Dell Preps for Next Linux Desktop Release
A major desktop Linux upgrade is set to be released on October 18. Michael Dell is expected to personally use it. And the PC giant will pre-load it on selected desktops and notebooks. Buzz about this next Linux release — dubbed Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon — is growing across the web. But what exactly does Gutsy Gibbon (aka Ubuntu 7.10) offer to desktop customers and solutions providers? Here’s a look.
Canonical (the company that develops Ubuntu) has outlined a long-term road map for the operating system. During the UbuntuLive conference back in July, Canonical CTO Matt Zimmerman said Ubuntu 7.10 would feature several core enhancements for desktop and server users. On the desktop, 7.10 will support:
- a 3D interface out of the box
- multi-monitor configuration
- laptop power profiling
- more details still to come
On the server, 7.10 will offer:
- Turn-key web administration
- One-step server recipes
- Proactive security with AppArmor, an increasingly popular open source security option
- “Desktop” type simplicity
So, what does that mean to Ubuntu resellers and customers? Quite a lot. Ubuntu moved from niche status into the spotlight when Michael Dell himself began running the operating system. And when Dell announced selected PCs with Ubuntu preloaded a few months ago, even The VAR Guy decided to open his wallet for one of the systems.
If Ubuntu 7.1o continues that positive buzz, it could help desktop Linux to gradually become a mainstream operating system. But don’t expect that to happen overnight. In an exclusive interview with Dell’s Linux gurus last month, the company indicated that it would take a slow-and-steady approach to Ubuntu. Translation: Don’t expect Dell to throw marketing dollars at Ubuntu PCs just yet.
The VAR Guy doesn’t expect that to happen for at least another year because Dell doesn’t want to over promise and under deliver to frustrated Windows users and small business owners who are seeking alternatives.
In the meantime, the countdown to Ubuntu 7.10 continues. And the buzz surrounding Ubuntu 7.1 will only grow louder as the upgrade’s October 18 launch date approaches.
I have been using Gutsy (Beta) for 2 weeks and it is amazing. I left Microsoft 2 years ago and have been using Linux (Ubuntu mostly) since then. When I go to a computer chain store (Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples, etc…) and see all those customers pay for a MS operating, it breaks my heart. I haven’t paid for software during my entire Linux usage period. I don’t pay for upgrades, virus scanners, spyware scanners… The point is I DON”T PAY!!!! That is why I think people will at one point give Linux a chance. The Microsoft era will soon have its sunset. Vista is making sure of that.
Maybe Linux isn’t ready to replace Windows, but it’s more sensible to port your windows XP/2000 to a Virtual Machine running on top of Linux than upgrading to the new Windows Vista.
That will oversimplificate administration, harden your system security, and save a few bucks (buying more RAM to allocate virtual machines is far cheaper than buying a Vista licence).
Virtual Machines store the full windows (OS, software, configuration and data) in a single file “inside” linux, so it’s really easy to backup, test new software upgrades or restore to a previous image with zero risks and no efforts at all. I’m running right now XP inside a Linux KVM. While is not as fast as running on hardware I fell much more confortable and safe that running the newest Vista.
AMEN
I’ve been running Feisty Fawn for almost a year now and it’s completely bulletproof. Had to do some work to get 3-D accelleration to work and to get BZFlag to work properly but now that it works it just keeps on going.
Thanks for the update and thanks to Dell for taking this first step which will be rewarding in the long term.
@Benoit (#1)
That’s nice, but there are still many programs out there where open source doesn’t come close.
I don’t care what you say about OpenOffice, MS Office 2007 completely annihilates it every single category (except cost). Outlook is better than Sunbird, as well. There may be rising competent OSS competitors to Exchange, but I don’t see them gaining any foothold. (Do they even work with blackberry’s?)
That and Photoshop. Gimp is cute. No really, I’ve used Gimp a good bit and it’s quaint. It’s nothing close to Photoshop in pure power, but for photo resizing it gets the job done.
And Blender? Again, I’ve seen some impressive results out of Blender. But nothing compared to the gorgeous works I’ve seen created in 3D Studio Max. Theres a reason Hollywood uses Premiere or Final Cut, 3D Studio Max (Or similar suite), and no OSS programs.
