Slashdot Log In
Ubuntu Dell Now In UK, France, and Germany
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Aug 07, 2007 09:16 PM
from the world-domination dept.
from the world-domination dept.
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.'"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Canada? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like the next logical step since Canada is a very similar market to the U.S.
I don't buy the excuse that they would have to deal with French language regulations, since they're extending their deal to France and to another non-English country, namely, Germany.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Also, I don't believe there are laws in France requiring items to be sold in French.
Re:Canada? (Score:5, Funny)
Why don't the other provinces just get together in a preemptive strike and kick Quebec out? If it's not consitutional, you could make it constitutional with only Quebec in opposition. Heck, if they even get wind of it, they'd get up on their high horse and just go ahead and secede and you'd be free of them
Then you could have Dells with Ubuntu right now
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Because Quebec controls the St. Lawrence Seaway, which is a major strategic/economic lifeline for a significant part of the Canadian interior. (Because it connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic ocean, and gets used to take grain out.)
Perhaps that's not as big an issue as it once was -- I suspect there are many more grain exports to the U.S. and Asia than there are to Europe, now that the Cold War is over and people
Re: (Score:2)
Why wouldn't Dell extend this deal into Canada?
Well, they could extend it to France as they claimed they did... I just did a search for "Ubuntu" on dell.fr and got a "Sorry, your search yielded no result" response (except it was "Désolé, aucun résultat trouvé" obviously).
Also I always wonder why PC makers who try this always do so only on their entry level model. As if they believed people got Linux because it was cheaper (hint : I seriously doubt that's the main reason for the great majority of users). I had my sight sets on someth
Wow... MS really fractured OSS community... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this a win? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Is this a win? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am inclined to trust Mark Shuttleworth when he makes reasonable compromises to make PCs work today. I feel this way because he does so without relenting in his efforts to ensure that a Free Ubuntu remains available to all. It's obvious to anyone who watches how he spends his money that he really is committed to Software Freedom, and that Ubuntu and Canonical are simply means to achieve that end.
He is also a businessman who understands what is required to achieve acceptance of said Freedom in the real world. It's clear that there are interim steps involved, which involve dirtying one's shoes with proprietary kludges from time to time. It's a necessary step, not because of any innate shortcomings in the FOSS model, but because of limitations in the manufacture and marketing of proprietary hardware and software.
Free Software breeds more Free Software. It's not 'viral', as Microsoft likes to say - it's addictive. The benefits of openness and cooperation are immense in a world where intellectual wealth is infinitely replicable. Shuttleworth knows this. In order to addict a wider part of the population, therefore, it's necessary to ensure that some product (heh) reach them, even if it's been adulterated somewhat.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
That's not the same. Free software in itself is not 'viral'. The GNU (and similar licenses) could be viewed as viral though.
In working for a corporation, I've seen the "why not use open source?" question asked a few times, and the answers are the same everytime:
free open source is fine
stay away from GNU
I don't know, let us see the license .
We (for example) use the ACE framework [wustl.edu] with no problems,
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely. See here [slashdot.org] for more detailed explanation of why even truly open source software (BSD, Mozilla License) often can't even touch GPLed code. Sadly, GPL is viral and prevents co-operation even in the open source world. It's not MS who says it's viral, it's open source developers who do.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
*GP
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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 ab
Re:Is this a win? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Is this a win? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
KDE? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No. GNOME is the default on all distros that are likely to be pre-installed these days, Ubuntu, SUSE and Red Hat/Fedora.
You can of course very easily install KDE on these systems, a simple apt-get on Ubuntu for example.
The reason, I suspect, is mostly the licensing of Qt and KDE, which is the GPL (and not LGPL, which GTK+ is). This makes it less corporate-friendly, in a way. It probably explains the big shift to GNOME in the major distros, as well as
Re: (Score:2)
dell? (Score:5, Funny)
For all the haters out there, let me just say that I like linux and I like ubuntu. Being community based, they've managed to get popular without getting the illwill that red hat did. And I think this is a good thing in general, but let's be honest: Dell sucks. This would have been great news 5 years ago when Dell was the top dog, but now they're racing to the bottom. HP/Compaq, Gateway, Lenevo, etc are eating their lunch. Apple is where it's at.
I've started a letter writing campaign to Steve Jobs to encourage him to sell Macintosh computers preloaded with Linux. Apple is on the leading edge of personal computing (or at least the journalists and newsmakers seem to think so). If we could encourage them to ship an iMac with ubuntu linux (or maybe kubuntu), that would have a halo effect. Curious people would install ubuntu on their home pcs. Maybe Apple will even open source iWork (Pages/Keynote/Numbers) and we'll finally have a decent word processor and spreadsheet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Good job, Dell (Score:5, Interesting)
The machine made it through its first major presentation to clients today (not presenting the laptop, but presenting materials to the client) without a hitch. I've installed Kubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Enlightenment, and Fluxbox on it so far. I was really, *really* tempted to run Enlightenment during the presentation today, just because of the slick animations and minimal GUI.
