Michael Dell Using Ubuntu Linux At Home

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.

Just an advert

[LiquidCoooled]

It looks like a normal posted flyer.
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.

MS tax

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if he can get it without the MS tax?

Re:Just an advert

[BecomingLumberg]

No, you are missing the point. He had to use the monster PCs for the ones running vista just to get it on the web. The Ubuntu lappy runs fine without a supercharger...

Support......

[The Diver]

How much time does he spend applying patches and updating software? Transferring data?

None. He has support take care of it.

He's smart, why shouldn't he run linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Just made a living out of selling cheap windows boxes. You seriously think the owners of Mc.D. eat the burgers themselfes aswell? ;-)

Or...

[anti-human 1]

...given that he owns/runs Dell, he has plenty of backups if one craps out (or bursts into flame, rumor du jour).

Re:Errmmmm

[billcopc]

I hate to feed the rumors, but what other distro would they possibly use ? I don't know of any other that pulls off the user experience schmoozing as cleanly as Ubuntu, seeing as it's one of their main goals. As funny as it would be to toss a Gentoo boot disc in the box and watch the call center agents as they commit suicide one after another:

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.

Re:FIVE?!

[joey_knisch]

Probably because there is no "observant" category.

Re:Support......

[MoronBob]

"Thank you for to be calling Dell Computer" "My name is John Smith How can I be helping you" "Mr Doll I will check to see if that machine is warrenty under still"