And of course games. Well, there aren’t OSS games, pretty much, at least nothing that’s even remotely competitive with a developed game.
But hey, keep on not buying things. If you’re just dicking around online and reading email you should be just fine!
Actually I have Counter-Strike running on both of my linux computers and it runs faster than on my windows computers 🙂 Also, there are plenty of absolutely awesome open source games for linux like Tremulous.
Alex, what have you got Counter-Strike running under? I haven’t tried installing Steam, etc. for over a year and was wondering how things are going. Are you using Cedega or Wine or something else? I’d love to know!
About exchange: Exchange is old-fasioned anyway.
If you were to deploy something fresh, in 2007 the choice would be to use a web-based groupwise setup. Which is just an apt-get away on the server. You can add an imap server, with calender and shared address books to it as well for those who prefer a desktop client rather than a webclient.
Sunbird isn’t the default on any system. Evolution is btw. That’s the MS Outlook/Exchange clone.
Also there are great and fun games for Linux. Fun being the most important adjective here. These games are popular like the Wii is popular. Not the state-of-the-art 3d engine. But good gameplay. Something that is lacking with the industrial games.
Also, I think, honestly, for Ubuntu, stuff like Gimp/Photoshop, Evolution/Outlook shouldn’t matter that much. The target audience is consumer desktop. It can be a corporate machiene lite which much better security and central administration, but Ubuntu in specific is in rise for the consumer desktop.
We’re talking Media players, Internet Browsers, Videopodcatchers, 3D FPS, burning audio-cd’s, putting music on your ipod. Stuff like that.
The general rule of thumb is: common tasks are easier, better integrated, more intuitive and less bloated. Tools that are only supposed to be used by professionals after 6 months of training should be irrelevant. The truth is, of all 100 photoshop users, 99 of them use less functionality of Photoshop than even GIMP offers.
It’s not so much a revolution of freedom, as well as a back-to-basics. My parents aren’t able to Nero Burning just to burn some movie as a DVD. The all-in-one-tools are dead. Why use Photoshop to resize an image? It takes ages to start-up. Its interface is very confusing is all you want is some basic stuff. The mind-set is changing.
People want simple tools that work together and do want they need to do on a daily base. They don’t want all-in-one graphical editors, office suites, internet-suites (remember netscape?), burning-suites, etc.
This is where linux is delevering. By default simple, to the point tools that do ONE TASK and not such at that.
Games more than anything are holding Ubuntu back from the group of users that would otherwise have switched yesterday. I’m a gamer. I run a few games on WINE. But more and more, and i just limiting myself to linux supported games and opensource games. Like counter-strike? Try Urban Terror. Like WoW? Seriously, there are like 100+ good MMORPG for linux (its insane).
It’s also the crap the commercial companies have tried to push down our throat that, now that the consumer have a choice, is going to bite them in the ass.
My default music player supports all portable music devices. It supports Jamendo (a 30,000+ free songs repository) rather than some commercial store that you have no interest in.
I don’t have 5 different update programs sitting in my tray. I don’t need to go to the internet to install some piece of software. I just click add/remove, and select which of the 20,000 applications I want. Boom, its installed.
I click a .rar file. Ubuntu asks me if I want to install support for rar-files. I say yes. The default archive manager pops up immediately after the zero-config installation, and I extract my files.
I plug in my printer. Does it ask me for device drivers? Do i need to install some crappy software of the vendor that you know is going to break your system? No, i see tiny little message in the corner of the screen. Printer detected and ready for use, do you want to print a test page?
Play-time is over. We need to get some work done. Functionality is overrated is nobody excepts the nerds and professionals know how to use it. In the past we were impressed when we saw a program with more than a 100 menu entries (like office, like photoshop). Wow, this thing can do anything. No, its just bad interface design, stuffing too much junk into each application by default.
The few applications where I am a hardcore user. I go to the tiny little menu. I select ‘manage extensions’. From that list I select the power-tools i would want to use. Just those. And just for those two apps where my usage is beyond common.
It’s time computers became what they were intended to become. If I look at a windows computer, i see 99 of the 100 interface decisions being based on commercial interest. Establishing the brand, emphasizing we can do anything.
