Dell: Ubuntu 7.04 Offering - Technical Details

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Before we announce the availability of Ubuntu 7.04 on select Dell client systems, I'd like to give an overview of what customers can expect from our initial Ubuntu offering.

Availabile Software and Hardware

The default software from the Ubuntu media will be installed on the system, including kernel and applications.
The peripheral options offered with Ubuntu will be a subset of what is offered with other operating systems. We're offering the hardware options on each system that have the most mature and stable Linux driver support. These hardware options have been thoroughly tested by the Linux team here at Dell.
We configure/install open source drivers for hardware, when possible.
We use partial open-source or closed source ("restricted" in Ubuntu terms) drivers where there is no equivalent open-source driver. This includes Intel wireless cards and Conexant modems.
We will have a wiki page on our linux.dell.com website that gives technical details of the supported systems, information on the device drivers used for system peripherals, details of our Ubuntu factory-installation, and information on the problems we found during our testing, with their fixes/workarounds.
We recommend Linux users buy Dell printers that have PostScript engines in them. The previous hyperlink lists those printers. You can also check in the Tech Specs tab for each printer on Dell.com show if it has PostScript or not.

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News source: Direct2Dell

(3 replies) #1 David3k on 21 May 2007 - 23:24

I hope that the Dell tech support team are up to handling the coming problems that they're gonna get.

They won't be ready. But then again, they never are.

#1.1 CaKeY on 22 May 2007 - 03:37

The Ubuntu folks will be handling support. I'm pretty sure they know what they're doing.

#1.2 Budious on 22 May 2007 - 05:44

Well of course the first suggestion for any caller will be "sudo shutdown -r now"

#1.3 A. Kaladis / nw_raptor on 22 May 2007 - 08:32

Quote - (Budious said @ #3)

and if all else fails, "sudo rm -rf /"

#2 dagamer34 on 22 May 2007 - 00:51

Aren't Dell printers notoriously un-Linux friendly since they are simply rebranded Lexmarks? I'd like to see Dell Technical support solve THAT problem.

#3 Netrack on 22 May 2007 - 01:09

one small step for the consumer....one big borkfest for technical support

#4 +Steffan on 22 May 2007 - 02:14

They are offering a bunch of windows based software when you customize a system.

(1 reply) #5 Angel Blue01 on 22 May 2007 - 05:58

I hope they include non-OSS stuff like DVD playback, video codecs, and Flash 9 by default.

#5.1 mrk112 on 22 May 2007 - 08:27

Unfortunately not...

Quote -

At this time, we are not including any support for proprietary audio or video codecs that are not already distributed with Ubuntu 7.04. These include MPEG 1/2/3/4, WMA, WMV, DVD, Quicktime, etc. We are evaluating options for providing this support in the future.

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/05/21/15563.aspx

#6 The_Decryptor on 22 May 2007 - 07:38

Whether or not the printers have PostScript engines means less and less these days, my cheap printer doesn't support PostScript (i think), but i can still send it PostScript, the printing engine on my mac transforms it into the proper format before it reaches it (well, everything to PDF, then PDF to whatever the printer uses)

Linux is the same, anything i print is converted to PostScript, then sent to my mac which changes it into PDF and prints that, Windows is the same as well.

Man, that was a long rant for one bullet item, happy about the rest though.

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