Dell Spells Out What They Will Offer on Ubuntu Systems

Wow! It is getting serious… they give us some info on what to expect from their Dell Linux pre-installed systems!

Ubuntu 7.04 Offering—Technical Details

“Before we announce the availability of Ubuntu 7.04 on select Dell client systems, I’d like to give an overview of what customers can expect from our initial Ubuntu offering.

Available Software and Hardware

* The default software from the Ubuntu media will be installed on the system, including kernel and applications.
* The peripheral options offered with Ubuntu will be a subset of what is offered with other operating systems. We’re offering the hardware options on each system that have the most mature and stable Linux driver support. These hardware options have been thoroughly tested by the Linux team here at Dell.
* We configure/install open source drivers for hardware, when possible.
* We use partial open-source or closed source (“restricted” in Ubuntu terms) drivers where there is no equivalent open-source driver. This includes Intel wireless cards and Conexant modems.
* We will have a wiki page on our linux.dell.com website that gives technical details of the supported systems, information on the device drivers used for system peripherals, details of our Ubuntu factory-installation, and information on the problems we found during our testing, with their fixes/workarounds.
* We recommend Linux users buy Dell printers that have PostScript engines in them. The previous hyperlink lists those printers. You can also check in the Tech Specs tab for each printer on Dell.com show if it has PostScript or not.”

Pretty cool… it will be interesting how many of these sell… and, how fast they do sell!