Dell has released some very exciting news recently – they will partner with Canonical, and announce a partnership that will allow Dell to ship Unbuntu, a distribution of Linux, to be installed on some laptops and desktops.
This move has been expected for quite some time, and it makes Dell the first major desktop vendor to release Linux preinstalled on consumer desktops.
Maybe die-hard Linux supporters see this as an exciting move, hoping to allow Linux to become more main-stream, and open new doors for both Linux users, and the open-source OS itself.
Select products will be preinstalled with Ubuntu 7.04, but no official word has come out to exactly what computers – although eWEEK's sister site, DesktopLinux, claims that it will be on the new series of Dell's ‘Essential' Dimension desktop. An official update on this should come within a few weeks.
When asked if other distributions will be available preinstalled, too, a Dell spokesman pointed out that, “It is important to remember that we offer Red Hat on our Dell Precision workstations, and have done so for years.”
The move, of course, is in direct response to consumer need – Dell says that there is an ever growing demand for Linux, and feel that when “customers win, Dell wins.
The question that's on everyone's mind, however, is how Microsoft will react – no major vendor has done this with Linux, and never so openly. Microsoft's Windows XP, and more recently, Windows Vista, has been a default in the OS business when it comes to buying a computer from a vendor. This could change the way we look at computers forever. |
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