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Ubuntu Dell Now In UK, France, and Germany

Posted by kdawson on Tue Aug 07, 2007 09:16 PM
from the world-domination dept.
Linux Business
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.'"
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  • Canada? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by javacowboy (222023) on Tuesday August 07 2007, @09:23PM (#20151367) Homepage
    Why wouldn't Dell extend this deal into Canada?

    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.
    • Definitely a weird move... While this is obviously not a representative sample of the whole population of Canada, I know of at least two people who were holding off on much-needed laptop purchases in the hopes of Canada making that list. Guess Dell won't be getting their business yet.
    • Also, Linux does quite well on the i8n front. Installing Mandriva, there was more languages then I could even name. Also, being a Canadian, I don't think that they are required to sell all their products in French. You don't see the book stores selling all the same books in both French and English. Then again, all the video games come with a French manual, even if the entire game is in English.
        • But does Ubuntu have an appropriate French Canadian localization? Selling a French France localization wouldn't work (since the languages are too different) and they can't sell just english either (because of the law) so they would need to do a French Canadian localization for Ubuntu.

          Also, I don't believe there are laws in France requiring items to be sold in French.

        • Re:Canada? (Score:5, Funny)

          by gujo-odori (473191) on Wednesday August 08 2007, @01:21AM (#20152955)
          Every non-Quebecois I know wishes Quebec would follow through on those threats to secede they make from time to time.

          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 :)
          • Why don't the other provinces just get together in a preemptive strike and kick Quebec out?

            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

    • 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)

    by 3seas (184403) on Tuesday August 07 2007, @09:33PM (#20151451) Homepage Journal
    ...but apparently its the OSS fractions that's wedging into territory occupied by MS...

  • I feel this is only a win if Ubuntu and Suse stop embracing proprietary, non-free (as in freedom) drivers. If they don't then the hardware manufacturers will still in in control of your computer, and you'll be at their mercy if there are bugs in the drivers which make the hardware unusable with your selected distro. Only if there is a push for free drivers will this be a win for everyone, rather than just for Ubuntu, Suse and others that happily ship non-free drivers.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Machtyn (759119)
      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
      • Apparently because it's not wholly theirs to release. At least that's what they claim.

    • Re:Is this a win? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grcumb (781340) on Tuesday August 07 2007, @10:58PM (#20152101) Homepage Journal

      I feel this is only a win if Ubuntu and Suse stop embracing proprietary, non-free (as in freedom) drivers. If they don't then the hardware manufacturers will still in in control of your computer, and you'll be at their mercy if there are bugs in the drivers which make the hardware unusable with your selected distro.

      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.

      • Free Software breeds more Free Software. It's not 'viral', as Microsoft likes to say - it's addictive.

        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,

        • That's not the same. Free software in itself is not 'viral'. The GNU (and similar licenses) could be viewed as viral though.

          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)

      by Repossessed (1117929)
      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.

      *GP

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Repossessed (1117929)
        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 ab

      • Re:Is this a win? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by bberens (965711) on Tuesday August 07 2007, @10:15PM (#20151779)
        I have mixed feelings about proprietary software on a Dell box. On one hand I try to promote the open source movement where I think it belongs (generally speaking any software that 'everyone needs'). On the other hand I can see many people wanting to try this 'open source' thing buying a computer from trusty Dell and going WTF when they can't play a DVD in their DVD drive. Dell, having complete power over what it installs in the box should have no problem choosing only hardware with open drivers. At the same time I wouldn't mind it too badly if they cut a deal a la Linspire so that users could (legally) get DVD playback.

          • Re:Is this a win? (Score:5, Informative)

            by pilot1 (610480) on Tuesday August 07 2007, @11:01PM (#20152123)

            And I see WTF right there, as proprietary drivers are not required to play DVD. You can play DVDs very well with readily available open source drivers. What are you trying to say, bberens? That spreading FUD is fun for you? Are you malicious or just ignorant?
            Proprietary drivers are not required to play DVDs, but this library [wikipedia.org] is.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by naich (781425)
              No it isn't. That library is required to play DVDs that have been encrypted with CSS. Any other DVD plays fine without it.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by MooUK (905450)
              That library is also completely open.
      • Wrong. I have installed Ubuntu on two separate machines, and both times I got non-free drivers installed by default, and the 'restricted' component of the package repository enabled ('multiverse' too, I think).
          • I didn't state my opinion on whether having the non-free stuff installed was a good or bad thing... I just wanted to correct the chap who claimed that this was not the case.

  • KDE? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Karma Sucks (127136)
    Is KDE the default on any of these configurations?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kripkenstein (913150)

      Is KDE the default on any of these configurations?

      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

      • though you can always get Kbuntu, though i find the application management isn't nearly as streamlined as the GNOME one is. then again, i haven't tried kbuntu in a few versions, so it might have improved since then.

