Fancy An Ubuntu Machine From Dell? …I Do

The other day I heard after months of waiting that Dell had finally released Ubuntu machines in the UK. So today I finally got a chance to see for myself and look on the Dell website. It’s not immediately obvious when you go to the UK site that anything has changed, in many ways it hasn’t. There’s not a lot of fanfare about the arrival of Ubuntu that’s for sure but it’s still a great victory for Linux. If you go to Products and then Open Source on the website you can get access to the new Ubuntu machines. Why it has to be so obscured I don’t know, I’ve said this before but when you look at most machines on Dell’s website it says next to them “Customise with XP” or “Customise With Vista”, I would like to see a “Customise With Ubuntu” option next to that. Hopefully we’ll get there someday.

Anyway, enough bitching I should be grateful ๐Ÿ™‚ So what can you expect to buy from Dell. I customised this Inspiron 6400 notebook on the site today and I was impressed with what you can get for your money:

  • Pentium Dual-Core T2080 Processor (1.87ghz)
  • Ubuntu 7.04 OS
  • 1 Year Collect & Return Warrenty
  • 15.4″ Widescreen LCD with TrueLife
  • 2048mb DDR2 SDRAM
  • 80gb Hard Disk (5400rpm)
  • 256mb Intel N-Series Graphics
  • 8X DVD-RW
  • 9 cell LithiumIon Battery (Better than the standard 6 cell)
  • Intelยฎ Pro Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g

All of this including VAT and delivery to your door for ยฃ587.50 that’s not half bad. I don’t want to sound like a Dell salesman here because as I’ve said before if System76 would ship to the UK I’d choose them as my Linux hardware supplier. However, Dell have done a good job and I’ll be very interested to see how quickly Ubuntu is made available on other models. Dell CTO Kevin Kettler announced the European Ubuntu release this week at the LinuxWorld expo.

Dell CTO Kevin Kettler – Weโ€™re making available the Ubuntu Linux distribution in the EMEA region, and available in three countries โ€” the U.K, Germany and France โ€” on Inspiron notebooks and Inspiron desktops to start off and we’ll continue to evaluate.

He also said that the company were piloting Linux as a corporate desktop image initernally and that many employees were very enthusiastic about it. All of this is good news for Linux and Open Source in general, hopefully it will go a long way to making that final breakthrough we need onto the desktop. In the meantime I’m saving my pennies to get myself a shinny new Ubuntu laptop, although I must confess I’m still waiting for the sexy red cased versions to be made available with Ubuntu ๐Ÿ˜‰

CHECK OUT THE FULL ZDNET STORY HERE

3 Comments

  1. Wow! That is a great price for a great system. Although I am often a Mac fanboy, I will have to consider a purchase.. ๐Ÿ™‚

    This and the SCO ruling, in my opinion, will fuel a nice bump in Linux usage. Bring it on!

  2. I like the fact that Dell seem to have also realised that design matters, their new laptops look really good, they’re doing nice slim cases in different colours. I think that will also help attract some potential Mac users.

    Of course having a decent Unix based OS can’t hurt either though ๐Ÿ™‚

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