Dell Puts Ubuntu on Selected Desktops and Laptops
As it had promised it would do soon after founder Michael Dell retook the reins of the company that bears his name, Dell is expanding its use of alternative operating systems on its desktops and servers. Just before the holiday season, Dell began shipping variants of its Inspiron personal computer lineup with the latest “Gutsy Gibbon” 7.10 release of Linux from Ubuntu.
While Dell, the man, has said he uses Ubuntu on his own laptop, he is a bit of a nerd and has skills tweaking a machine that perhaps Dell’s commercial and consumer customers do not have to make things work. The chicken and egg problem with Linux on the desktop has been that because the dominant PC manufacturers do not support Linux as an equal beside Windows, people won’t buy it and try it. And the reason why vendors won’t support Linux on the desktop is that it does not have momentum and market share. After a groundswell of voices from the Linux community asking Dell to support Linux on PCs as well as servers, the company is moving in that direction. (Or more precisely, it is doing it again, since Dell was supporting Linux on PCs in the late 1990s and didn’t sell very many.)
