Dell says all aboard for Linux PCs

Stan Beer
Monday, 26 February 2007 13:47

IT Industry - Strategy

PC maker Dell has announced that it has commenced a program that will result in the sale and distribution of a range of computers with pre-installed Linux distributions instead of Microsoft Windows. Dell has indicated that Novell's Suse Linux will be first cab off the rank.

According to Dell, the company's decision to move forward has been a direct result from requests posted by users to its new interactive website Dell IdeaStorm, which was launched on February 16. Apparently Dell has received a plethora of requests from users for desktops and notebooks loaded with pre-installed Linux distributions and the open source alternative to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org.

Dell states that a problem for the company has been which Linux distribution to run with.

"As this community knows, there is no single customer preference for a distribution of Linux," Dell stated on IdeaStorm. "In the last week, the IdeaStorm community suggested more than half a dozen distributions. We don't want to pick one distribution and alienate users with a preference for another."

However, Dell intends to go ahead with a range of desktops and notebooks certified to run Novell's Suse first, possibly followed by other popular Linux distributions, such as Fedora and Ubuntu.

"We are working with Novell to certify our corporate client products for Linux, including our OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations. This is another step towards ensuring that our customers have a good experience with Linux on our systems," Dell stated.

"In addition to working with Novell, we are also working with other distributors and evaluating the possibility of additional certifications across our product line."