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Michael Dell Using Ubuntu Linux At Home 236

Posted by kdawson 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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Michael Dell Using Ubuntu Linux At Home More

Michael Dell Using Ubuntu Linux At Home

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  • Just an advert (Score:4, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Thursday April 19, 2007 @07:37AM (#18796177) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Re:Just an advert (Score:5, Funny)

      by BecomingLumberg ( 949374 ) on Thursday April 19, 2007 @07:49AM (#18796303)
      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...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You call this shit:

      * 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)

        by hswerdfe ( 569925 ) <slashdot@org.howard@swerdfeger@com> on Thursday April 19, 2007 @09:25AM (#18797631) Homepage Journal
        yah, but it would be nice if google earth would work right.
        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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Creepy ( 93888 )
        For clarification/expansion on the original poster's information, the Quadro series is used for 3D accelerated graphics, just not so much games - it is nVidia's chipset for OpenGL acceleration aimed primarily at the Workstation/CAD market and is essentially nVidia's answer to the FireGL cards from ATI (AMD).

        Seeing that Linux uses OpenGL for 3D, those cards probably offer better overall performance, at the price of being a bit behind the technology curve from a gamer perspective.

        This thing would smoke my des

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by somersault ( 912633 )
      Yeah, because a laptop with a Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM and a Quadro graphics card is utterly crap.. pfft.. I had an M60 for a while and it was great, that M90's specs look pretty awesome to me, and it probably costs more than £2000.. not that I'd want to swap my MacBook Pro for it at the moment anyway.

    • Well you have to figure that the reason to use Windows is for games, or having MCE to interface with your XBox360-- or other things of that sort. At this point, most people will find Linux most appropriate for their work machine. You have OpenOffice, Evolution, Firefox, etc. Your "productivity" apps. Those things are far less resource-intensive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jgc7 ( 910200 )
      He probably doesn't even like linux. He just decided it is easier than uninstalling all of the crapware that came with the computer.
  • Is the wonder machine, I also use... :)

    However, I am not allowed to use Linux. :(

    Dell support would be fine, but corporate policies need to change too.
  • The statistics are biased towards how you buy your computer, rather than what people actually use. How many of those other machines dual boot also?

  • Businessmen & Their Customers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@gm a i l . com> on Thursday April 19, 2007 @07:40AM (#18796213) Journal

    If one were betting on which distro Dell will eventually ship pre-installed, this factoid might be food for thought.
    I'm going to discard this assumption that because Michael Dell uses Ubuntu that's what they're looking at.

    The simple reason being that a good businessman never assumes what's good for him is good for his customer.

    • The simple reason being that a good businessman never assumes what's good for him is good for his customer.
      If you don't eat your own dogfood, how can you expect your customers to.

       
      • Ahhh,
        But the distro isn't the dog food, the notebook is.
        In this case I would think that the LT release would be the ideal distro for them to distribute to customers, but hey...
        -nB

    • Maybe he ist looking at a course change? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lonewolf666 ( 259450 ) on Thursday April 19, 2007 @08:06AM (#18796505)
      In the past, sticking to Windows seems to have worked for Dell. There are obvious reasons (need to support only one OS) plus maybe a very favourable volume deal by Microsoft.
      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: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by prelelat ( 201821 )
        You know I don't know if he would go with Ubuntu on the consumer side, it would be nice its what I use for a regular desktop. But you have to consider that some of their servers ship with Red Hat Enterprise and ask yourself "If I ship a Red Hat type OS with my consumer computers could I get my Enterprise people to train my Consumer call centers?" I don't know if this will be a deciding point, but the fact that he does have call centers trained in RH might factor in.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msouth ( 10321 )
      ok, you do that. I'm going to discard the idea that he is a good businessman. (Not necessarily for any other reason than that you sounded so cool when you discarded yours, I wanted to discard one, too. And maybe because he said that if he was running apple at the time Jobs went back there that he would shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders. But, seriously, I might just be bringing that up because it's so funny.)

