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Michael Dell Using Ubuntu Linux At Home
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Apr 19, 2007 07:31 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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Michael Dell Using Ubuntu Linux At Home
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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)
Re:Just an advert (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://swerdfeger.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday May 25 2003, @12:25AM)
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.
M90 (Score:2)
However, I am not allowed to use Linux.
Dell support would be fine, but corporate policies need to change too.
He is not the only one - Happy Feisty Fawn day! (Score:2)
(http://commandline.org.uk/ | Last Journal: Wednesday May 30, @05:49AM)
Businessmen & Their Customers (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/~eldavojohn/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 16, @03:26PM)
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
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.
Re:Businessmen & Their Customers (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.ganjablogger.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday January 05 2006, @05:36PM)
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.
MS tax (Score:5, Funny)
Errmmmm (Score:2, Troll)
(http://stylus-toolbox.sf.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 15, @11:50AM)
What? (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Wednesday April 05 2006, @05:24AM)
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.
Re:Errmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
(http://fnarg.com/)
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.
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?
Makes perfect sense to me (Score:2)
not bad (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Seriously? (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.kibbee.ca/)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://whineymacfanboy.googlepages.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday April 12 2007, @09:28AM)
Windows Migration Assistant? [michaellarabel.com]
Oh Boy (Score:2, Flamebait)
(http://www.pembo13.com/)
Support...... (Score:2, Funny)
(http://www.alancurry.com/)
None. He has support take care of it.
No Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
He's smart, why shouldn't he run linux (Score:5, Funny)
Big Deal. (Score:1)
(http://www.leperkhanz.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 01 2003, @05:17AM)
On a serious note though, he would probably sell more computers (eventually) if he DID switch a majority of his machines over to Ubuntu.
A. They'd be cheaper.
B. They'd work better.
C. They could have Beryl eye candy.
I mean, those 3 things are enough to easily make a Feisty machine sell more than a windows machine for 90% of the users out there who don't REALLY need DirectX.
rhY
Just sounds like a plug for Dell systems nothing (Score:2)
(http://ninjadeals.blogspot.com/)
OS by Ubuntu (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Wednesday November 07, @10:09AM)
Watch by Cartier
Desk by Ethan Allen
Suit by Armani
Who cares what Michael Dell has on his laptop? How many people who work for "American" car companies drive "Japanese" cars? Just because his company has a deal with Bill Gates doesn't mean MD has to run Windows on his laptop, nor does it mean that what's on his laptop is going into production laptops. Talk about creating a stir over nothing...
Gaming rig?! (Score:2)
(http://www.unity08.com/)
Get back to work, you slacker!
I used to support executives (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Monday October 29, @07:20AM)
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)
Soft (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://telebody.com | Last Journal: Tuesday July 30 2002, @07:28AM)
I must be the only one who thinks displays look cooler with something displayed in them.
That said it is almost enough to get me to buy those dual 30" ultrasharp displays. I mean they must be readable if Dell has them at home, right? Just how much do those suckers cost I wonder.. Quality of LCD display is pretty important to me as my eyes need rest.
more facts (Score:2)
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.
From the drug world (Score:2)
2007WFP, eh? (Score:1)
(http://www.1019.net/)
* UltraSharp 20-inch widescreen flat-panel monitor, 2007WFP
He's also got a Dell DJ (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Thursday July 12, @12:30PM)
At least he doesn't have a Zune. Michel Dell and Steve Ballmer squirting in an airport terminal... *shudder*
Nice (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Thursday July 12, @12:30PM)
Seriously, though, look at how often over the years he said he'd make AMD boxes, but always stuck with Intel (after another round of extorted price cuts, one imagines) and now they're finally offering AMD CPUs in several lines. Maybe this really is the start of offering a line of supported Dells with Linux.
Vetted (Score:2)
(http://fwarren.homelinux.net/)
Yes that was meant to be funny.
Ian Murdock (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Monday January 15 2007, @10:11PM)
Overclocking ?! :) (Score:2)
"Dell XPS 710 H2C
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 processor overclocked to 3.2GHz"
so? (Score:1)
It's not like it was reported that Bill Gates uses Ubuntu at home.
Gamer? (Score:2)
He just happens to have one machine using Linux (Score:2)
Oh, please, this is a fucking advertisement for Dell products.
Don't waste my time with this drivel.
Re:mikey likes it... (Score:2)
(http://www.movetoiceland.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday June 02 2004, @11:02AM)
It's not OS/X. It's OS X. And it's not "oh ess ex" it's "oh ess ten"
Re:How did he download the release so fast? (Score:3, Informative)
(Last Journal: Sunday April 22 2007, @01:32PM)
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.
Re:mikey likes it... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:mikey likes it... (Score:1)
Grow up.
Re:mikey likes it... (Score:2)
(http://localhost/)
Re:Seems just an ad (Score:2)
(http://singularity-ahead.blogspot.com/)
Unless he didn't install it and decided to try out one of the new Dell Linux laptops before they hit the streets, so it had Ubuntu on it before it left the factory floor. Which is why there's the speculation that Ubuntu will be the distro used in Dell's consumer Linux machines.
Then again, seeing as the guy got rich from building PCs in his bedroom, I doubt he's a usual corporate exec when it comes to technical matters. Hell, he could be a