TooMuchGreen

During my on-going crusade for open desktop solutions I’m quite regularly met with blank looks and confused queries as to what Ubuntu is, I find myself re-pitching the “…it’s an operating system for your computer just like Windows but free…” routine with added justification tagged on highlighting it’s UNIX heritage (for those geeky enough to appreciate computing history), it’s resulting inherent stability and the whole emanated positivity of it’s community created open code base, however with Linux still sub 5% of the global market for operating systems there are some days you really do feel like you’re up against it, but other days, like yesterday, you’re given a real boost.

What better supportive boost could there be than one of the biggest manufacturers of PC’s in the world upgrading selected areas of their popular netbook and laptop product line to ship with the very latest flavour, yes, Dell’s US website is now offering the superb Mini 10V and Inspiron 15n with Ubuntu 9.04 pre-installed, nice one Dell.

Dell have a recent history of interest for Ubuntu and most certainly get my vote as commended innovators “on the case”. I run a self configured Dell Mini 9″ development server alongside the MacBook Air and it’s a real gem, in fact as previously mentioned in another post I honestly wonder how I ever managed without it. Aside from snappy DNS and Proxy caching (to assist with a shamefully poor shared Wi-Fi internet link) it runs a fully blown LAMP stack which again (due to the dodgy Wi-Fi) is invaluable to me, for example this TMG WordPress site was developed on it one day and quickly uploaded the next, much easier and quicker than having to work live up through a flaky connection which continually times out during the simplest of edits (and drives you nuts as a result, a man can only work with so many “autosaves”).

An Ubuntu Dell laptop is cheaper than a Windows version, it’s more stable and just *cooler* all round. Click the header  image for more information (and to order yours).