Sensitive Subject
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| richo123 May 01, 2007 4:41 AM EDT |
Apparently a bunch of blogs "announcing" this news were taken off Ubuntu planet: http://jerome.gotangco.com/ Wonder why? |
| bigg May 01, 2007 4:51 AM EDT |
If the SJVN report is true, then Shuttleworth and Dell were talking at the same time that Shuttleworth wrote on his blog that it wouldn't make sense for Dell to sell anything but Windows. I guess they don't want to allow speculation about a deal that's in progress. I'm no fan of Mark Shuttleworth, and my view of him as a dictator appears to be more than a little bit true. If they don't want the news to get out why did Michael Dell make such a big deal about his new laptop? |
| devnet May 01, 2007 5:27 AM EDT |
What’s even more lame is that the post was linked to by Boing Boing. So, there’s 20k Unique visitors an hour for about 8 hours that won’t know what the hell is going on. What a great message to send to people and an excellent way to build momentum toward an announcement. Just like the blog post you link to above richo123, I think it's lame that they had to censor the community. Censor canonical employee's you bet...community? Lame! |
| richo123 May 01, 2007 5:43 AM EDT |
Looks like it is real: [url=http://news.com.com/Dell picks Ubuntu for Linux PCs/2100-7344_3-6180419.html?tag=nefd.lede]http://news.com.com/Dell picks Ubuntu for Linux PCs/2100-734...[/url] "Canonical wouldn't reveal financial terms of the deal. "It's a very significant deal for us, in terms of evolution of the company," Silber said. "How big a deal depends, to a large extent, on how many machines are sold. We think that'll be a high number." " |
| number6x May 01, 2007 6:06 AM EDT |
Dell threatening to sell Linux pre-loaded is just the ammunition Michael Dell needs to let him sell Windows XP pre-loaded. Huh? Dell may or may not be serious about Linux. The company and the man have had a spotty record. I'm sure they will sell whatever makes money for them, and right now in the desktop market I would guess that Dell sees the most demand for windows XP. Dell is selling Linux in the server area, so we know they will sell Linux. So what keeps them from promoting Linux? Michael has to be concerned about pressure from Bill G. and Microsoft. Making a big stink about Linux. Lots of 'leaks' to the press. Then, a week or two later, Dell starts shipping XP again? Sales of Vista licenses have been good in Redmond, but how is Vista driving sales at Dell and other vendors? MS is counting licenses sold to vendors, but how have sales to actual customers been going? Why doesn't Microsoft tell us how many copies of Vista have been activated since it was released? Vista must be especially hard on vendors who supply business desktops. When compared to XP, Vista does not offer any features that appeal to the companies that want to put 4000 PC's on their worker's desktops . XP is just fine, and the lesser hardware requirements and lack of re-training make it even more appealing. My best guess is that about 90% of Dell's recent Linux rumors have been to put pressure on Redmond to let Dell keep shipping XP and not have to be lock step with Redmond on the Vista death march. Dell will be able to, once again, not live up to its rumors of Linux support, and get Redmond to let Dell keep shipping XP. Of course, I'm probably wrong. Completely wrong. I hope they do start promoting Linux on the desktop. |
| jdixon May 01, 2007 6:36 AM EDT |
> Of course, I'm probably wrong. Completely wrong. I wouldn't go so far as to say probably. Possibly, more likely. In any case, there's no reason you can't be right about the reason Dell is willing to offer Linux. They could very well be using Linux to put pressure on Microsoft and have no real intention of promoting Linux. There's a big gap between "offering" and "promoting". If the link to the Linux machines is as carefully hidden as the no-OS option has been, and they charge the same price for the Ubuntu machine as they do for a Vista machine, then Dell would be keeping their word to "offer" Linux. They would then have significant leverage with Microsoft, as they could always move them to the front page and offer discounts at any time, especially if demand proves to be what they expect. And who knows, the Linux machines may be a complete success, and Dell may sell several hundred thousand of them in the first months. At that point, they'll have some really difficult decisions to make. I'm waiting to see what happens, but if what's projected comes to pass, I'll undoubtedly be buying one, just to do my part to make those difficult decisons necessary. :) |
| bigg May 01, 2007 6:39 AM EDT |
The models SJVN pointed to generally have nvidia graphics and the Dell 1390 wireless. If this is what they are really planning, it won't help Linux users much, because we'll still have the same hardware incompatibility problems we've always had. What nearly all the comments said was to provide Linux compatible hardware and don't worry about the distribution. What's funny is that the laptops all use Dell 1390 wireless cards, which give Feisty more problems than anything else. I want to see what actually happens. They did make a promise earlier to use hardware with open drivers when possible, so we'll see. |
| jdixon May 01, 2007 6:59 AM EDT |
I've just posted a newswire story giving links to Dell's Ideastorm and Direct2dell sites with confirmation that it's Ubuntu. I have no idea how long it will take for it to show up or if someone else beat me to it. |
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