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Ubuntu On Dell After Four Months

Posted by kdawson on from the steady-as-she-goes dept.

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."

6 of 378 comments (clear)

  1. Within the retail sector... by Tastecicles · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...Dell have raised the awareness of Linux to the point where potentials are actually asking if Windows or Linux is installed. Eighteen months ago, that wouldn't have happened. Eighteen months ago people asked if a machine had XP, 2003, ME, 2K, or whatever version of Windows, but hardly ever Linux. I'm a Linux user myself, by preference (and politic, and budget), and advocate it wherever I can. I'm not saying it's for everybody, it might not be, but if you want a toaster, get a toaster. If you want a toaster that deep fries your sunday roast with all the trimmings, give Linux a go. :)

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    1. Re:Within the retail sector... by LingNoi · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you're on Ubuntu there are places such as http://www.getdeb.net/ where you can get popular programs that aren't in the repositories yet.

    2. Re:Within the retail sector... by zergl · · Score: 5, Insightful

      However, I'm now in a position where I want to install subversion and tomcat, and it's really not easy. Windows wins in this situation, because of the ease of automated installers. Which is a great shame, and I know I'll get lambasted because I haven't done enough research or put the effort into to learning the basics of installing on linux properly, but for it to ever be accepted in the mainstream by your average Joe, things like that need to "just work".

      Tomcat and SVN probably isn't part of what average Joe will use.

      While it's true that "professional" or "power user" software isn't that easy to setup (messing around in the configs with an editor, etc.), I don't think it would bother the ordinary desktop user very much, because he'll probably never need it.

      OTOH, installing everyday software like OOo, Gimp, Firefox, small little games etc. is extremely easy on linux in comparison to windows. Browse repository, install and forget. With the added bonus that the software you get is very probably free of malware of any kind (if you use $DISTRO default repository) and same goes for updates to that software.

    3. Re:Within the retail sector... by LingNoi · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not really. It's more to do with the fact that once a version of Ubuntu is released you only get security updates in the repository. So for example there is no Pidgin in Ubuntu Feisty because that was released after Ubuntu Feisty was.

      The reason they only provide security updates is because they don't want a situation where continuously updating stuff in the repositories breaks other programs. Instead Canonical will take a snapshot of all the new programs and work really hard testing that snapshot and sorting out all the bugs, release that out the door and start working on the next version.

      So if you want Pidgin or another must have updated program on Feisty then you go to getdeb.net

      Ubuntu Gutsy is being released on 18th this month (2 days) so that'll have a ton of updated programs, features, etc.

  2. It doesn't have to take over... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To be honest, I don't think it has to take over, nor do I think it will. Even Firefox didn't take over IE, but it did have some impact, and Microsoft changed its crappy CSS support to a _slightly_ better one. If Linux achieves ~20% or so it will be much harder for Microsoft to push its proprietary standards, and everyone benefits.

  3. Re:What about dual boot? by djfake · · Score: 5, Informative
    I bought a Vista box (since the license it probably cheaper and the warranty better server) from Dell: Was this easy or what? I just did a "shrink" to the massive C: in Vista, then booted off of Ubuntu CD and started the install, selecting "guided using freespace" when partitioning. After a reboot, grub had automatically configured Vista into the bootloader. I then edited /boot/grub/menu.lst to set it as the default.

    The other way around (adding Vista to a Linux Box) is slightly more complicated:

    http://my.opera.com/djfake/blog/dell-preloaded-with-ubuntu

    Or you could buy an Intel Mac and use boot camp, that's ea$y enough too! c

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