Linux Tux on Dell LaptopThe pre-installed Linux on Dell Inc’s notebook and desktop computers may be coming before the end of April, DesktopLinux’s sources say.

“We still do not know which Linux Dell Inc. will be installing on its desktops and laptops. Among the distributions we know to be under consideration are: Novell/SUSE, Red Hat, Fedora, openSUSE, and Ubuntu. It would be safe to say now, though, that Ubuntu will be at least one of the Linuxes that Dell will be offering,” DesktopLinux claims.

The web-site also reports Michael S. Dell, president and CEO of Dell Inc, uses Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn Linux operating system on his personal Precision M90 notebook computer. Along with the latest Ubuntu version, released this week, Dell uses software such as VMWare Workstation 6 Beta, and OpenOffice.org 2.2, Automatix2, Firefox 2.0.0.3 and Evolution Groupware 2.10, according to his biography.

Dell Inc. has confirmed last month it will offer laptop and desktop computers with factory installed Linux operating system, after the thousands of company’s IdeaStorm Blog visitors voted for that idea.

Correction: After the comments on this item we have replaced in third paragraph “…Dell uses open source software such as VMWare Workstation 6 Beta…” with “…Dell uses software such as VMWare Workstation 6 Beta…”. Sorry for this mistake. Thank You very much.

Have a comment, question, or user review? Share it with us in the comment section below.

On: April 19th, 2007
In: Dell, Linux & Laptops, Software
By: Danijel Zivkovic
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  • matt

    VMWare is NOT open source

  • Anonymous

    What a clanger!

    VMware is NOT open source!!

  • ole

    “source software such as VMWare Workstation 6″ VMWare is _very_ not open source.

  • http://evelynpheng.wordpress.com Eve

    Dell going to offer Ubuntu on the Inspiron 6400. I got this news from a friend who working in Dell Inc.

  • Ramon Cahenzli

    VMWare Workstation is neither open source nor free software, and DesktopLinux never claimed that. Perhaps you should update the article :)

  • mathias erdtmann

    NOTE: VMWare Workstation 6 Beta is free, but not open source.

  • Linux Torvalds

    Vmware is not even close to opensource software. The fact that it runs on Linux doesn’t say anything about it’s development model!

  • imaad

    can u get both windows xp and linux?

    just some programs work on windows and not on linux!

  • http://www.cyclechaos.com/blog/ Motorcycle Guy

    Yeah that would be cool if you could get it preconfigured to dual boot.

  • SPSteve

    Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any decent drivers for my M6300 for Fedora9.

    I work in a Microsoft World, meaning I need to RDP into Win 2003 servers and XP Machines to do anything productive.

    This proves to be an issue because there is no acceptable software to RDP into a windows machine.

    Not a heartstop, but without any drivers to enable desktop effects on a Quadro FX 1600 M, I’m left with a vanilla install of Fedora.

    Using Ubuntu, it would in the past download the non free driver for the video card, but as of this week, that is no longer possible.

    I would LOVE to move to Fedora, and would prefer to stay away from Ubuntu if possible, but it doesn’t look like it will be an option any time soon.