  • MS tax (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19, 2007 @07:40AM (#18796215)
    I wonder if he can get it without the MS tax?
    • oddly enough, the no-OS laptops [dell.com] dell is offering cost the same or more than the equivalents with Windows. :-/

      i'm looking into getting a linux laptop, and the best deal seems to be to get a dell with windows and load linux onto it yourself (make sure you configure it with linux-friendly hardware, though).
  • Wasn't Feisty Fawn just released this week? If he's been using it, he's either been using the beta or else he just installed it, right? And if Dell were really in talks with Canonical to distribute Ubuntu 7.04 on Dell PCs, wouldn't we be hearing about it from Canonical and/or Mark Shuttleworth?

    • Re:Errmmmm (Score:5, Funny)

      by billcopc ( 196330 ) <vrillco@yahoo.com> on Thursday April 19, 2007 @08:39AM (#18796955) Homepage
      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.
    • Dell probably has a lot of OSs installed on various computers. I had Ubuntu installed on a laptop for a few days a few months back (wasn't for me). Like many people, he probably thought :this is interesting, let's have a look". It certainly doesn't mean it's his only or primary system.

  • FIVE?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArtDent ( 83554 ) on Thursday April 19, 2007 @07:45AM (#18796271)
    I can't even imagine why one person would want five PCs.

    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)

      by Helios1182 ( 629010 )
      Given that he runs one of the largest PC companies in the world he may just enjoy them and working with them.

      • Or... (Score:2, Funny)

        by anti-human 1 ( 911677 )
        ...given that he owns/runs Dell, he has plenty of backups if one craps out (or bursts into flame, rumor du jour).

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by faloi ( 738831 )
      I can't even imagine why one person would want five PCs.

      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)

        by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
        I can see the need too. Unfortunately I don't have all that much space at home. So, I have to have one computer that does absolutely everything I need. That means for right now, I'm running Windows. I would love to be able to run a Linux Server, A Windows Gaming machine, and have a Linux Media centre, and well, for office/internet, I don't care, either one is fine, so I'd probably go with Linux.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by mgv ( 198488 )

          I can see the need too. Unfortunately I don't have all that much space at home. So, I have to have one computer that does absolutely everything I need. That means for right now, I'm running Windows. I would love to be able to run a Linux Server, A Windows Gaming machine, and have a Linux Media centre, and well, for office/internet, I don't care, either one is fine, so I'd probably go with Linux.

          Perhaps a mac mini or two would meet your space requirement. It works for me. You could even go the full monty a

      • I resemble that remark, though I use my company laptop for "normal computer-type stuff", and don't play games much. Throw in a couple computers for the kids and another laptop for the wife and the numbers edge back up.

      • One PC for name service and in the darkness BIND them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Khomar ( 529552 )

      I can't even imagine why one person would want five PCs.

      Easy. I have five computers in my house including two laptops. One laptop is for work. One laptop is for my wife, and I also use it when I am watching the kids (I don't usually watch them in my office). One is my file server. One is my primary home machine for things like Quicken and hobby development. My last computer (the admittedly frivolous one) is basically just used for LAN computer games. Here very soon it will be setup to host my childr

    • Laptop with XP and Linux. (useful for about anything.)
      XP Workstation (used as harddisk recording system)
      Linux workstation (for fun & profit)
      Linux server (for fun&profit)
      HTC universal pda (web-browsing, e-mail, pda)

      so... 5 pc's seems pretty standard to me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      Let's see. 1 video editor, 1 Gaming PC, 1 kitchen Tablet PC, 1 media center, 1 Toshiba Toughbook cf-30, 1 Latitude 131L, 1 Dell D600 1 MSI laptop for my daughter (in pink)

      1 Security camera DVR PC 1 server pc.

      Oh I forgot, another toughbook cf-28 in the garage for car tuning and diagnostics.

      so I got 11 computers, 1 wife, 1 child. I have the parts to build 2 more... Looking to make a pair of mythbackends to reside at a couple of friends houses to record TV illegally for me.

      except for the Toughbooks, everythi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *

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

      Come on, man. Do you think this guy does this on his own? The guy probably has a team of people who just change light bulbs.

