It’s finally here. Later today, Dell will offer U.S customers three different systems with Ubuntu 7.04 installed: the XPS 410n and Dimension E520n desktops and the Inspiron E1505n notebook. These systems are now available at www.dell.com/open today. Starting price for the E520n desktop and the E1505n notebook is $599; the XPS 410n starts at $899 $849. Note from Lionel: My apologies, but I had included an incorrect starting price for the XPS 410n. It will be $849.
Hardware support will come from Dell. Beyond that, users can turn to the Linux section of the Dell Community Forum for help and also get the latest updates from our Linux team at www.dell.com/linux http://linux.dell.com. Users also have fee-based options for operating system support through Canonical, including 30-day Get Started, One-year Basic and One-year Standard.
As John said in his post earlier this week, initially we will offer a subset of the component options we support on the three systems. We will continue to work with vendors to improve the stability of the associated Linux drivers moving forward. That’s part of our longer-term goal to increase the number of drivers that work at the kernel level—something Direct2Dell readers made very clear. We’ll get there, it just takes time.
Update 5-25: Beyond this first step of offering three platforms with Ubuntu pre-installed, another goal we have is to introduce Linux to a wider audience. If you're new to Linux or would like to understand more about open source, check out this StudioDell video: Linux 101: What's all the Fuss?
Dell is doing this because of your clear feedback in IdeaStorm. User dhart submitted this idea on February 16—the first day we launched IdeaStorm and it quickly became the #1 idea. Since then, about 30,000 community members weighed in to support it, and over 100,000 of you completed the Linux survey to tell us more.
In this vlog, I had the pleasure to interview John Hull and key members of his team that helped us get to this point today. In addition to John, you'll hear from Roger Noriega and Rezwanul Kabir, who were the desktop and notebook leads, respectively. You'll also hear perspective from Hatim Amro about work he did to get systems with Ubuntu through Dell's manufacturing process.
To the worldwide Linux community, I wanted to thank you for all your support. Linux-related posts are the three most viewed posts since we launched the blog back in July 2006. The Linux survey post and the Ubuntu 7.04 post are also the top two most commented blog entries as well—both received well over 500 comments. That makes it hard to keep up with comment moderation, but it's a problem I love to have.
Thanks for giving us a chance to show what Dell 2.0 is about. While this is a milestone that a lot of us will remember, it’s just the beginning—plenty more to come.