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Michael Dell Using Ubuntu Linux At Home
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Apr 19, 2007 08:31 AM
from the hmmmm dept.
from the hmmmm dept.
whoever57 sends us a link from the Dell site noting that Michael Dell is using Ubuntu Linux at home (7.04, Feisty Fawn) on a Precision M90 laptop loaded with Openoffice.org and Evolution. If one were betting on which distro Dell will eventually ship pre-installed, this factoid might be food for thought. Oh, and Micheal Dell's gaming system uses XP Media Center edition.
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Dell Opens a Poll On Linux Options 404 comments
narramissic writes "In response to overwhelming user demand for Linux, Dell has posted a survey on a company blog that asks 'PC users to choose between Linux flavors such as Fedora and Ubuntu, and to pick more general choices such as notebooks versus desktops, high-end models versus value models and telephone-based support versus community-based support.' Votes will be collected through March 23, and Dell plans to use the feedback to begin selling Linux-based consumer PCs." The poll is pretty minimal. Wonder how much it will really guide Dell's choices.
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Just an advert (Score:4, Funny)
Given all the other stuff he has I bet the baseline Linux machine will be the toilet one.
Or the one he threatens his kids with:
"Screw around on teh internets and you will use Linux for the rest of the week"
Having said that, its REALLY good Dell are actually selling machines, the specified model just looks crap compared to the other kit on the page.
Re:Just an advert (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
* Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 Processor
* 4GB DDR2 667Mhz DRAM
* 17" WXGA+ Widescreen LCD
* 160GB 7200rpm SATA hard drive
* 8X DVD +/- RW optical drive
* NVIDIA Quadro FX 3500 512MB
That is hardly a damn baseline machine. It is a mobile workstation for crying out loud with a QUADRO! Yes, not great for 3D accel, but they have caught up and I think great 2D accel might be more warranted in Linux anyway. Most people using it that I know are not running crazy 3D games in it. Yes, most the other systems on the page would smoke this, but that hardly is saying much.
I also wouldn't start assuming what systems will have Linux installs, but I will put money that there w
Re:Just an advert (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a newish dell laptop with and intel Graphics card running Ubuntu and google Earth has masive drawing errors and is unstable.
I have a 4 year old desktop with as 32Mb NVidia card running Ubuntu and google earth works perfectly.
I don't need 3d for games, but I do need some small amount of 3D. for simple stuff.
Next laptop I buy will have an NVidia card, I hear they are power hungry, and expencive, but at least I will have some form of 3d working.
Parent
Businessmen & Their Customers (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple reason being that a good businessman never assumes what's good for him is good for his customer.
Maybe he ist looking at a course change? (Score:5, Insightful)
But as Linux gains more market share, it is time for Dell to re-evaluate this position. Michael Dell using Ubuntu may be part of such research. If so, he is acting with more foresight than some managers I know
Parent
Re:Businessmen & Their Customers (Score:4, Interesting)
He's saying that the fact that M. Dell is using Ubuntu should not play a major factor into what distro Dell decides to ship to its customers. The opposite is not true... If he were to pick a distro AFTER the decision had been made, he may very well choose to use the same distro his company is shipping.
We don't know if that decision has been made, what it is, or why M. Dell chose Ubuntu. Making assumptions on any that is foolhardy at best. But then, that's what journalism means today. Making half-assed assumptions and printing them as fact. When you're wrong, you just write the retraction in tiny print on the billionth page.
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Re:Businessmen & Their Customers (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, the company he led to massive profits. He was fired by VC's and investors who thought a slick oldschool CEO could do better. After nearly going bankrupt and being bailed out by Microsoft of all people they finally brought jobs back. Jobs then led them to the iMac the multi-colored top selling personal computer (to this day as far as I know) and then the IPod and the intel macs.
Yeah, Jobs is a terrible businessman who accidently drives massive profits where 'good businessmen' can't seem to make it fly.
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MS tax (Score:5, Funny)
FIVE?! (Score:5, Insightful)
How much time does he spend applying patches and updating software? Transferring data?
THREE different laptops? Doesn't he realize that the whole appeal of a laptop is that you can take it with you wherever you go?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I can... One PC to act as my home theater, another PC acting as a big ol' server, a corporate approved box that I can use to work from home, a gaming rig, and another laptop to do normal computer-type stuff. And that's not even counting any machines that would be for other people in the house to use.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Feisty released (Score:5, Informative)
Although it's not officially announced yet, the Ubuntu Feisty Fawn torrents are live:
Desktop i386 [ubuntu.com]
Desktop AMD64 [ubuntu.com]
Server i386 [ubuntu.com]
Server AMD64 [ubuntu.com]
The more exotic torrents (and the directly downloadable ISOs) can be found at the official release site [ubuntu.com] but I thought we'd try to save their servers a bit of pain and heartache.
No Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
He's smart, why shouldn't he run linux (Score:5, Funny)
I used to support executives (Score:4, Insightful)
They simply did not acknowledge that anyone in the organization had any sort of technical problems at all and chalked it up to nerdy whining. Our budgets were routinely slashed, hardware and software was left running long past end of life, capacity planning was a joke and the internal costs for help desk calls and deskside visits were jacked up to absurdly high levels so that no managers would permit their own people to use them. Complaints to senior management were met with not so vague threats of termination, STFU, GBTW!
So if Mike Dell uses uBuntu it's probably because he's imperially disconnected from the realities in his own company. To him, I'm sure he feels that everyone has 5 PC's and full time free dedicated support from the best brains in the industry and what on earth are these peons complaining about now for God's sake?
Re:I used to support executives (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
You all fell for it: this is PR at work.... (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon, folks--- this is PR working at its finest and you're getting sucked right into the nozzle. Dell support for Linux has been scant and waffling for years. Now you're being seduced by the fantasy that The Big Dell actually uses an OSS system. Get real.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
CD - ubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso.torrent [linuxtracker.org]
DVD - feisty-dvd-i386.iso.torrent [linuxtracker.org]
Re:How did he download the release so fast? (Score:4, Informative)
http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04/ [ubuntu.com]
The iso's are on that site now.
Parent
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows Migration Assistant? [michaellarabel.com]
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Re:Errmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Joe - " I setup Portage to run off a CDB backend, and now my metadata is corrupt. Fix my box, bitch!"
Kerpal - " Ok, sir, please turn off the computer and remove the power cord for 2 minutes. "
Joe - " No, f*** you that won't fix it. I need a tarball of this and that, and a custom shell script to reindex those..."
Kerpal - " Ok, sir, I am going to put you on hold... (hold music) AAAAAAAAAH *BOOM* *SPLAT* *CLICK*"
Ultimately they want a nice easy distro to appeal to the masses, because that's the business they're in. I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with a nice idiot-proof restore CD as well, because the expensive part is training the thousands of tech support people worldwide. Having them pop in a restore disc is an easy way to deal with it, because ultimately that's what a lot of techs end up doing when Windows acts up too... just blow it away and start over. That's how they're trained. Advanced software troubleshooting is a luxury billed by the hour, not covered by the puny hardware warranty.
Parent
What? (Score:4, Informative)
I can see that this isn't (i) a definite 'No' (and nor would it be); (ii) "We'd be delighted if the Dell team want to get in touch"; (iii) "I have their Cease & Desist and Restraining Orders on my office wall -- we'll get Dell to ship Ubuntu, just you see"; or (iv) "We're integrating Wine and Launchpad to track users via the default-installed Dell add-ons". However, I don't think that there's enough there to be sure that it is any hint of talks, as Canonical's and Ubuntu's status would rise if Mark Shuttleworth could give the impression that Dell were interested.
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