Hell, Adobe Reader takes 20 seconds to start up, just so you think its really complicated and you are using the state-of-the-art. If it took 0.2 second you wouldn’t even know the name of the program. It takes 0.2 sec on Ubuntu to open up an PDF file. No, i don’t know what the program is called. It’s just there when I needed.
If I put in an audio-cd. I get a window with just the name of album, and the tracks. I can click the big RIP button. Or i can double click any of the tracks to play them. It doesn’t launch some huge 100+ mb super media all-in-one crap.
If I put in a DVD, it plays the DVD. Just the DVD. It’s not loading some media-librayr, or connecting to media-guides on the internet.
It’s not windows that is rotten. Its the whole mindset. The whole ecosystem. Good selling software is hardly ever good software.
You can also turn it around: maybe the whole Ubuntu desktop is like one big all-in-one super program. But still: it only has the basic tools for the common tasks. By default we are common. You need something specific? You click add/remove, search for 3d modeling , stunts-like-racing-game, label-printer, whatever and you customize it.
I can keep this rant up forever. It’s the quality that is selling linux. Not because it can do more, but because it can do what y ou want, and do it better. Just because feature X is available, doesn’t mean you’ve ever used it or have a real need for it. Its just there taking up your ram, taking up your discspace, taking up your cpu, updating itself in the background with its own interface conventions, and its own updater, that constantly bugs you.
One reason to install Ubuntu: BECAUSE YOU WILL NEVER EVER SEE A BOUNCING PAPERCLIP! Or anthing annoying like that.
What the heck would I do with CS3 and 3dstudio max at home anyway? I don’t run a studio at home dude,do you? I mean, come on, a new copy of 3dstudio max9 runs 3500 dollars new, CS3 is over a grand so I guess you must be dreaming of starting a production company or something. Hope you are having fun. I just use my OSS programs to have fun and learn about computers.Betcha for the average user OSS programs are just as much fun and offers 99% of what the average user needs. In spite of your derogatory tone OSS is the way for me.
Cart
This is wonderful news that they won’t stagnate current Dell users of 7.04.
Chris, I use Maya and Photoshop in my profession as well as I have used Blender and The Gimp, and I must say that these two open source programs are brilliant and compete very well with their commercial counterparts and that you’re making too many assumptions. The real reason big studios don’t use blender is because their existing toolsets and plugins are very entrenched to what they’ve already got, be it 3Dsmax, Maya or XSI, and the top renderers like renderman work well with them and not blender, still this isn’t an issue with blender (the in-built renderer beats the hell out of maya software, maya’s built-in renderer). Also these commercial apps have no built-in compositor either, and if you want fluid or cloth simulations with maya you must pay the huge price of like US$7999 for unlimited, whereas blender has it free. The shortcomings? Maybe the hard-coded controls, however this is being tackled in 2.50 I think, another good thing is no ongoing cost of upgrading, the last update from maya 8.5 to 2008 brought hardly anything new by the way but cost a great deal to upgrade. Blender can only get better, not to mention it has the most tiny memory footprint and load time!
As with photoshop vs the gimp, I agree photoshop wins overall at this current time but not by the margin you say. As for exchange, there’s Zimbra which supports more protocols including exchange, open source ones, and whatever iSync on the mac can use. Also Evolution is the program you want to use to sync up to the proprietary MS protocol (recently it was extremely slow for the MS protocol, however this is fixed now). Not sure about blackberry.
Premiere is somewhat rubbish 🙂 I know I’ve used it! However sadly there’s no open source video editor which comes close to any of the big video editing players 🙁 Haven’t tried cinerella though. Shake is available but it’s damn expensive.
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Linux isn’t ready to replace windows as a general-purpose desktop OS … mostly because of the lack of games, educational software, and business software.
As a desktop for a software guy, though, Linux has been easily able to replace Windows for years now …unless you’re developing Windows apps, I suppose.
I’ve been using Fedora Linux, or Red Hats since 1996. I’ll be honest — there are two open source programs I hate and need serious fixing.
