I’ve got a lot of news to share about Ubuntu, and instead of doing several different posts about it all I thought it would be better to aggregate the info into one convenient article. Prepare your minds for Ubuntu overload!
–Dell Ships 40,000 Ubuntu Machines–
The Register managed to get their hands on some Dell stats, and they are actually rather impressive. It was back in May that Dell started offering Ubuntu as an operating system option on both laptops and desktops, and since then they have apparently shipped 40,000 units. I’m rather impressed with that number, but over 6-months has passed since the release which equates to about 220 computers being shipped every day.
The big question that this has left everyone asking is whether that’s good enough for Dell. They are shipping about 10 million computers every 3-months, and I’m not sure if they’ll see enough value in offering a line of computers where they can only ship 20,000 in the same period. It will be interesting to see how it plays out though.
–Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 1–
One of the joys with open source technology is that you can keep on top of future releases almost as if you were a developing it yourself. With that being said Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 1 (Hardy Heron) was just released, but it only brings a few goodies to the table. It has Xorg 7.3 which improves automatic graphics configuration, a few updated apps like Firefox and Gimp, and there are some new packages that were merged in from Debian.
It’s probably not worth an upgrade quite yet because you’ll risk compromising your system’s stability since it is such an early release. Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 2 is scheduled for December 20th, and then looking into next year Beta 1 is planned for March 27th. When all is said and done Ubuntu 8.04 will ship on April 24th, 2008 and it will be classified as a Long Term Support (LTS) release.
–Full Circle Magazine Issue #7–
It’s that time again! The community-powered Ubuntu magazine is already on its 7th issue, and the cover story is on installing Ubuntu Studio. That version of Ubuntu is geared towards audio and video enthusiasts.
I’ve converted this issue of Full Circle Magazine into a JPEG image for those of you who don’t want to download the PDF, and here’s a quick overview of what issue #6 has in it:
- Step-by-Step Ubuntu Studio Installation
- How-To:
- Simple SSH Install
- A Terminal on your Desktop
- Easily Convert from Windows
- Learning Scribus Part 7
- Wubi Installer Review
- Top 5 Audio/Video Apps.
- Interview with the Howard County Library
- News, Letters, Q&A, MyDesktop and more
Considering nobody in the “real world” really knows what Linux is 40,000 is amazing. I didn’t think they would sell that many to be honest. For a first gen product that is fantastic. I hope this gives Dell the incentive to put more effort into making Ubuntu run smoother on their hardware because I found it to be a little flaky when I used one with Ubuntu pre-loaded. At this rate Linux should have a decent offering in the OEM market if Ubuntu continues to get stronger and Dell fully embrace Linux as a choice for consumers. The future looks pretty good for Linux in the consumer market :)
It is definitely a big number, but the one thing I hope comes out of it is a push for more device manufacturers to create Linux drivers. I think Dell is definitely one of the companies that can make it happen.
And some of them amongst the 40000 who’re new to computers will discover, there is another OS called “Microsoft Windows” which everyone uses and “is amazing” and will switch to it.
You have to wonder how many Ubuntu pc’s they would sell if they had some kind of indication on the actual main Dell website that they were actually for sale. If you order a pc in the normal way by going to Dell.com you will not be offered Ubuntu. Dell does not mention anything about Ubuntu in the millions of catalogs and mail flyers and ads they put out. You have to do a purposeful search for it.
The real question is how many sales are enough to persuade Dell to actually promote and publicize and heck, maybe even ADVERTISE their Ubuntu pc’s like they do with their other products that they really want to sell.
They used to have a small square block on the right side of the laptop and desktop pages that said they had Ubuntu PC’s, but it looks like they’ve removed those. I’m wondering if some people mistakenly bought them not realizing that Windows apps wouldn’t run on it.