I actually LIKE that Dell waited, and tweaked it to work right with their hardware. Go Dell for not shipping a buggy linux and further inhibiting the growth of linux.

nutbastard

Awesome. I just installed this on my friends 5 year old Dell the other day. Worked beautifuly, super fast install. He's never used anything but XP, picked up Ubuntu in a day... loves the software install feature. It's a top-notch OS.

Now... Give me the upcoming Dell E with this on it! Gimme gimme gimme!

dirigoDIGITAL

man, dell is doing everything of everything
they got a affordable line, a middle performance line, a xps line, a xps gaming line, a alienware line
xp, vista now they got linux
they got tablets, business laptops, crap load of desktops
goes on and on

thomusvoo

HA! I anc see someone trying to get that serviced at the new WalMart service station..

"Well, theres your problem right there, mister. Sumbody went and stoled your Winduhs off uf 'der and infectedized it wit this Umbumtow virus."

Mr.SithNinja

@dirigoDIGITAL: I didn't read your comment before I posted, but you're singing the same song I am!

Kaiser-Machead's Chips Ahoy!

@araddatz: whoops... $50 cheaper I guess. Still...

araddatz

@araddatz: Props to Dell. I hope that they can give the same kind of love to their little E line that's supposed to be coming soon. I'd grab one with Hardy Heron in it.

Kaiser-Machead's Chips Ahoy!

@sakko Wifi seems to work fine for me.

Rabid Penguin

Too bad the one with Vista Home and all the same config is cheaper :(

I just don't get that... Does MS even charge a big OEM like Dell to use their OS?

araddatz

Uhh can anyone confirm if wifi is working in this build? Last I messed with it was uhhh about 2 revisions ago and it only supported a couple chipsets, even with NDIS wrapper I couldn't get wifi going reliably.

sakko

The main problem I see here is that Linux needs massive testing on SPECIFIC hardware to get rid of ISSUES before it's usable. That's the exact problem people complain about when it comes to Linux.

But at least people can their hands on stable Linux installations with proper support which is something the average person can not do for themselves. Of course they have to buy new hardware to do it.

JEmlay

@Mr.SithNinja: lol! That made my day.

evangelistc01

@sakko: Works fine with my Atheros chip set.

Scott

@nutbastard:
We don't know if that's actually the case or not.

Scott

@sakko:

wifi worked out of the box for me too. some intel 1395 or something.

nutbastard

does that mean we can get a proper hibernate on dell laptops & ubuntu now ?

ercdvs

I think I might buy a Product red XPS and just dump vista and install ubuntu on it. The Ubuntu XPS is only the 13". For $50 more you can get the red one and have a 15" screen.

I think they really are fucking over linux users in this case.

BrandonOBrien

@Mr.SithNinja: Heck, you gawn lawst that dang start button....

hired_geek

@thomusvoo: yeah now they just need nicer looking desktops then got a good thing going

revolution-inc

Dell almost, ALMOST has it. Compare 2 of the same notebooks, one with Ubuntu, one with Vista, and the Vista rig is cheaper? How does that make sense? Ubuntu is free! Buy the Vista machine and install Ubuntu yourself!

tumnus

@Scott:

"Dell wanted to do a whole bunch of testing and add support for stuff like fingerprint readers, Bluetooth, HDMI and MP3/WMA/WMV out of the box before rolling it out on their Linux systems."

I don't see how that isn't the case, in light of TFA.

nutbastard

just realized something...

does anyone have any idea if dell will be putting plasma on these things or will you have to install that on your own?

jrghoull

@jrghoull: Do you mean Compiz-Fusion? If so, it's built in to Hardy.

If you mean the plasmoids from KDE4, then you'd have to install that - I think they only ship Ubuntu, not Kubuntu.

Rich Bradshaw

@JEmlay: There's nothing unique about a hardware manufacturer shipping a product a few months after the release date. Dell did the exact same thing with Vista - and my Fiance's CD/DVD drive still doesn't work with her less than 1 year old dell that shipped with Vista. With Ubuntu Hardy Heron, all of the hardware works flawlessly.

When Windows releases Windows, it takes months before it's available to consumers. This pre-release is called RTM. Ubuntu has no RTM, so Dell treated the release date as the RTM. Check it out. It took about two months from the day Dell got Vista in its hands to the day it shipped a laptop.

Release:
[reviews.cnet.com]

First Dell:
[www.itwire.com]

davidron

@tumnus: I'm guessing Dell is gonna provide some sort of customer service/support line for linux users. When you buy a copy of Windows you do get some support from microsoft, but thats not the case with linux. So that might be the reason for a higher price. You might be paying to train the new batch of linux "capable" support.

ARodX7

What noone seems to understand is that it IS cheaper for Dell to sell a WinDoZe machine because they get PAID to load all of that Crapware from companies like Macafee, AOL, Google, etc. When they sell a Linux machine, they don't have all that crap to install(thankfully), so they have to actually charge more because they don't get the kickbacks. That's the breaks guys. Anyway, it makes more sense to buy the WinDoZe version so that you have a key if you sell it so you can actually have a "legal" copy of the WinDoZe OS on it when you sell it. As for offering Ubuntu, well, it's a start. When they start offering a heavyweight disto like openSUSE or Fedora, I might be slightly impressed.

MontagueIdomeneus

Oh boy - yay. Finally they're going to make drivers for everything and you won't need to use restricteds (bigggg linux fan here, ubuntu is a great OS for new guyz).

They can't legally close Ubuntu's source off because it would violate the GNU GPL, I do believe. So now basically the drivers are going to work perfectly for all dells with ubuntu (or other debian based) as well as other distros as well. They might as well throw the source out there.

Step in the right direction (UNIX based systems).

Syndacate

@davidron:
Why are you replying to me? That had nothing to do with my comment.

JEmlay