What You Should Expect from Dell PCs with Ubuntu 7.04

John Hull, Manager of Linux OS Technologies, announced yesterday, in a press release, an overview regarding the technical details of what customers should expect from the Dell initial Ubuntu offering.

Available 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. Dell will offer 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 Dell Linux team.
￭ Dell promise to configure/install open source drivers for hardware, when possible.
￭ Dell promise to 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.
￭ There will be a wiki page of their Linux official website which will give technical details of the supported systems, information on the device drivers used for system peripherals, details of Dell's Ubuntu factory-installation, and information on the problems that will be found during the testings, with their fixes and workarounds.
￭ Dell recommends Linux users to 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.

Software and Hardware Not Offered:

￭ For hardware options not offered with this release, we are working with the vendors of those devices to improve the maturity and stability of their associated Linux drivers. While this may not happen overnight, we do expect to have a broader range of hardware support with Linux over time.
￭ At this time, Dell will NOT include 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. Dell evaluates options for providing this codecs in the near future.

As you probably already know, Dell announced at the beginning of this month that it will offer desktops and notebook systems with pre-installed Ubuntu Linux to all their customers.

For more details about the Dell PCs with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed, please visit the official homepage.