Ubuntu Dell Now In UK, France, and Germany 183
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.'"
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.
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Does it include i8n 5p33k?
Seriously, why are otherwise-sensible programmers too lazy to type localization? I've never gotten it. Is it something to do with an old 8 character filename restriction?
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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
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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
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the Franciphone culture and its representation in the provence of Quebec are an important piece of Canada.
for more then just economic reasons.
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For example: France has 'Stop' signs whereas Quebec has 'Arretez'...
It should also be noted that Parisian french and Canadian french are bastard cousins of each other.
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Dammit, it's my bike shed and it will be green.
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We should get Ubuntu dells first!!!
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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
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(I am waiting impatiently for dell to offer them in canada).
Wow... MS really fractured OSS community... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this a win? (Score:2, Insightful)
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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.
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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,
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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.
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And your legal dept. have a problem with that, why? Because you're relying on closed-source to make money instead of providing ongoing services for clients that they couldn't get otherwise get with just the sourcecode? Maybe you need a new businessmodel.
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They're making over 2 billion dollars a year in profit (and have been for some years) and they're in the top 5 providers for their domain (though this position is self-proclaimed, so it might not be really that accurate). Considering their purpose is makin
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*GP
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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)
Re:Is this a win? (Score:5, Informative)
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<Joe User>In other words, it doesn't play DVDs.</Joe User>
Seriously, do you know anyone that *only* use their DVD player to watch home-made DVDs and pr0n, which are generally the only DVDs without? Note that people that only download DVDs from the net don't count, since they don't give a shit about legality anyway.
While your technically correct, for practical purposes Linux d
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From the wikipedia article I linked earlier:
In many countries it is forbidden to sell or document programs that provide ways around copy prevention systems. CSS is not a copy prevention system, but rather primarily a region-control market segmentation system.[citation needed] Despite this fact, many Linux distributions do not contain libdvdcss (for example Debian, SUSE Linux, and Ubuntu) due to fears of running afoul of DMCA-style laws.
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Even if we didn't recognise software patents, there is still the problem that libdvdcss is made illegal by our implementation of the EUCD.
KDE? (Score:2, Interesting)
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sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install kubuntu-desktop
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That's interesting, considering Debian is just about the same age as his UID is. Heck, mine's seven years old, I think.
No (Score:1)
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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
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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 the focus on GNOME in nearly all the new mobile Linux initiatives.
KDE's libraries are LGPL, so it's only QT libs that are GPL'ed, though that is of little consequence as of the present. And I don't worry too much about KDEs future, the shift to GNOME just mark the entering of the non-powerusers into the linux system. KDE is empowerment, features and customizability. Gnome is "get-the-hell-out-of-my-way", "do-as-little-as-possible" and conformality. Nothing wrong with either one, as long as I don't have to use Gnome. A limited system might be better for new users, especi
waiting for a better deal from dell (Score:1, Interesting)
The cheapest dell/Ubuntu is $499.
I'd buy a machine right now if the pricing made sense.
Even if they shipped the $349 box with a blank hard drive I'd buy that over the Ubuntu @ $499
And the walmart everex 20 watt machine that was in all the news a couple weeks ago is MIA. I went to the local superstore and they not only did not have any everex desktops, they had no idea what $298 offer I was talking about.
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.
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Because the coders of FOSS applications have writing ever cleaner code as one of their primary motivations. A study published for the European Commission (page 49) [europa.eu] last year showed that approximately 50% of the code in the Debian repository had been replaced at least every 5 years. Cleaner code leads inevitably to more efficient code, so over time the applications tend to become more efficient even as they add features. Therefore, the machines running a majority of FOSS code tend to become more stable o
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All systems at my company are on a 36-month lease, so we don't get rid of computers because they're too slow - most of them work just fine even with our latest software templates - we get rid of them because the lease period is over and they have to be returned.
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If we had the same order error (substituting 17" & 19" for 23" and 30"), the larger monitors would go to the executives. And the 17" inch too, 'cause we all understand that executives really benefit from a dual-display setup. Anybody who complained would get some of the 15" CRTs that we still hav
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While I don't deny I've seen the "Windows Rot" phenomenon, it's most commonly due to people installing shit that runs at startup (often silently and ne
YAY! (Score:1)
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Why does Dell give Ubuntu/Inspiron the slow CPUs? (Score:1)
Whereas on Dell's FreeDOS-loaded 530N you can go up to the E6420.
Why does Dell restrict the Ubuntu-loaded Inspiron to low-end CPUs?
Re:Why does Dell give Ubuntu/Inspiron the slow CPU (Score:2)
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I haven't checked the CPU options on the laptops.
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Well done, /. (Score:1)
Now? Where? (Score:1)
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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.
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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.
Bad job, Dell. (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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The Dell 1420n that I'm posting from has a modem that is "supported" by the preinstalled Ubuntu OS. With "supported" in quotes only because the supported depends on a proprietary bits. (And I haven't heard anything to indicate that's likely to change soon.) But it should work. I haven't tried to use it, though.
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
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So I see, and I can't imagine why. We were told "you can buy it now"; we tried to find the offer; we couldn't. So we posted to warn others, and you get attacked for your post. It doesn't make much sense, but after all this is Slashdot.
You'll note my post is still sitting at 2, where it started. I would have thought it was informative, in that it pointed out that the base article was incorrect (in at least one respect).
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
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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..
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Of course, that warning is also an ass covering; somebody who bought a Linux laptop might think (somehow) it includes both Linux AND Windows, and that is a pretty clear clarifying statemen
Don't fear the penguins... (Score:2)
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Re:Decision point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Decision point (Score:4, Informative)
*trying to dispel the Linux is an OS confusion*
I second that (Score:2)
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Linux is an operating system kernel. The kernel combined with some low level utilities, the majority of which if not all are GNU originated, comprises the operating system. So Linux is part of the operating system.
Anything else on top is not part of the operating system. Gnome / KDE / Xfce are desktop environments. Because people are used to Windows, they often mistakenly think GUI = OS.
Ubuntu et al. are even more than an OS/DE c
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Why replace one confusion with another confusion? At most, kernel + utils + WM + DE is the operating system, certainly not full distributions with tons and tons of userspace applications. Clearly WM and DE is optional since you can have headless servers managed by ssh, which means only kernel+utils are essential. GNU/Linux is enough to be called an operating system, and no ma
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
errr. (Score:2, Insightful)
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In case that went over your head, look up disjunct adverbs.
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Every natural language was produced through change. You can't stop it from changing.
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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?
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Parent (and I, separately), carefully read the base article, and noted that it said specifically that:
"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..."
Note that it says "customers... *can* order". Not "will soon be able to order". Not "will be able to order as soon as we get our Web site updated". And certainly not "will be able to order tomorrow,
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However you said that the Toshiba laptop that you purchased came with Windows (unless I misunderstood your post). That means that some of your money went back to Microsoft.
BTW, the machines are now available if you go to http://dell.co.uk/ubuntu [dell.co.uk]. They don't seem to be available from anywhere on Dell's main site, but that was to be expected and follows the precedent set by th