Ubuntu On Dell After Four Months

mrcgran sends us to LXer for an interview with John Hull, a manager of the Linux Engineering team at Dell, where he reports on how the Ubuntu machines have been working out for them so far. "Embracing Ubuntu Linux on our desktops and laptops seems to have really raised Dell's visibility within the Linux community. We have been supporting, testing, developing for, and selling Linux for 8+ years here at Dell, but before the Ubuntu announcement, a lot of people didn't know that we did any of that... Previous to our Ubuntu product announcement... we would have a conversations with vendors about pushing Linux support for their hardware, but without a Linux product offering from Dell for that hardware, it was very difficult to convince them to release Linux drivers. That has certainly changed now... The original sales estimates for Ubuntu computers was around 1% of the total sales, or about 20,000 systems annually. The program so far is meeting expectations. Customers are certainly showing their interest and buying systems preloaded with Ubuntu, but it certainly won't overtake Microsoft Windows anytime soon."

Comments

Re:Within the retail sector...

[polaris878]

PuTTY. Yes I know Ubuntu comes with SSH, but for being a techie and somewhat new to Linux I had a hell of a time getting even something so simple as PuTTY installed without the aid of a packet manager.

With Ubuntu it is the same old song.

[jackspenn]

Ubuntu is one of those free loading distributions, why aren't people supporting distributions that actually help to move Linux forward?

In my mind Red Hat, Novell and Debian are to Linux as Pink Floyd, Lead Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones are to Rock n' Roll.

Ubuntu can best be compared to Britney Spears; to get noticed they both showed off some pussy, they both attract young kids and they both suck.

- Eric

FYI:

Slackware would be Aerosmith (How many times have you thought you saw the last release and they have one more)
Gentoo would be Pearl Jam (Commands respect, 'nough said)
Yellow Dog would be Prince (It's gay; plays different processors, I mean instruments)
Linus would be Lennon (They are both revolutionaries)