First, OpenOffice. I loathe OpenOffice. Even ignoring the compatibility issues that are arguably Microsoft’s fault for having such a complicated file format . . . OpenOffice plain stinks. It is improving far too slowly to compete. I hope that the new IBM foray into OpenOffice will bring it up to speed quickly. Until then, I use a VMWare Virtual Machine to run Office 2007 in XP — under Fedora Linux, of course.
Second, the Gimp. That is a very descriptive name for it. The Gimp is a gimpy version of Photoshop. While its true that you can edit pictures with most of the functionality of Photoshop, the Gimp development team has completely missed the mark in terms of an acceptable UI. If you are used to working in the Gimp, and then look at Adobe Photoshop CS3, it will make your jaw drop.
Aside from these two points, I entirely use Linux. My work is in Computer Architecture, so the entire workflow — minus writing papers and drawing graphs — is open sourced.
Every year, people say that “Linux is going to hit it big on the Desktop this year.” Every time I hear that, I wish it was true — but until OOo and The Gimp are overhauled, it just won’t be ready.
@Chris and any other Microsoft paid trolls.
This is an article about Linux and Dell, not about whether or not Linux will replace windows.
Your experiences of Linux not living up to your closed source expectations probably has to do with your delusion (or sales pitch) that Microsoft is the end all be all of computing technology. Linux is not Windows, nor has it ever tried to be.
Stop expecting Linux to be something you already know and instead take time to learn what it is. When you understand it’s advantages over Windows, you won’t sound like such an ignorant MS lackey.
[…] Dell se prepara para ofrecer Linux con Ubuntu 7.10techiqmag.com/2007/10/08/dell-preps-for-next-linux-desktop-r… por dcarrero hace pocos segundos […]
[…] comente hace tiempo que Dell preinstalará Ubuntu en sus equipos. Hoy desde menéame me entero que Dell se prepara para ofrecer equipos con Linux Ubuntu 7.10 […]
[…] More info: here […]
Of course Windows has an edge when it comes to polished applications. What do you expect? However Open source applications are MORE THAN ADEQUATE for most users needs. When you care about OS performance then let’s talk. Linux is a true multitasking workhorse -running the internet. Infinitely customizable for devices, servers or desktop. Go ahead run your wimpy insecure amp; expensive MS OS. I run Ubuntu Linux an OS with true power, customization and security.
The point is not if Maya gt; Blender, Photoshop gt; GIMP, etc… they are different options: nothing stops Acrobat from releasing a GNU/Linux version of Photoshop. The same goes for games, driver support, etc. These has never been real reason why Windows gt; GNU/Linux, don’t get things wrong 🙂
Despite that, let me say that I do prefer Evince for Acrobat Reader, Blender for 3DStudio (it weights 3Mb), Firefox for IE (4Mb), Infrarecorder for Nero (3Mb), etc ..
I think we are not seeing the big picture here, Windows is already dead, it is just that people is either too lazy to learn new things or they are trapped by the lock-in mechanics.
Chris #6… are you really telling us that you have paid for Windows, Office 2007, Photoshop and 3D Studio Max?
Trust yourself: they are very good applications, but if you had to pay for them, you wouldn’t have any.
Linux is free, zero cost, and gets the job done.
[…] his take on how Dell plans to support Ubuntu 7.10:read more | digg […]
It might be a good news that Dell is pre-installing Ubuntu during the next release. However, it never fails to make me wonder if Dell has to avoid doing the installation for us, would that help to reduce cost.
After all, we only need the computer from Dell, they are not software makers. We can easily install Linux ourselves.
To the people that think you need 3dStudio Max, Photoshop, and some other Proprietary apps.
3D Max is windows only, But the step up from that is Maya, and it runs on Linux. If memory servers Maya was used many a Pixar movie and many ran on linux and used linux cluster farms.
ILM did Starwars on Linux systems and with their own custom software.
As too Photoshop, most serious artists and people who actually use Photoshop to it’s full potential do it on a Mac. Sure I’d love Adobe to port it to Linux, and who knows maybe they will.
Office 2007 is not that great. I’ll admit OpenOffice needs to work on some of it speed and load issues but otherwise it does 90% – 95% of what MS Office. What OOo doesn’t do is generally not used by most people anyway.
Open Source has some areas to mature more but beats out Windows in many other areas.
