the prices were the same or HIGHER for linux! Dell will need to address this, and offer these dellbuntu boxes at lower price. the OS is free! if they need to include a price to cover support costs, it should still not be equal to or greater than the cost of including Vista!
Personally, I have resisted the siren call of Dell for a long time. This changes my mind. I need a new machine and this could be just the ticket -- it was either that or refurb an old HP with a new HD and a copy of Feisty Fawn. I like the idea of it pre-loaded.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
So we're expecting a flood of people complaining about how they are offering one specific distro, and none others. The big worry here was that few people would be happy with whatever 1 distro was picked, and picking many, and subsequently supporting them, would be a problem.
so my question: As I feel about it - I was under the impression that the idea behind getting linux pre-loaded was that you simply aren't paying for an OS you don't want. IIRC, it has been awhile, or it has never been possible, to get a blank HD with your system from dell. Personally, I think this would be the best option. Linux, configured totally-not-the-way-I-want -it would be one step better, as I'm not shelling out the $235345 for windows, which I'm just going to delete anyway.
Don't get me started on how when a relative or co-worker buys one of these things, you have to format the computer just to get rid of all of the annoyware that comes with it. (Mcafee! Musicmatch jukebox? Qualcomm service agreement? WTF is this agreement that comes pre-installed and pre-agreed to? )
Am I under the wrong impression here, or can we be happy just to not have windows pre-loaded, and not be paying for something that is going to get deleted?
Do we really have to argue about whether or not Ubuntu was the way to go? I can't imagine a single person in this crowd who would be happy with the way dell will set it up, and if the argument is that it will introduce linux to the masses, well, I just don't see that happening. The only people who don't already know what they're doing who wind up ordering a dell box with linux already on it are only going to order it because of the cost discount.
Then they'll do one of two things:
Ask you to show them how to use it (ugh)
pirate/buy windows.
So, my original question: We're happy because this primarily means not paying for windows when we're not using it, right? What other benefits are there?
HDs are big these days. Why not sell both Windows and Linux on it? I think it would be commercially way more attractive to customers. And if Window's license doesn't allow that, EU pay notice and start your investigation!
Bert
I'm happy with the Ubuntu, although I'd rather have it as a laptop (space!)
Because let's face it I'm cheap. These machines will come at a premium compared to the pre-loaded bloatware boxes because that bloatware and windows itself subsidies much of the cost of the hardware itself. I will continue to buy bloatware boxes and wipe them clean and install Linux afterword because I'm going to do what's right by me. Thank you Microsoft and friends for helping pay for my new hardware, now get lost.
Vista had been in beta-testing for a year and a half. The negative press about Vista has been rolling in for YEARS. Dell knew full well it would be a disaster long before the release. So yes, they probably started talks with Canonical well over a year ago, and I stand by my statement that it was heavily influenced by Vista.
Nope, I've had several barely computer literate coworkers ask me how they go about buying a computer without Vista.
But will the option be put in a pull down menu off the desktops and notebooks linked from the front page, or will you have to click a tiny, unobtrusive link on the bottom that says, "check out our Ubuntu computers" hidden behind the giant banners saying that Dell fellates Vista and recommends that you do the same?
This really doesn't count as enough for me before it's there in the select input tag next to the Microsoft products.
Same thing here. My boss, who doesn't know the difference between a minimized program and a full computer crash, has told me he heard that Vista is crap. The notion that Vista sucks is definately reaching the general population.
Canonical approached Dell. I am 99% certain of it. They probably first approached Dell two or so years ago, around the 5.1 release (which was the one that really began to differentiate Ubuntu). They will have spent about 18 months simply convincing Dell that they are serious and that Dell should partner with them. The next six months will have been spent drawing up contracts, performing due-diligence on Dells part, finalising payment schedules and performing technical validation and testing.
I'm prepared to be proven wrong. Perhaps Dell did approach Canonical and begged them to put Ubuntu on their machines. It's unlikely though. I am sure that Vista had nothing to do with it. The existing relationship between Dell and Microsoft may have been part of the reason for Dell to agree to offer Ubuntu, but that's a business decision.
Watch as it spreads like Firefox from this point forward. One major vendor is now pre-loading linux and it's gaining some fringe popularity with the masses.
