Today, 24 May 2007, is a historical day for every Ubuntu fan out there, because Dell will finally release the first three systems with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed. The systems offered by Dell are:

￭ XPS 410n Desktop
￭ Dimension E520n Desktop
￭ Inspiron E1505n Notebook

The above systems will be available for customers today at www.dell.com/open by 4 PM CST. The XPS 410n desktop system will have a starting price of $849, and the price for the E520n desktop and the E1505n notebook starts at $599.

Dell will offer hardware support for these systems and all the customers can get help and latest updates from the Dell Community Forum & the official Dell Linux website. On the other hand, Canonical will offer support to everyone who buys a Dell system with Ubuntu pre-installed; these fee-based options include 30-day Get Started, One-year Basic and One-year Standard.

John Hull, Manager of Linux OS Technologies at Dell, and the Dell Linux team will continue to work with hardware vendors to improve the Linux drivers' stability: "That's part of our longer-term goal to increase the number of drivers that work at the kernel level-something Direct2Dell readers made very clear. We'll get there, it just takes time."

On February 16, when Dell first launched the Dell IdeaStorm website, someone named dhart submitted this wonderful idea - to have pre-installed Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE) on Dell desktops and notebooks. Over 30,000 community members supported this idea and more than 100,000 people completed the Linux survey to tell Dell what they think about having pre-installed Linux OS on their systems.

Please watch this interview with the Dell Linux team leaders, starring John Hull, Roger Noriega, Rezwanul Kabir and Hatim Amro. The interview was taken by Lionel Menchaca from Direct2Dell website. Enjoy!