I'm not the most talented Ubuntu apologist, but I think that most of us who should be using it, know who we are.
BTW, my non-techie wife uses this machine every day without problems.
Not yet your can't (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not yet your can't (Score:4, Informative)
The only option for the Inspiron 6400 in Germany remains Windows Vista for now (going through the normal www.dell.de pages). They don't even have XP any more. I wouldn't touch Vista with a ten foot pole before the first service pack comes out.
Are there notebooks with Ubuntu that have a modem built in? A modem can be your only option on the road sometimes. And I even got my brothers Thinkpad A20 modem to work with Debian.
Parent
Europe ? (Score:2)
Well, geography was not my favourite subject, still, I got fed up with similar moves. Reminds me of iTunes, like how it's available in Europe... right. People complain about globalization, hell, I'd really prefer it, if it would mean services would be global - or at least be available in Europe if they say it's available in Europe. Made me angry about on the same level when I happened to find some good stuff in an on
Microsoft present tense... (Score:2)
Not as of today, they can't. I live in the UK, and I just went to dell.co.uk and started to customize an order for an Inspiron 6400. Guess what? The operating system options are Windows, Windows, or some other flavour of Windows. "Any OS you like, just as long as it's Windows".
Looks like the Dell marketroid who issued the statement was usi
Ubuntu preloaded PC in France (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a friend of mine who runs his business with only email and phone, he have 4 employees that do the same thing. All the PCs at his office are used for email, browsing the web and some document editing sometimes
From the Dell website(!) (Score:2, Interesting)
"The main thing to note is that when you choose open source you don't get a Windows® operating system."
Aaahh, so that's what this Ubuntu thing is all about..
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Decision point (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Decision point (Score:4, Informative)
*trying to dispel the Linux is an OS confusion*
Parent
I second that (Score:2)
Hobbyist Image (Score:2)
While Linux (and the other opensource projects surrounding it) isn't just 'grass roots' as it once used to be the community and its individual (sometimes hobbyist) members are very important. It's good that the key developers around Linux are employed at companies where they can program for Linux and be paid for it. But where would Linux be without those many people writing bug-reports, howtos, translations and the like? Gentoo and Ubuntu wouldn't be half as popular if their many wiki entr
Re:Why does Dell give Ubuntu/Inspiron the slow CPU (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
errr. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:waiting for a better deal from dell (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was hired in January, I chose a Mac, and they issued me a 15" MacBook Pro, 2 GB RAM/120 GB disk. I'm fairly confident this will still be a highly usable machine in three years. Lots of people have PowerBooks that are between 2 and 3 years old, and while they think a new MBP would be cool, they have no complaints with their current hardware; it's getting the job done and performing well. The people running Linux or BSD are doing OK, too.
But the ones with 3-year old notebooks running XP, they practically have their upgrade eligibility date marked in red on the calendar (some probably really do). Compared to the Mac and Linux and BSD machines of the same age, those 3 year old Windows boxes are just wheezing along. What this means for the purchaser of a Dell Ubuntu box, then, is that if they buy a decently speced-out machine now, the can reasonably expect that in three years it will still be very serviceable. Even if you pay a little more for it, you'll get that money back in the form of longer hardware upgrade cycles. This fact can't be lost on Dell, I wonder if that's a factor in any price differences?
Interestingly, a thing I hear regularly from people waiting for their hardware upgrade cycle is that they plan to get a Mac next time instead of a Windows machine. At least in engineering, Macs have already become the majority platform. I was in a meeting today and looked around the table and counted that 80% of the attendees had Macs.
Regular users still mostly opt for Windows, of course, but both here where I work and at a couple of recent conferences I went to (not Black Hat and Defcon, but security-oriented anyway), there were a lot of people with Macs or PC notebooks minus Windows. A guy a couple rows in front of me was running FreeBSD on his. Everywhere, I hear people who currently have Windows saying they are going to take a serious look at moving to Mac or Linux. Microsoft is losing, or at risk of losing, a great deal of mindshare in the community of programmers, engineers, and other technical fields. One of the things that helped make Microsoft who they are today is great mindshare in that group. If they lose it, that loss can go a long way toward breaking them. Interest in, and acceptance of, Macs and Linux machines in the corporate environment seems to be at an all-time high and going up rapidly.
I'm sure Microsoft is concerned, but I don't believe they fully appreciate the peril, fully appreciate how close the tipping point may be. The next 2 or 3 years, while they work on the successor to Vista while many of their users cling to XP or move to Mac or Linux should be very interesting.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In case that went over your head, look up disjunct adverbs.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The links from there are currently broken, however.
Re:Yawn - more Dell hot air (Score:4, Insightful)
You're clearly a person of great principle with very little free-time on your hands. Are you what they call a power consumer?
Parent