Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
One word around town is that Michael Dell himself uses the latest version of Ubuntu, version 7.04 (Feisty Fawn), which is just out of beta today. Another word around town is the Dell is getting set to release some product pre-loaded with Linux by the end of April. If so, any bets as to which distro Dell puts to market first?
It is true that Dell has admitted to holding
discussions with Novell about Suse. However, Ubuntu has been gaining a
lot of press lately and has been steadily building a reputation as the
"Linux for the rest of us". Now with the word is out (intentionally?)
that Michael Dell uses Unbuntu Feisty on one of his own computers the
likelihood that Ubuntu will be an early starter on Dell is high.
Having recently installed a late beta version of Ubuntu Feisty
(actually Kubuntu, with the KDE GUI), I can say that it is a breeze to
download, burn an installation disc and install onto your hard drive.
However - and Ubuntu faithful this is not meant to be a criticism -
many new users will be likely to run into device driver issues. It's
just the nature of the operating system beast and the reason most users
buy Windows pre-loaded.
However, the issue of device driver incompatibilities largely goes away
if you buy a tested and supported pre-installed version of Ubuntu on
hardware from a first tier computer vendor such as Dell. There will
still be some peripherals that don't have Linux device drivers - the
printers and scanners list will probably be a little shorter than that
of Windows. That shouldn't bother new Ubuntu users any more than it
bothers new Mac users if they can get a new plug and play Linux system
with all the applications they need already sitting on their desktop.
Speaking of Mac, some Linux purists may argue that a pre-installed
plug-and-play Ubuntu is no more true Linux than Mac OS X is Unix. if
so, they would be wrong. There are innumerable free open source
applications that are available for download and installation and,
although Ubuntu will come pre-loaded on a Dell machine, it is not
inextricably tied to the hardware.
Finally, it has been said that Ubuntu is the fastest growing Linux
distribution. That may be true but right now it is still not growing
fast enough to make a serious dent in the dominance of Windows like for
instance Firefox has done to Internet Explorer. Having a major hardware
vendor behind Ubuntu could be exactly the sort of kick along that it
needs to gain critical mass.
From Dell's point of view, throwing its weight behind Ubuntu could be a
very smart move. The company is picking itself up off the floor after a
forgettable 2006 and moving ahead with a Linux desktop strategy ahead
of the pack could win back some its lost market share. If other major
hardware vendors follow Dell's lead, then 2007 may finally herald the
year of the Linux desktop.
David Bass
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