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Ubuntu Dell Now In UK, France, and Germany
mrcgran writes "Dell announced the availability of Ubuntu in Europe and future plans for China. 'I hinted at this before, but today, it's official: Dell announced that consumers in the United Kingdom, France and Germany can order an Inspiron 6400 notebook or an Inspiron 530N desktop with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed... In his LinuxWorld keynote, Kevin Kettler announced that Dell and Novell intend to offer SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 factory-installed on select consumer notebooks and desktops in China.'"
While I agree that Open Sourcing either the drivers would be good, I think I'd rather have the full microcode for the chipsets. That would give several different groups a chance at making drivers. I'm not sure why AMD/ATI and NVidia don't release the assembly code, they may find they would not have to work as hard on drivers and they just might get some free assistance in tracking down bugs in both Windows and any other OS. Having said all that, I'd rather take these baby steps with Dell offering any pre-installed Linux, whether it has open or closed source drivers, than not having any computer with pre-installed Linux. Besides, Dell's Ubuntu laptop offering has Intel graphics and wireless chipsets.
Linux isn't an operating system, it's a kernel. Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, those are operating systems powered by the Linux kernel.
*trying to dispel the Linux is an OS confusion*
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Hidden in the press release and not obvious on the main UK site is a text link to www.dell.co.uk/ubuntu
Following this link takes you to the "Dell with Ubuntu" homepage, but clicking on "Choose Desktop" or "Choose Notebook" results in a 404.
Excellent work there Dell.
I'd call it that. I've got a fairly intimate knowledge of the Dell systems that can be configured with Ubuntu (I fix Dell's for a living). Dell tends to favor Intel for it's onboard graphics (and Linux users have little reason, to upgrade this). And Intel produces it's own open source* drivers. Sadly, right now it looks like the new Inspiron desktop doesn't have an onboard graphics option**, and the XPS machines never do, so until that changes, a pure open source system will have to be the notebooks.
*GPLv2 for kernel modules, MIT for other parts, which to my understanding is traditional for Linux drivers.
**I'm going to have to take a look at this when I get to work, but iirc, there's an onboard Intel GMA, even if they don't sell that as an option.
Footnote: Selling Ubuntu apparently worked, they've run out of 1505Ns already. Hopefully this will encourage them to widen the options a bit.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Addendum. There *is* a Intel GMA something or other on the 530 lineup, but in order to get it, you'll have to pay 50 dollars more, and Ubuntu won't be preinstalled. (Go to Dell.com/open and click on shop for FreeDOS)
It makes no sense to me either.
Another nifty trick? They have an ultra low end (as in celeron) machine with Vista on it, will only cost you 400 dollars and should run Linux great (except the modem, which will be useless).
Okay, so I'm borderline astroturfing at this point. I'm being honest about it though.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
No it isn't. That library is required to play DVDs that have been encrypted with CSS. Any other DVD plays fine without it.
That library is also completely open.