Dell's Subnotebook To Ship With Ubuntu

k33l0r writes "Dell's entry into the sub-notebook market, the Inspiron 910, will ship with Ubuntu preinstalled. This was confirmed this morning when Gizmodo published (leaked) specifications for the Inspiron 910." I hope that's not the final form of the keyboard, though -- lots of wasted space on each side.

Comments

That's good news

[Nursie]

I wish my EEE 901 had shipped with ubuntu too, instead of Xandros.

Not that it's bad for beginners, but I'm not sure I want such a toy OS. I know Ubuntu eee exists, but I'd musch rather have the official distro. Or debian...

Re:That's good news

[British]

I have the opposite view. I have the default Xandros on my EEE PC and like it more than Ubuntu. Still no gcc(haven't figured that one out), but I can:

1. Tweak my mousewheel settings(still can't find that in Ubuntu)
2. tweak the GUI easily(through that big config manager)
3. add/remove/tweak start menu items easily. Look at that, I added MAME to the Games section. Look at that, it put wireshark in a start menu section by itself.
4. Effortlessly hook up to a wireless network
5. Numerous other things that have been frustrating in Unbuntu.

I bought a used IBM desktop(4 Ghz) and it seems sluggish with Unbuntu on it compared to the EEE. Even turning off the bells & whistles didn't do much of a difference.

Probably the right way to go

[Van Cutter Romney]

I have an 8.9" eee pc running on the Intel Mobile Processor (read Celeron). I have both Ubuntu and XP running on dual boot but use Ubuntu more than often. XP is still **very** slow on the laptop and there is continuous disk activity while running it.

Re:Probably the right way to go

[cwAllenPoole]

I'm really surprised that anyone would WANT XP on this. First, MS is poo-pooing its own product. Second, it is a lot harder to get XP customized and paired down enough. Third, (at least for me), one of the big sells of MS OS's is compatibility. With this, however, I'd imagine that most of the work will be with OOo, Mozilla, or equivalent, something which is already cross platform compatible.

No docking support...

[east coast]

This would seem a lot neater, if not more worth while, if it had a dock option. I just look at what HP did with the 1100 tablet and it's dock and think that they had the right idea with some slight short comings. Something in the same vein could have been done with this.

Re:That is great news! But..

[Skrynesaver]

Of course it will, but at least you can seek better paid support elsewhere (Canonical) or indeed the quite excellent ubuntuforums.org for free. I love the way the UMPC market is exposing Linux to people who would never have heard of it otherwise, there was even an MS spokesdrone in our local computing press saying that "Yes, the Linux option is suitable for beginners but experienced users would prefer the Windows option on the EEE", laugh, I nearly wet myself.

Re:If it's a linux computer...

[Stormwatch]

Nah. Everyone should just use the Saint John's Arms , like Apple does.

Re:That is great news! But..

[east coast]

Maybe you posted as an AC just to get a quick jab in but I would pose that question seriously.

It seems that, with the gadget crowd, Linux support is always sweet in the beginning as they oogle over the new machine but as soon as something new comes out the old gadget is left to collect dust. Suddenly Ubuntu moves on a version or two and people still running the old gadget are left in no man's land with support issues. The people who really understand Linux are too busy with the new gadget to support the old. It's the long term user who's left holding the bag.

Will Dell continue to support this as the distro progresses or should the unit come with a sticker warning the user not to upgrade beyond the current version? It's kind of burned my ass the number of times I tried to pull some older gadgets over to Linux only to find that if I use the distro's 2 or 3 year old package I was fine but if I wanted the latest and greatest I was busied with the work of just getting basic functionality going. The upgrade cycle concerns me too much in some cases to give Linux a try if the only support I have is community based.

I likely will not go "100%" Linux for a long long time. Most of it has to do with working in a Windows shop and, frankly, liking my games. But even if that wasn't an issue I still haven't warmed up to the community support aspect.

Re:That is great news! But..

[suggsjc]

Yes, that's a bug...and one I recently encountered. But the fix is easy (but admittedly not obvious). You just kill the processes that hang and then reinstall the locales package once you restart. I fully agree that manually killing processes is not something you want your average user to have to do, but the workarounds are out there and (for the most part) clearly documented in those links you speak of.

I think this discussion started from someone wondering if Dell will continue to support this laptop several years down the road. To me it seems that as hardware matures its support just gets better. Just think of how many posts you hear about people putting xubuntu on their "old P2 sitting around collecting dust" and it "just works" because that hardware is well understood. So as long as Dell provides enough information about the hardware at the onset, then it will be supported well at first and as bugs/issues arise they will be incorporated into the mainstream codebases.

Re:MS ISV astroturf

[should_be_linear]

Actually, I noticed exactly the same thing. There were 2 guys sitting on our *linux* news-server day and night and waiting for any article on, specifically, eee or OpenOffice. As soon as there was one, they immediately started stupid trolls on how windows rules (sadly, no rating system on that site) so I asked them: Are you guys professional trolls? I mean, PR agencies could easily be involved in this, so I am asking. They didn't answer and I learned they always quit discussion (trolling) after this little question. I wonder why, they could lie they really believe in what they are saying.