    • Five? Eh, well, I guess the five desktop systems and four notebooks on my home network are a tad out of the ordinary?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjvn ( 11568 )
      Heh. I've never had less than 20 in my home at any one time for more then a decade. The current count is 24.

      And, yes, I use all of them.

      And, yes, I could use more. For example, I don't have an Intel-based Mac or a recent SPARC box.

      Steven

    • Let's see, I've got my Powerbook, my wife has her iBook. There's the Mini in the office acting as a file and print server, and we've got my old Power Mac in the basement that's simply waiting to be sold. And if you include my web host, which I use to do offsite backups, that's 5 "PCs." I'm also thinking about setting up a MythTV box.

      And I don't spend much time applying patches or transferring data. That's what scripts are for.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ArtDent ( 83554 )
        I should clarify that I read "these are the systems and peripherals Michael is using right now" to imply that these are his, not his family members', personal machines.

        I also chose the term "PC" intentionally, to indicate machines that sit on his desk or lap and with which he interacts *personally*. I see no sign of a file/print server there, just three laptops, a gaming desktop, and yet another desktop at work. Never mind the web host; none of those machines powers www.dell.com. ;)

        So, what I see is that yo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by garcia ( 6573 )
      I have three laptops, a Mac Mini, and a Linux server. I also have two Windows machines in various stages of disrepair that because of the laptops and their comparatively low power consumption, will probably remain that way for now.

      One of the laptops is my wife's but the rest are used by us both in various ways. Why do I have so many? Because they all serve a different purpose and they are necessary?

      Just because YOU can't understand it doesn't mean it isn't viable. How many TVs do you have operating in y
    • I can't even imagine why one person would want five PCs.

      He only has five PCs? What an amateur. Off the top of my head, I have a server/workstation. My wife has her own workstation. My daughter has her own workstation. In addition, we have a laptop, and a media center PC. I also have five servers in a test lab that I use for educational purposes.
    • All depends on how much you want to segment stuff out. I keep a home theater PC next to the TV, a Windows machine, a Linux machine, a Mac Mini, and a laptop (Windows Vista). I've also got another PC that houses a local SAN (4 500gb drives in a RAID5), but I never really use it directly - it's just a file server.

      The Windows, Linux, and Mac desktops are all on a KVM. I like playing with different OS's and such. I had even considered getting another one and putting BeOS or SkyOS or the like on it, but they
    • I've got two laptops (Thinkpad, XPSM170), two desktops (Dell XPS), one tablet pc (Samsung Q1) and a crappy PDA. And thats just my stuff at home. :)

      They all get used for different things.

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

      On this Ubuntu Laptop at least, very little. It tells him there's updates and asks if he wants to install them. He says "yes", gives the machine his password, and he's done.

      I can't speak for the Windows boxes though.
    • "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home" - 1977, Ken Olsen, president Digital Equipment

      You really can't understand why the top man in a computer harware company would want 5 different models to play around with? I mean christ, I have 3 desktops and a laptop in my house and I don't even work for a computer hardware company...
    • 1. My PowerBook
      2. My wife's Dell laptop
      3. Mac Mini HTPC
      4. Server/Firewall box
      5. Gaming box

      And I don't feel like that's an unreasonable number of computers for even a fairly non-technical household like mine. Heck, my folks have four: both mom and dad have a laptop and desktop -- and they're about the most un-technical people you could imagine.
  • It's the easiest to use of the PC based desktop operating systems.