Did you have the same opinion in 2000 when Mac OS X came out?- that's about where Ubuntu is now. I think Dell is going to position ubuntu as the *mac* of PC's- try to follow me, here. They need a simple, beautiful operating system for peoples' wives and daughters to use that has all the functionality necessary and 'don't give them no lip. I doubt it's going to largely impact Windows' market-share. However, I would expect Microsoft to release a more attractive, minimalist Windows in the future to try to attack this fold.
What's really happening is operating systems are becoming less important as computers become web machines. This should make things interesting- the greatest platforms will be those that can take advantage of PC power while still being fully web-enabled- things like silverlight could be a very important step in this direction.
It's not like they prepare the machine specially for Linux
No, but it does mean they have to train their technical support to diagnose hardware faults from Linux, add another OS option to the build process (which, let's face it, will be image-based, but it's still work) and ensure all the hardware in the systems which are offered with Linux preinstalled is compatible. These aren't zero-cost things to do.
We have a winner. This is why Windows and Macintosh have had commercial success in the desktop market while Linux flails: the computer works out of the box. And Windows wins out of the two because PCs are cheaper than Macs. The big problem with Linux distros is a lack of usable, pre-installed software and working drivers. Users have never liked or understood command lines.
You almost need a manufacturer to bother taking the time to put together a bundle where everything "just works" out of the box. If they can negotiate selling Ubuntu desktops/laptops without the Windows tax, you just might see a real shift in marketshare. The only thing missing is some form of Bootcamp: Linux Edition (UboontuCamp? nah...) so people can play their games.
What they should do, is sell Dual Core systems with the option of having Windows XP installed in a VM (pick KVM, Xen, VMWare, whatever). ... :-)
That might be interesting to
well, to me anyway.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seus
works for some products, but not everything. Your coke/pepsi/generic cola example is about a cheap and quickly consumed product. If they don't really like the generic,it will only last a short while and is cheap enough that they can toss it out if it is truly horrible.
Where windows/linux is concerned, let me relate a recent experience. My nephew just moved out of his parents house and out from behind the router and firewall I had configured. He got dsl and hooked it up to straight from the modem and into his computer. Guess what? Within three days he couldn't run either IE or firefox, they would just crash when launched. Before, he hadn't really appreciated the delicate nature of windows or the importance of a good firewall.
I installed the newly released Ubuntu 7.04 and he is tickled. He can do everything that he needs with totally free (in every respect) software. I showed him some windows games running under wine on my laptop and he was interested, but since he is now working and going to school, games are not as important. We haven't even bothered fixing his winxp install yet. His roommate was watching me setup Beryl and was asking a lot of questions about this linux thing, completely surprised at the maturity and features of the new Ubuntu. Brand awareness of Windows and Microsoft is very high with both of those guys, but seeing the differences in action has greatly tempered any effects of that awareness.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
People are stupid. Why do you think people run out and buy a $40,000 SUV while gas prices are nearing $4 a gallon and the only use is to get groceries and haul around their 1.5 kids? Why do you think people are running out to buy a hybrid, when right now the best technology we can implement for the batteries only suggest a life of 3 years and the battery is the majority of the value of the car?
Actually people are now buying little microcompacts, like the Toyota Yaris and Chevy Aveo, in huge quantities now. The little Chevy's sales are up by 53% from last year and up 44% in just Q1 of 2007 alone. The little Toyota's sales are up a whopping 463% over last year's sales of the model.
Something about getting 35-40 mpg(highway) in a basic transportation car that costs only $15K brand new is mighty appealing when fuel prices go north of $3/gallon.
I suspect MS will play hardball with them. Dell is no longer the number one Windows reseller it once was. Dell is hoping for lower OEM pricing, but they may end up getting their throat cut ala MS deciding not to relicense XP to them removing it from the price list, and setting a very high price on Vista and office for Dell in order to make an example of them. Dell will be making concessions (although it is hard to say what those will be). We all have to see if they've gone too far.