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[…] oct 9th, 2007 by Kai-chan Una grandÃsima mejora en el escritorio Linux se lanzará en octubre, y se espera que Michael Dell l… […]
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Actually one of my friends first read this article and asked me to visit this page. This article has very useful information, it will be helpful for many. Thank you so much for your help and for your efforts.
Thanks,
Alex
http://www.freedownloadpadfileurlsitesubmit.com
[…] TechIQ – Archive – Dell Preps for Next Linux Desktop Release Secondo TechIQ il migliorare di Ubuntu potrebbe far uscire dalla nicchia Linux e farlo diventare un sistema mainstream. Micheal Dell sta infatti aspettando con ansia l#8217;uscita di Gutsy Gibbon (Ubuntu 7.10) ed è entusiasta del Long Time Support scelto da C (tags: ubuntu Linux Dell, Gutsy, computers technology) […]
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I switched totally to Linux 5 years ago. As a consultant, many of my clients are Windows users. I’ve taken this under consideration when sharing files and stick with MS fonts for those exchanges. No two applications are the same and popular Linux applications have proven quite usable in a mixed environment. Linux and Microsoft will always be different — thank God for that.
Looking forward to the new K/Ubuntu. My laptop’s nearling the end of its lifetime. Dell will get my business.
I was a little annoyed by the Benoit comment about not paying for open source software. At least you could donate to projects. I have donated over $200 to various projects. That is the way you’re supposed to do it.
I have been using linux for about 2 years, out of complete frustration with The Ubiquitous OS. First was Debian, now Xubuntu.
I upgraded to 7.10 about 2 weeks ago with barely an interruption. Imagine what that would look like with The Other OS…
I run an MIS department; I could have whatever I want. I want stable – I use linux. And it’s free.
What else is there to say?
Will Dell be providing a version of it’s own, like it did for the 1420N (that is a DVD install version with all of Dell’s drivers, etc)?
And will Dell provide an upgrade path for the 1420N to be upgraded to the new version of Ubuntu?
Or will the new version of Ubuntu already be “1420n friendly” and allow for an online upgrade of the Dell Laptop?
[…] strongest on PC desktops and notebooks, Canonical has publicly stated that Ubuntu 7.10 will include several server-focused enhancements. The company has also hinted that it was preparing a small business server suite. Also, Canonical […]
[…] has publicly stated that Ubuntu 7.10 will include several server-focused enhancements. The company has also hinted that it was preparing a small business server suite. Also, Canonical […]
[…] Dell Preps for Next Linux Desktop Release Posted in IT e Sviluppo, News. Tags: dell, linux, ubuntu. […]
SabayonLinux. Try it. based off gentoo, which is way better than ubuntu.
There are a FEW areas in which my business still needs Windows applications, but for “general business use”, Ubuntu has been a workable solution for some while.
Email, more than adequate (and yes, Blackberry support is there), not quite as polished as the MS solution, but saving several thousand.
Office suite, adequate. Not as good as MS Office, but the re-training issue is there with Office2007 just as much as it is with OOo. Saving few hundred per seat.
Web access. Firefox is just as good as Internet explorer (in fact, most of our Windows users have moved over to the Windows version of Firefox anyway.)
In fact, because our in-house applications are web-based anyway, it really doesn’t matter too much what clients we run for “general business use”.
The two areas where we still need more applications:
Financials. Sorry, people, but until they release Sage for Linux, then our accountant ain’t going to swap.
Audio editing. Audacity is good, but for professional work, Audition still has the edge, particularly in things like Fourier noise reduction. Given that one of our divisions releases audio-books for a living, this is kind of important for us… but that is ONE member of the team, who need a high-end application anyway, not a general roll-out issue.
The question is, as ever, one of support costs.
If Linux could do EVERYTHING, then it would be clear-cut. There are enough local firms offering Linux support that we have reassurance, and our in-house IT people all seem to run Linux at home anyway, so would be delighted for us to move over.
The problem, for the moment, is that the overall cost of running a MIXED desktop environment is still a thorn in the side of the budget… I guess we’re all used to that from the odd person who NEEDS (TM) a Mac, though 🙂
i am writing to find out which of the linux systems are compatible with window xp home. i would appreciate any help in this matter thanks
David Bender:
You can switch from Windows xp home to Ubuntu 7.04 without any problems.