     

  • Feisty released (Score:5, Informative)

    by bignickel ( 931486 ) on Thursday April 19, 2007 @07:53AM (#18796359)

    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)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
    I really want to know what it is that makes people think Ubuntu is the best thing since sliced bread. I've tried it out, and it's not any better than a lot of other distros. Actually, I find that because they aim too much towards the home user, that it makes it difficult to do more advanced things. Personally, I use Mandriva. I have used it since version 7. I don't see Ubuntu doing anything that Mandriva (or Mandrake) wasn't doing 3 years ago.

    • Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FKnight ( 521972 ) on Thursday April 19, 2007 @08:09AM (#18796543)
      Who are you to say that Ubuntu is aimed "too much" at the home user? Did you ever think that maybe that's who they're targeting? Every other Linux distribution isn't aimed at all at any variation of a home/average user. The folks at Ubuntu are probably going "gee, duh. Maybe we should make a distribution that you can use without having to have 6 years of sysadmin experience" You're doing the right thing by using a distribution you prefer. It's just a little off base to say that Ubuntu's distribution is aimed "too much" toward home users. Or do you prefer the days when you had to be a computer geek in order to use a computer?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by TobascoKid ( 82629 )
        Every other Linux distribution isn't aimed at all at any variation of a home/average user.

        Linspire????

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by budword ( 680846 )
      I used Mandriva 3 years ago, and some since. Ubuntu got quite a few things right, with ease, that I couldn't find a way to do in Mandriva, even given the large amount of time I spent on those tasks back then. Installing Ecipse and Java for one, were a real pain in the ass. Ubuntu, it was a 3 minute job. I like Mandriva, and I think it was great for it's time, (back when I used it daily), but I've reached the point I want to work with my system and not work on it. Ubuntu gets so much right hassle free that n

    • Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Whiney Mac Fanboy ( 963289 ) * <whineymacfanboy@gmail.com> on Thursday April 19, 2007 @08:16AM (#18796643) Homepage Journal
      I don't see Ubuntu doing anything that Mandriva (or Mandrake) wasn't doing 3 years ago.

      Windows Migration Assistant? [michaellarabel.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by porkThreeWays ( 895269 )
      Yes, the secret is out. High quality Linux distributions aren't that much different from each other. I think Ubuntu has come to the forefront because they've got the right advertising, were in the right place at the right time, have a very dedicated community which wants Ubuntu in the most hands, and because it still is a pretty good distribution. That's not to minimize all the hard work that has gone into Ubuntu, but everyone is working hard. Ubuntu just did a lot of non-technical things right as well comb
      • You see, that's what I thought. There's a lot of good Linux distros out there. Ones I've noticed as being pretty good include Mandriva, Suses, Fedora, and Ubuntu. I just find it really weird that Ubuntu gets so much attention when it's not really that much better than most of the other distros. What I find even weirder is that Mandriva gets almost no attention, when they've been doing things well for many years.
    • I really want to know what it is that makes people think Ubuntu is the best thing since sliced bread.

      I think there are several reasons -

      * It has more of an community feel than some distros, where the company supporting it isn't as in your face as in some other distros.

      * It's based on debian so you get all the goodness of debian, but with timely releases.

      * There's a stronger commitment to software freedom than some other distros (even more so in Fiesty with gNewSence inspired super-free version), while at th

  • Oh Boy (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by pembo13 ( 770295 )
    Now we'll never hear the end of the "Ubuntu Rocks" guys

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Aladrin ( 926209 )
      That's okay, they're not going to be nearly as bad as the 'Kubuntu is better' guys. ;) Which reminds me...

      KUBUNTU! WHOO!
  • How much time does he spend applying patches and updating software? Transferring data?

    None. He has support take care of it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by MoronBob ( 574671 )
      "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"

  • No Vista (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yuna49 ( 905461 ) on Thursday April 19, 2007 @08:06AM (#18796509)
    While it's interesting that he has an Ubuntu laptop, I'm more surprised that none of the four other machines are running Vista. They're all still using various flavors of XP.

