____/ Jeanette on Friday 30 November 2007 02:50 : \____
> It would appear Dell Ubuntu sales are going well
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/30/ubuntu_dell_sales/
>
>
> Dell agreed to ship PCs and laptops with the Ubuntu operating system
> after more than 130,000 people promoted the notion on the company's
> IdeaStorm web site. It would seem, however, that only a fraction of
> these zealots were willing to back their votes with cash.
>
> Dell has shipped close to 40,000 systems pre-installed with the Ubuntu
> flavor of Linux, according to multiple sources. By most accounts, that's
> a heck of a total for what remains more or less a fringe operating
> system. Ubuntu fans are urged to hold back their virtual quills of
> vitriol following that last sentence and remember that the OS trails
> major desktop and notebook OSes by quite a margin.
Dell's estimate was 20,000 in one year. It has been just months and that number
has not been met (but doubled, with projection of quadrupling or more). On
numerous occasions Dell has said that it was very happy with the numbers, but
it just didn't give away the numbers (one source said 30,000 a couple of
months ago, so maybe it was a leak).
I personally have 1 Dell box that runs only Linux, but was not sold with Linux.
Many Linux users can suit themselves and others simply switch.
Dell should be very happy to have exceeded its expectation. These numbers are
by no means an indication of the scale of use of Free software, which by
nature is _not sold_.
By the way, the phrasing or spin in The Reg is a case of sensationalism, so
don't mind the weird statements.
Since Dell began selling Linux, merely every large OEM (and small ones too) has
begun selling Linux as well, so competition was born, which affects Dell's
numbers and will urge Dell to lower the prices further.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | FreeBSD - sidling with a little devil
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU is Not UNIX | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
http://iuron.com - proposing a non-profit search engine
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