Ubuntu and Dell

[ketzerei]

I was curious as to some your thoughts about Dell packaging computers with ubuntu pre-installed. Is it a good thing? Is it bad? Is dell the Devil? I'm curious.

[Juan Pablo]

It's nice to see a big OEM distributing Ubuntu computers, you know all the hardware will be compatible with Linux if you buy one.
It also gives some reason to hardware manufacturers to support Linux

[techieMoe]

I'm pretty sure there was a thread on this fairly recently... I just don't feel like digging it up. My thoughts are this is a good thing for Linux driver support. If Dell really pushes the manufacturers of the components they use to create Linux drivers, that benefits the Linux community as a whole, even if the drivers are closed-source. Dell, as a large OEM company, has the clout to ask (for instance) Cisco to put out Linux drivers for their wireless chipsets so that they can use them on these Ubuntu boxes. Cisco would more easily listen to a large OEM than a letter-writing campaign or a petition from the Linux/FOSS community.

[bigtomrodney]

Everything that techieMoe said...ditto. There has already been talk of Dell pushing a few vendors for better Linux support. Specifically ATI and Broadcom were mentioned as they are the two big vendors Dell uses that could use the support. At the moment both have drivers but ATI is behind a good bit and the open source Broadcom WiFi drivers really only work at 11Mb/s. A push in this direction would be great.

[techieMoe]

I read an article on Ars Technica today called Penguin on an Inspiron where they took one of Dell's Ubuntu laptops for a spin. I must say, they've piqued my interest. I put together a possible system on Dell's website and came up with a nice price-to-feature ratio. Add to that the fact that it's running Linux and I must say, I'm impressed.