  • He's smart, why shouldn't he run linux (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19, 2007 @08:08AM (#18796535)
    Just made a living out of selling cheap windows boxes. You seriously think the owners of Mc.D. eat the burgers themselfes aswell? ;-)
  • more... How much does he use the systems? What are his comments on the various systems? Big whoop he has a computer with Linux on it. He is Mike Dell for gosh sakes.

  • 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...

  • Oh, and Michael Dell's gaming system uses XP Media Center edition.

    Get back to work, you slacker!

  • I used to support executives (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Thursday April 19, 2007 @08:33AM (#18796871) Homepage Journal
    At a rather large tech company. A small cadre of top honchos had their own groupware server(s!), their own email server(s!) and their own dedicated VPN. They also had instant 24/7 unlimited support wherever they were for any of the multiple home or office machines they used. Their support ratio headcount was 1:1, e.g. each supported person had one FTE dedicated to them.

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19, 2007 @08:59AM (#18797237)
      Not true in Michael's case. I work at Dell and a couple of stories I heard...(posting AC) (1.5 years ago) IT team is having a meeting and Michael happens to drop in... They are discussing why/ what of some web application. Michael questions why Firefox is not supported...--End result, the whole of Dell has an option to use Mozilla as a supported app. second one, at a newly set-up facility a midlevel manager is showing michael around the lab. we have 5 of these latest computers, 5 of that etc. etc. Michael proceeds to completely open up one of the servers and proceeds to ask "Why are you using test systems on production environment?" turns out that the machines indeed were pre-production...and michael figured it out from the connectors used!!

  • Soft (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mattr ( 78516 ) <`moc.ydobelet' `ta' `rttam'> on Thursday April 19, 2007 @08:38AM (#18796947) Homepage Journal
    I'd rather see several detailed screenshots per machine with detailed info on exactly what software packages are used, how he likes them, and how, and how much, they are used.

    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.
  • The really big news though, is that so does Billy G! But he likes it to keep it real quiet. Balmer tried it but didn't understand it and went back to Workbench 3.9.

  • You all fell for it: this is PR at work.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by postbigbang ( 761081 ) on Thursday April 19, 2007 @08:52AM (#18797113)
    Oh, gee, Michael Dell, running dog lackey Microsoft/Intel fanboi now uses Ubuntu! See? Dell is really trying to those pesky Linux people! See? Mikey uses one at home, although there is the altar of XP Media Center there just to make sure that Bill's not pissed.

    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, Insightful)

      by kisak ( 524062 )
      I agree completely, it has PR written all over it. But then again, it is PR that might as well back-fire on Dell. If Ubuntu is good enough for their boss, why can't we buy it pre-installed from Dell? It is PR to make us linux-fanbois happy, but it can just as well makes us more vocal and bothersom.
  • It is well know that a successful dealer doesn't use the drugs he sells.
  • C'mon, Mike, you quit making those POSs months ago. Treat yourself right, get an iPod. You know you just look like a tool when you bust that thing out at the airport. Instead of looking like the head of a major computer outfit, you just look like some dork who can't afford or, worse, doesn't know about the iPod.

    At least he doesn't have a Zune. Michel Dell and Steve Ballmer squirting in an airport terminal... *shudder*
  • Seriously, this is cool in several ways. And given his past with MS, it takes guts to post that in public... or will we read in two hours "Update: Michael Dell's bio on Dell website hacked by Ubuntu fans"? :-)

    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 L
  • Seeing that Michael Dell uses Automatix2, I am sure he has had it vetted by his lawyers. It is nice to know all the codecs and software in it are legal to download and run in the United States

    Yes that was meant to be funny.

  • I notice for his at home machine he is an overclocker.

    "Dell XPS 710 H2C
    Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 processor overclocked to 3.2GHz"

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