Canonical: Ubuntu To Soon Ship On 5% Of PCs

[lopho]

Is it better to run "less" secure browser on much more secure system or "more" secure browser on insecure system? In case you forgot you can set AppArmor profiles in Linux and make your browser much more secure.

which ubuntu does actually do by default with firefox cant speak for other distros.

[curaga]

The OEMs may not be counting the people who wipe the pre-installed thing anyway to remove all OEM crap. Which clearly is there, because how else would they find out who runs it and who doesn't?

Anecdote: I've bought two laptops with linux preinstalled, both were wiped before they could connect to the net.

[pingufunkybeat]

I'd love to buy a laptop with some flavour of Linux pre-installed, and all hardware working!

Of course, the first thing I'd do is wipe it clean and install and configure my own system, but it's great to know that a) the OEM supports Linux, b) the hardware is supported by Linux, and c) you're not paying MS tax.

[schmidtbag]

Do you think that when Canonical partners with OEMs to produce Ubuntu-powered machines they will have any of those problems?

Yes and no. If Ubuntu is the 1 and only distro ever sold and they use the same parts from the same companies over and over then sure, those problems will be fixed. But otherwise, once a company like SUSE joins in, they're not going to use unity. They're not going to use Ubuntu Sofware Center or Synaptic. Many things will be drastically different, and obviously since these companies would benefit from getting their distro known, they're not going to advertise the fact that there's an alternative to their own product or default setup.


Also, I really don't want Unity being the default DE haha.

[curaga]

Yep, they were the same price as the FreeDOS models, which is less than the Windows models. Both came with SLED.

Having Ubuntu coming on them would certainly be nice, if only to let Canonical shout "X million linux users from us alone!".

[kraftman]

which ubuntu does actually do by default with firefox cant speak for other distros.

Not exactly. You have to install apparmor profiles and enable Firefox one which is disabled by default.

[crazycheese]

This is very good news !!

The biggest problem for Ubuntu and other Linux distros shipping to the masses is that, in a lot of cases, customers are installing Windows after they get the unit.

This is not problem at all. We all wiped Windows and installed Linux. This year I have already made 2 Linux Mint-based PCs that are running Linux Mint. This is about choice.

[crazycheese]

I'd love to buy a laptop with some flavour of Linux pre-installed, and all hardware working!

Of course, the first thing I'd do is wipe it clean and install and configure my own system, but it's great to know that a) the OEM supports Linux, b) the hardware is supported by Linux, and c) you're not paying MS tax.

This. I will also be looking at buying tablet or laptop very soon.


(stupid char limit is stupid)

[droidhacker]

The biggest problem for Ubuntu and other Linux distros shipping to the masses is that, in a lot of cases, customers are installing Windows after they get the unit. And not just dual booting; they wipe Linux and never come back as soon as they figure out that it won't run whatever exe trash they download from the internet. And then they immediately stick in a Windows CD (often pirated) and don't look back.

Nonsense, and here's why;
99.9% of all computer users can barely find the ON button. Someone who can barely find the ON button is NOT capable of clearing and installing an operating system.

Your problem is that you're making assumptions based on what YOU PERSONALLY are capable of, or what you know of the people who YOU PERSONALLY associate with. This is not representative of the population at large.

Do you remember when netbooks first arrived? The vast majority of them shipped with a crippled version of Fedora. Despite being CAPABLE of running wondoze (or a full blown linux distro), people DID NOT. They RETURNED the machines instead. IMO, if they'd used a full blown desktop distro, the rate of returns would have been much lower.

[GreatEmerald]

I'd love to buy a laptop with some flavour of Linux pre-installed, and all hardware working!

Of course, the first thing I'd do is wipe it clean and install and configure my own system, but it's great to know that a) the OEM supports Linux, b) the hardware is supported by Linux, and c) you're not paying MS tax.

Yeap. I bought one Linux system like that, with Ubuntu preinstalled. From Dell, of course. But it makes no sense whatsoever to keep the default Ubuntu installation, as it was already old (had Maverick Meerkat, while at that time Oneiric was out). That said, it did tell you to upgrade the first time you booted, but Linux is all about choice, after all. That PC was a simple work PC (hence it's really ludicrous to have Windows on it to begin with), and not used by me, but rather another person. I presented some of the LiveCDs of different distributions and DEs to him, and he chose a different distro than Ubuntu. Hence, the system was wiped shortly after first boot, to be replaced with another, newer and more preferable Linux distro.
Mind you, that PC isn't all that good for Linux after all. For instance, you can flash the BIOS... from Windows. Or DOS. But not from Linux...

As for how they know who uses the PCs - they add an empty repository that leads to their servers and therefore the Linux machine sends a ping to them each time when using the package manager. the existence of that fake repository is also pointed out on first boot, with a polite request not to remove it. Thankfully, Dell is not intrusive and didn't put any preloaded bloat on it, either.