I’m using 7.04 since many months and 7.10 beta since 2 weeks without any problems.
It’s amazing to see the stability of OS linux. You can run hours,days, without any reset or losing efficiency. I believe it’s really improving very fast!
We should be cautious about weighing too much on Linux based Dell
machines for many reasons:
It is very difficult to even find the Linux machines on Dell
website. Which simply means that Dell wants to sell these computers to
people who * already * are in.
Linux installed Dell machines are prices * higher * than their
windows cousins. This is totally stupid of dell. They could easily
have brought same computers with windows or Linux with the latter
being $50 less.
When buying laptops / desktops you can’t choose Linux. Nor does
Dell advertise Linux based machines in anyway either in the media or
on its site, it just asks “Looking for open source”?
Worst of all, it does * not * offers servers with free Linux,
neither Ubuntu server nor Debian. It only offers expensive Redhat or
SUSE. That’s totally dumb.
Dell is selling a high end laptop (1420N)
and a high end desktop (530N) with Linux, whereas my 3 year old p4
with 512MB does perfectly fine with Ubuntu. The windows based
Inspiron 1420 and 530 with same config and service duration are
actually more expensive than the Linux based N series counterparts, so
your service cost argument is void. Dell could possibly offer Ubuntu
with simpler / intro level machines simply because unlike Windows,
Ubuntu/Linux is not resource hungry. So when I said just $50 lower,
meant the simplest intro machine minus windows to cost less than what
it would with windows.
I can’t quote the source from the top of my head, but at the end of
2006 equal share of PC users were using Mac OS and Linux (all distro),
and that was about 8% + 8% . On the server side, Linux/Unix based
systems make most sense as people are worrying more about security
that Windows server does not provide (and apple is not even in the
server business).
There is genuine potential for Linux based PC’s, but Dell needs to tap
the market. Just putting something up for sale and hoping people who
need it to find it is too retro. Since they decided to invest
resources into it, they better had done a clean job.
It is of course commendable that Dell was smart enough to venture into
open source and offers Ubuntu Linux installed computers, but their
marketing fiasco is sure to make this cool move a loser. They have to
offer more than just one laptop and one desktop with Linux options,
and people should be allowed to find where these are listed on the
web. There’s nothing to hide!
[…] Dell se prépare à la prochaine sortie du bureau Linux – Une mise à jour majeure du bureau Linux est prévue le 18 octobre. Michael Dell doit l#8217;utiliser personnellement. Et le géant du PC distribuera Ubuntu sur une sélection d#8217;ordinateurs de bureau et de portables. […]
[…] undeniable. The operating system, overseen by Canonical, received a major upgrade last month. And Dell continues to ship Ubuntu on selected systems. (In fact, I own one of the Dell systems.) Now, Everex has further customized Ubuntu as part of the […]
[…] read more | digg story […]
@Rubab Khan
wow totally agree with you
you have done a great analisis
Walmart and everex with the gPC / gOS (thinkgos.com) in my opinion are doing a much better job than dell.
Like you said, Dell needs to sell low-end pcs with ubuntu too !
a $300 ubuntu dell pc
a $450 ubuntu dell laptop
their 2 current high end offerings
ubuntu to the masses, to people who really need a pc or their first pc.
[…] Lanzamiento de Ubuntu 7-10 Gutsy Gibbon […]
[…] undeniable. The operating system, overseen by Canonical, received a major upgrade last month. And Dell continues to ship Ubuntu on selected systems. (In fact, The VAR Guy owns one of the systems.) Now, Everex has further customized Ubuntu as part […]
[…] That may sound like a tiny figure. But let#8217;s do some quick math. Worldwide PC sales will approach 260 million units this year, according to Gartner. Five percent of that market is 13 million units. That#8217;s a killer opportunity for Canonical and its partners. Ubuntu#8217;s installed base is currently about 6 million to 12 million users, Canonical estimates. And the latest Ubuntu 7.10 release should help broaden the operating system#8217;s appeal #8212; especially with Dell backing it. […]