Dell goes Ubuntu at last – is it the end for Windows?

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Saturday, 26 May 2007

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Well, if you remember the computing world from the late 70s, through to today, you’d remember a lot of change, and especially during the 80s, a lot of different operating systems, with Microsoft DOS and then Windows effectively dominating from the early 80s through to today.

But over the past decade, Linux has grown from strength to strength, culminating now, with Ubuntu at least, of the widespread availability of consumer oriented Linux computer systems in the US, and hopefully worldwide in the not too distant future.

Many different versions of Linux are already in use by millions of people around the world on PCs today, none of whom waited for Dell to release a Ubuntu PC. Having operating system diversity and having choice as a consumer is a very good thing. It’s good to have Windows vs Mac OS X vs Linux vs PS3 vs everything else as it means we have strong and robust and healthy competition within the computing world.

So, the deal should prove very good for Dell, and naturally, for Ubuntu. All that needs to happen now is for customers to buy, but if the “popular demand” that prompted Dell to offer Ubuntu in the first place is any indication, Ubuntu truly will become the world’s most popular version of consumer Linux, with each version enhancing the user interface, adding more drivers, increasing security and attracting more software to the Linux platform.

That’s what happened to Microsoft products, culminating in the stable Windows XP Service Pack 2 still preferred by millions of Windows users, through to Windows Vista, which on a suitably configured machine works much better than Windows XP does today, even though plenty of XP, Linux, Mac OS X and other users don’t believe that to be true.

And that’s where we have Windows, still the major focus of promotional activities for Dell, with both XP and Vista versions in configurations aplenty, far more than the three offered for Ubuntu.

The entrance of Ubuntu into the true realm of consumer PC purchases is a momentous step to be sure, and has signaled the true maturity of Linux, even though it still has some way to go to achieve the almost total hardware and software compatibility of Windows XP SP2.

So I ask again: is this the end of Vista? Definitely not – but the beginning of the era of a true consumer Linux has finally arrived.
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