Michael Dolan Dot Com

Monday, February 26th, 2007

Dell Responds to IdeaStorm’s Linux Demand

Dell’s full response here. An excerpt re: Linux below. I think this comes up quite short of what the users wanted - but I think this hits a continuously obvious market segment in the corporate desktop space. Should be interesting to watch this unfold. For the consumer segment, it is interesting to see Dell dodge any Linux or at least blank hard drive options… at a minimum, Dell could preload Ubuntu at no cost… and let the user install whatever distro they want.

Pre-Installed Linux Options

It’s exciting to see the IdeaStorm community’s interest in open source solutions like Linux and OpenOffice. Your feedback has been all about flexibility and we have seen a consistent request to provide platforms that allow people to install their operating system of choice. We are listening, and as a result, we are working with Novell to certify our corporate client products for Linux, including our OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations. This is another step towards ensuring that our customers have a good experience with Linux on our systems.

As this community knows, there is no single customer preference for a distribution of Linux. In the last week, the IdeaStorm community suggested more than half a dozen distributions. We don’t want to pick one distribution and alienate users with a preference for another. We want users to have the opportunity to help define the market for Linux on desktop and notebook systems. In addition to working with Novell, we are also working with other distributors and evaluating the possibility of additional certifications across our product line. We are continuing to investigate your other Linux-related ideas, so please continue to check here for updates.

To read about the recent addition of Latitude notebooks to our n-series family, read Direct2Dell from one of Dell’s Linux solution architects, or visit www.dell.com/linux and www.dell.com/nseries.