Dell To Ship Linux PCs

[phoronix]

Phoronix News: Dell To Ship Linux PCs

Last month with Dell's launch of their IdeaStorm website it made Linux a top priority for not only Dell servers but also notebook and desktops. As a result of the overwhelming feedback, Dell will shortly be introducing notebooks and desktops in the United States that ship with Linux pre-installed! This is a great accomplishment of having Linux being a factory installed option. No Linux distribution(s) have yet been named for what will be supported...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=NTU2Mw

[Moustacha]

United States, uhh. Do they plan on doing it outside of the US?

[Michael]

United States, uhh. Do they plan on doing it outside of the US?

I would imagine so.

[Svartalf]

In reality, they've been shipping Linux PC's for a while. You just had to know where to look and were willing to take a price hike on the sub-optimal configurations of things- much of this was due to their insistence on certifying the machines for Linux use AND needing a different firmware set (It's something of a lesser known fact that most of the mainline OEMs have taken to putting the CD key that matches the label on the machine into the firmware of the machine to "improve the user experience" for that inevitable re-install of Windows. If you have one of those firmware sets, you can put the latest version of XP or Vista on the machine without needing a CD-Key or Activation (it's already been done for you and legitimized by MS and the OEM...)- meaning "piracy" of the OS.)

I'm hopeful that my friend's solution for this that he came up with for Dell is why we're going to start seeing real pre-installs with no real pricing differences. As for being only in the US, I suspect that it's going to be world-wide with Dell; there's no real reason to do otherwise and their production lines for the made-to-order machines are, to my knowlege, basically the same as the ones in the US facilities.