After a few months of hard testing in their labs, Dell announced last Friday that they would start shipping Dell laptops and desktops with Ubuntu 8.04 pre-installed. That will only be available for the XPS M1330N, Inspiron 1525N notebooks, and the Inspiron 530N desktops.

"In early August, we will also add the XPS M1530n and Studio 15n to the line-up. This is just in time for LinuxWorld where we will participate in a number of the conference sessions. That will be your chance to hear directly about what's been accomplished over the last year and where we see it going in 2009," said Anne B. Camden, Dell spokesperson.

Today, Dell announced the new features added on these selected laptops and desktops powered by Ubuntu 8.04:

￭ WMV, WMA and MP3 audio playback;
￭ LinDVD DVD player for improved video playback;
￭ All XPS laptops support biometric fingerprint readers;
￭ Full OpenGL support for Inspiron 530n with ATI graphics;
￭ HDMI audio output support for both ATI and Nvidia video cards.

The Ubuntu 8.04-powered Dell machines will be available for customers in the United States, Germany, Spain, France, Canada, the United Kingdom and many Latin American countries (like Colombia and Mexico).

About Ubuntu OS

Ubuntu is one of the world's most popular open source operating systems. Ubuntu is a Linux-based operating system that is community developed, updated regularly and offered for free. Designed to be user friendly, the Ubuntu OS comes with built-in software for office productivity (i.e. word processor, spreadsheets and presentation applications), e-mail, calendar, chat, web browsing, photos, and more.

Download Ubuntu 8.04.1 (Hardy Heron) LTS right now from Softpedia.