Dell certainly steps in the right direction by launching two notebooks and a desktop with Hardy Heron, the version of Ubuntu Linux that was released in April.
Dell is offering Ubuntu 8.04 on the consumer systems in the United States, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, United Kingdom, Mexico and Colombia. The open source operating system is available on the XPS M1330N and the Inspiron 1525N notebooks and the Inspiron 530N desktop.
In early August, Dell plans to add the XPS M1530N and the Studio 15N notebooks to the line-up. The releases will be in time for Linux World, which runs Aug. 4-7 in San Francisco. At the conference, Dell plans to discuss where it sees the direction of Linux going in 2009.
Dell has made the latest Linux image more accessible to a global audience by including the ability to select a language during the first boot process. “While this doesn’t mean we’re shipping in every country — yet — it’s a step in the right direction,” Daniel Judd, Dell’s product group strategist, said in the company’s blog.
Best Buy and Amazon.com are offering Hardy Heron on CD for $20 and $18, respectively.
Do you use Ubuntu? What are you thoughts on this move by Dell?
I have an old laptop that kept getting “overheating errors” in window xp, could not for the life of me figure it out. I have Ubuntu installed on it and it just purrs along just use it to do maintenance and surf around. I like the Idea of being able to purchase it on a new system installed already without all the bloat ware.