I have a new Dell laptop with Windows Vista. I give it to my wife, and her first comment is that it's slow. (It has the new Pentium core duo!) And I find that I'm running into the IP connection limit all of the time in Vista home basic. However, there are just a few things for which I need Windows, and I can't emulate it because it doesn't like that (e.g. playing DVDs). I will soon attempt to dual boot Ubuntu Linux or Fedora Linux and Windows Vista, but I would really LOVE it if Dell would have installed it in dual boot mode for me. I would have paid up to $99 for it. I'm actually using my old laptop now, because I'm afraid of destroying the recovery partition and getting into warranty trouble.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
You're right, word of mouth is important.
... how many of those sales were of OEM versions to companies like Dell who probably purchase licenses in advance? Those licenses might never sell, and Dell will quit buying more. I think the first quarter earnings might be slightly inflated because of standard advance purchase practices, but it will all even out as the OEMs realize that no one wants Vista.
A coworker of mine (who is not what I would call "computer literate") recently bought a Dell Inspiron, and it came with XP Home and a free upgrade to Vista (I don't remember the version). She upgraded the computer to Vista, just like the box said she should, and promptly decided she hated it. Even on her beefy laptop, it was slow and sluggish, and she didn't like all the security prompts interrupting her work.
So she brought it in to the office and asked me (resident computer geek) to reinstall XP. Here is a person who doesn't know anything "under the hood" about computers, and had not heard anything about Vista; but she hated it anyway, and hated it enough to go out of her way to get rid of it.
You can be sure from now on she will tell everyone she knows not to get Vista.
In light of this, I was amused when I heard a news report about Microsoft's first quarter earnings. Profits were high, and an MS spokesperson attributed this to "brisk sales of Vista". But I want to know
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Bundle MS and you'll complain you don't want to pay for the OEM license.
Give you MS-free option and you then complain you're losing the cheap OEM license.
*bangs head on desk*
I'd agree with this statement.
I built and installed Kubuntu on a computer for a relative who is self described as computer illiterate, very computer illiterate.
The comment was, "This doesn't look that different (than Windows98)" which it replaced. They had no problems getting up and running with it.
In that respect this is a good thing if the buyer has a reson to buy Linux preinstalled, maybe price, security, dislike of Windows but not enough computer know-how to install it?
Yes, so then Dell needs to actually do that.
Linux has one failure for this market in my (granted limited) experience with it... it works in a strange bubble where people update large swaths of it frequently. Updating a package may well replace your version of apache, or your X Server.
Is Dell going to
1) rely on Ubuntu's package management and hope everything keeps just working like it did out of the box
2) maintain its own repositories, guarantee everything keeps working, but then if you upgrade things like your video card you have to link in to new repositories, and god help you (pretty unlikely since 8 computer models down the line this could be a serious pita)
3) try and keep the users from updating
4) something else entirely?
I don't know, I'm more familar with the pure debian world (living in unstable/testing) so these are real issues... if they stick with a stable release of ubuntu this is probably a much smaller concern, but then how happy would most linux users being running 2 year old versions of all their packages?
I know this is offtopic, but it is a valid question given the situation you describe. I stick with Windows based computing so that I *CAN* run my games. I've tried some virtualization (primarily to get around the administrator issue - I want my kids to be able to install and play their games, but I don't want them to be administrators so that they can download and install spywa---err screensavers). The big problem I've found is that all of the virtualization I've used (again Windows based with Windows in the virtual machine) supports only non-3D accelerated video. So, all of those games that they want to play, I wind up having to install as admin so that they can play.....and even then, some of them won't run unless you are admin.
I know that Linux handles the admin issue better, but it doesn't run the games. Do Linux based virtualization solutions allow me to run 3D accelerated Windows games? If so, I'm sold and my kids' machines will be switching to Ubuntu.
Layne
Yes, but a linux system would presumably come with hardware that works well in linux, a huge problem at this point.
Regardless of the state of software installation at purchase, the fact that its being sold FOR linux is the primary attraction.
The people who do buy purely on price (the average big-box American consumer) are usually absolute morons, and are going to require ungodly amounts of support...
Perhaps Dell thinks they may actually have to do less tech support with Linux. What percentage of tech support calls are due to virus/malware infestation? I am sure it is huge. This is a non-issue with Linux. It is rock solid once its up and running, with tens of thousands of safe, mature and free software packages to choose from. I think there may be less tech support for linux loaded boxes.
There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.