Linux

Today is the day. For customers in the United States who interested in compelling notebooks with 15.4” Hi-def widescreen displays the Dell XPS M1530n and Studio 15n notebooks are now available with Ubuntu 8.04 factory installed. US customers can check out these systems and more at www.dell.com/ubuntu (or click on the Ubuntu image below).

Thanks again to the Linux community for the continued support (and purchase) of Dell systems with Linux pre-installed. Your interest and direct feedback enables better solutions on a broader array of platforms. Hope to see you at LinuxWorld!

As many of you know, the 2008 LinuxWorld Conference and Expo is taking place this week in San Franciscso. Several of us at Dell will be attending to take part in the "Desktop Linux" track. I'll be part of a panel discussion titled "OEM Desktop Panel Discussion - We’re shipping Linux on PCs: Now What?" on Wednesday morning at 11:30, while Daniel Judd and Cole Crawford are hosting a session titled "The Client Linux Desktop: A Dell Case Study", on Thursday morning at 10:15. If you're attending the conference, please stop by and chat with us; we'd love to meet you and get your feedback.

I'd like to follow up our Ubuntu 8.04 post with a quick update on the technical details for what we have added with this release. We have continued to build and improve upon on what we did for our Ubuntu 7.10 offering, and here are some of the highlights:

• We have added Fluendo GStreamer codecs for mp3, wma, and wmv playback. This will allow you to play media of those types in your favorite media player on the system. These codecs are in addition to the LinDVD DVD player application that we're continuing to offer as a standard part of every Ubuntu 8.04 system.
• Biometric fingerprint readers are now supported on the XPS laptops. We have all of the necessary software installed and ready to use; you just have to easily configure the software to recognize your fingerprint.
• ATI Graphics options are available on the Inspiron 530n, and will also be available on the Studio 15n. We're using the close-source fglrx driver to give full OpenGL support
• HDMI audio output is now supported with NVIDIA and ATI graphics cards, so you'll now be able to output both audio and video to your home A/V equipment. As many of you know for HDMI, the audio output is directed out what is essentially an HDMI video port, so the graphics drivers need to know how to interact with the audio controller. We worked with both NVIDIA and ATI to get their graphics drivers to work with the HDMI ports on our systems, and we find HDMI to work well with both. Unfortunately, HDMI audio does not yet work with Intel graphics cards.

I'll add more in a few weeks once we start selling The XPS 1530n and Studio 15n with Ubuntu 8.04.

After months of testing and development we are ready to release Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on select Dell consumer systems. For consumers in the United States, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, United Kingdom and many Latin American countries (like Mexico and Colombia) Ubuntu 8.04 will be offered on the XPS M1330N and Inspiron 1525N notebooks and the Inspiron 530N  Click on any of the country links above or go to www.dell.com/ubuntu to place your order. :)

In early August, we will also add the XPS M1530n and Studio 15n to the line-up. This is just in time for LinuxWorld where we will participate in a number of the conference sessions. That will be your chance to hear directly about what’s been accomplished over the last year and where we see it going in 2009.

In her post, Anne Camden mentions some of the new features the Ubuntu 8.04 brings. Beyond that, we took steps to make our Linux images more accessible to a global audience by including the ability to select your language during the first boot process. While this does not mean we’re shipping in every country (yet) it’s a step in the right direction. Stay tuned for a technical details post from John Hull will provide a good overview of the work we did on the new release. Similar post from him on Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10 releases have proved to be pretty popular with the Linux community.

This week, Dell will be out "in force" at the Red Hat Summit in Boston.  If you're attending the show, be sure to stop by the Dell booth in the expo area, where we'll have one of our new PowerEdge M1000e modular blade enclosures on hand, as well as a Precision M6300 mobile workstation (coincidentally sold with Red Hat Enterprise Linux installed).  We'll be giving away green bags, so come take a look at what we've got.

Thursday will be a busy day.  During lunch, we will be offering a "Lunch-n-Learn" session, where you can talk to Dell engineers like myself, and ask us anything you like about Dell & Linux.  At 4pm, Robert Hentosh and Peter Lillian present Get IT Faster, Run IT Better, Grow IT Smarter, focusing on Dell's High Performance Compute Cluster and High Availability solutions built with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  Also at 4pm, I'll be presenting Getting the Bits Out: Fedora Mirror Manager in the Open Source Software track.  Of course, this would have to conflict with Fedora user and Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst who is speaking in the FUDCon area at the same time.  Such is my luck.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I'll be involved in the Fedora User and Developer Conference.  With over 150 people lined up (and you're welcome to come even if you haven't pre-registered), it should be the largest US-based FUDCon ever.  There will be a lot of work hammering out ideas and features for Fedora 10 and beyond, but it's always a good time.  There may even be some last-minute campaigning by the good candidates for the Fedora Project Board (be sure to vote!).  Just beware the ninjas!

I hope to see you there.