Dell and Ubuntu

Interesting development today.

http://www.ubuntu.com/news/dell-to-offer-ubuntu

This is the politically correct choice.  Single users are likely to be 
pro open source, which is the 'spin' that Ubuntu has in spades at the 
moment.  Corporate buyers are going to put whatever they want on the 
machine anyway, be it Red Hat, SuSE, or something else.  The only thing 
they are interested in is hardware compatibility.

I thought it was probably the best choice that could be made at the moment.

Frank.

In three short years they've become the #1 distro not counting corporate 
sales. Must be doing something right.

It'll be interesting to see what the final Dell enhanced distro looks 
like. They most likely will add other open source products to the plain 
Ubuntu package to perform common tasks, particularly with games, photos 
and videos. It certainly can't hurt the image of Linux as a potential 
consumer system, but I don't see the present Ubuntu as passing the 
"Grandma can use it" test. They have not stated clearly if they will 
actually use Kubuntu, which would be slightly more user friendly.

It'll also be interesting to see how Dell prices these systems compared 
to similar Windows boxes. There has been a huge support commitment made 
by someone. Don't know if it is Dell or Ubuntu, but there will be a need 
for competent (and costly) tech support

Frank B wrote:
> 
> This is the politically correct choice.  Single users are likely to be 
> pro open source, which is the 'spin' that Ubuntu has in spades at the 
> moment.  Corporate buyers are going to put whatever they want on the 
> machine anyway, be it Red Hat, SuSE, or something else.  The only thing 
> they are interested in is hardware compatibility.
> 
> I thought it was probably the best choice that could be made at the
moment.
> 
> Frank.
>