  • dell? (Score:5, Funny)

    by larry bagina (561269) on Tuesday August 07 2007, @10:57PM (#20152085) Journal

    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.

    • Macs preloaded with Linux? You're forcing your luck.
    • I guess you'll get laughet on return of your request, I guess it is easier to see flying pigs than to ever think of apple selling computers with Linux...

      and we'll finally have a decent word processor and spreadsheet
      Oh sorry, we already do.

  • Good job, Dell (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheModelEskimo (968202) on Wednesday August 08 2007, @12:00AM (#20152531)
    I "voted with my cash" as I've seen others mention, and ordered a Dell Ubuntu laptop. Best computing decision I've ever made, easily. If you are even entertaining the slightest thoughts about getting one, do it.

    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)

    by Spad (470073) <slashdotNO@SPAMspad.co.uk> on Wednesday August 08 2007, @01:06AM (#20152905) Homepage
    Hidden in the press release and not obvious on the main UK site is a text link to www.dell.co.uk/ubuntu [dell.co.uk]

    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)

      by lobStar (1103461)
      The corresponding German [dell.de] and French [dell.fr] sites exist too, with the same 404 errors.

    • Re:Not yet your can't (Score:4, Informative)

      by Britz (170620) on Wednesday August 08 2007, @04:15AM (#20153781)
      As well as www.dell.co.uk/ubuntu www.dell.de/ubuntu also presents an Ubuntu page in German with the same results if you click on the links.

      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.
  • availability of Ubuntu in Europe [...] consumers in the United Kingdom, France and Germany

    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
  • "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..."

    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
  • Dell are acting like amateurs. At Dell France website there is no way to find any machine with Ubuntu, I tried the search, "/ubuntu", manually checked almost all their offer, there is no Ubuntu on the page. At best the client is redirected to Dell USA with the USA offerings of PCs with Ubuntu.

    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 Dell Ubuntu Page:

    "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)

      by pboyd2004 (860767)
      The way I see it choice is good. Dell or other OEMs selling other OSes than just Windows is good for the customer. Even if they try to make it "into the Same Old Thing" it is still a different choice and that's a good thing.

    • Re:Decision point (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bberens (965711) on Tuesday August 07 2007, @10:05PM (#20151699)
      Linux is not a 'grass roots' operating system, and hasn't been for a long time. It's been a very capable server OS which is backed by several large corporations. It's just now making headway into the desktop market. It's sort of the reverse of what Windows did. Linux needs to shake its grass roots image if it wants to make bigger waves in the business world. Please stop referring to it as such because it only strengthens the idea that linux is a toy for hobbyists.

      • Re:Decision point (Score:4, Informative)

        by Khyber (864651) <khyberkitsune@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 08 2007, @12:16AM (#20152631) Journal
        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*
        • The notion (or assumption) of "the Linux OS" is a very unfortunate and confusing delusion in the world of software. It causes otherwise intelligent techies to start talking about a mythical FOSS operating system "Linux" as if users who are exposed to its various userland environments are having a shared experience. Yet the methods for setting up printers, network shares and applications can be wildly divergent between distros (or... the methods are mostly the same, just ignore the page and-a-half extra shel
      • I kindly disagree.

        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

      • errr. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        All operating systems suck! Use whatever you like.

      • Re:waiting for a better deal from dell (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gujo-odori (473191) on Wednesday August 08 2007, @01:56AM (#20153151)
        Another factor in the valuation is the hardware life cycle. For example, at my company you get your choice of a Mac, a Windows machine or installing the BSD or Linux distro of your choice (on pretty much a support-it-yourself basis), and you're eligible for a new machine every three years.

        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.
      • No they won't let you order somthing from the UK site unless you have a UK address. The same offices deal with the UK as Ireland (in fact they are in Ireland) and UK Sales can't ship to addresses outside the UK.

      • You cannot use the word "hopefully" that way. Hopefully can only be used as an adverb. A correct usage could be "she waits hopefully."
        Frankly, Anonymous Coward, I don't give a damn.

        In case that went over your head, look up disjunct adverbs.

    • Re:Yawn - more Dell hot air (Score:4, Insightful)

      by delire (809063) on Wednesday August 08 2007, @04:52AM (#20153995)

      Go to Dell's UK site and do a search for Ubuntu. No products offered.
      So, let me get this straight: having heard of hearing of Dell's plans to sell laptops with Ubuntu in the U.K - announced 24 hours ago - you've been to their website to look for said laptop, not found it and went on to configure and buy a Toshiba with Windows on it instead. Shortly afterward you came here to angrily inform us that the offering is nothing but hot air - an attempt to get free publicity and take advantage of lower margins on software from Microsoft Holland's Dutch CEO.

      You're clearly a person of great principle with very little free-time on your hands. Are you what they call a power consumer?

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