Webs’ Random Ideas

Sorry if you were looking for a review of a terrible Hollywood horror flick, but I have great news to report! Dell listened to their customers, and as a slap in the face to Micro$oft, will now start offering Ubuntu on some of their systems. If you want to purchase one of these systems just click here… Found under Open Source Systems.

This is so good for Linux and has made me very excited. Not because I am going to be purchasing a dell anytime soon, but because this is going to be a huge help for Linux hardware development and support.

As of right now, the major problem with Linux is two fold. The first is the installation process, but that is a topic for another day. The second is hardware support. You see when an Operating System (OS) is created, there needs to be a way to allow the OS to communicate with the hardware. This is done through the use of drivers.

The problem is that for whatever reason (I’m thinking laziness) many companies are reluctant to create drivers for Linux. Even though Linux developers have already said they will develop the drivers for the companies and sign non-disclosure agreements for free. Which to me doesn’t make much sense at all. Once the companies create these drivers, Linux developers will take care of the rest, these companies don’t really have to do anything else.

So Dell putting Ubuntu on their systems means Dell not only has to make sure everything works, but they also have to support it to some degree. And since Dell is always looking to cut costs, they won’t necessarily use the same hardware for their systems month to month. Which means better compatibility for Linux in the long run since Dell has to make sure it works.

But that aside, I am just plain excited. People who may have never attempted to try Linux before might now give it a shot. Unfortunately you probably won’t save a lot of money on these computers, even though Linux is free, because manufacturers get a lot of discounts by loading your system with crappy free software. It’s essentially advertising for software companies to say, “Hey Dell, throw our crappy software on your systems and we will pay ya!”

Besides this, most of us techs already have a Windows license and we know how to use it. So to me this is great cause now you can get Linux on a Dell and if you don’t like Linux you can install M$ without all the crappy software. Pretty sweet!

[UPDATE]
Sorry, apparently the system ships with a blank hard drive and a copy of FreeDOS that you can install if you choose. I was unable to find anything that states the system ships with Ubuntu. If you read this post and find the link please leave a comment and I will update this post with that info.