Dell's Subnotebook To Ship With Ubuntu

k33l0r writes "Dell's entry into the sub-notebook market, the Inspiron 910, will ship with Ubuntu preinstalled. This was confirmed this morning when Gizmodo published (leaked) specifications for the Inspiron 910." I hope that's not the final form of the keyboard, though -- lots of wasted space on each side.

That's good news

I wish my EEE 901 had shipped with ubuntu too, instead of Xandros.

Not that it's bad for beginners, but I'm not sure I want such a toy OS. I know Ubuntu eee exists, but I'd musch rather have the official distro. Or debian...

Ubuntu runs fine on EEE and Classmate

Might be obvious, but a little googling is all it takes to put Ubuntu on an EEE. Edubuntu 7.10 installed on mine with no real problems. But for normal people, yes it would be nice if it came preinstalled. The Intel Classmate comes with a version of Edubuntu 8.04 from Go2PC that is getting more stable every day. This may be Ubuntu's market if they can sign up more OEM's.

Re:That's good news

Not that it's bad for beginners, but I'm not sure I want such a toy OS.

I've heard comments like this a lot and I am curious as to why you consider Xandros a toy operating system. I am a long time Fedora user and have been using Linux seriously for over 12 years and I am quite happy with the distribution that came with my EEE. I don't use the easy mode that the EEE defaults to (though I actually do like that mode), but nothing about the distribution seems "toy" to me.

Mandriva supports the Eee PC

Mandriva supports the Eee PC directly. Just get the latest version and install it. No big deal.

Re:That's good news

There's nothing wrong with Ubuntu.

What I don't want is a hacked together, unsupported one-man project on what seems to be fairly generic hardware. "Ubuntu eee" is such a thing, at present, and not the official distro.

Some specs

Items of interest (to me at least): 8.9" WSVGA TL 1024x600 (WLED) screen 2.20 lbs w/ 4-cell battery Bluetooth via mini-card (apparently not included) CPU 1.6 GHz, 533 MHz, 512K single core Intel Atom N270 Diamondville Thanks. Hope it does come in at the $299 price...

This sub notebook....

was it originally developed or the Navy?

Get it? Sub notebook?

Oh, alright! I'm going back to work...well, I'll just pretend I have work.

Re:This sub notebook....

That was such a sub-par joke.

Re:This sub notebook....

That was such a sub-par joke.

Wow, man. That comment was, like, deep.

Re:This sub notebook....

I'll sink to any depth for a joke.

Probably the right way to go

I have an 8.9" eee pc running on the Intel Mobile Processor (read Celeron). I have both Ubuntu and XP running on dual boot but use Ubuntu more than often. XP is still **very** slow on the laptop and there is continuous disk activity while running it.

No docking support...

This would seem a lot neater, if not more worth while, if it had a dock option. I just look at what HP did with the 1100 tablet and it's dock and think that they had the right idea with some slight short comings. Something in the same vein could have been done with this.

If it's a linux computer...

...then print Tux on that silly windows key please?

Re:If it's a linux computer...

Nah. Everyone should just use the Saint John's Arms [wikipedia.org], like Apple does.

Re:That is great news! But..

Of course it will, but at least you can seek better paid support elsewhere (Canonical) or indeed the quite excellent ubuntuforums.org for free. I love the way the UMPC market is exposing Linux to people who would never have heard of it otherwise, there was even an MS spokesdrone in our local computing press saying that "Yes, the Linux option is suitable for beginners but experienced users would prefer the Windows option on the EEE", laugh, I nearly wet myself.

MS ISV astroturf

I'm involved with a fairly large Linux desktop deployment and I've noticed that whenever a blog post or article is posted for desktop Linux, a lot of MS apologist come in stating that Windows is a better deeper experience and you are shortchanging your students/workers by giving them Linux. While I'm a Linux zealot, I am willing to deploy Windows and MAC when I need to and it makes since from a performance/cost perspective. I don't believe this is a paid guerrilla advertising campaign from MS, but suspect that a lot of small ISV's that tied their livelihood to supporting Windows installations are nervous about the growing market share of Linux. It might be less than 1% of the market, but start paying attention when you walk into a call center, retail store, hospital or school. Actually paying attention may not be enough because they are well camouflaged.

Re:MS ISV astroturf

I don't believe this is a paid guerrilla advertising campaign from MS

Can I ask why not?

I agree there's a significant effort from ISVs who are encouraged to "get out on the web and support the product", but there's also abundant evidence that Microsoft uses marketing groups like DCI and Law Media Group to astroturf more directly.

Why wouldn't they?

Re:MS ISV astroturf

Actually, I noticed exactly the same thing. There were 2 guys sitting on our *linux* news-server day and night and waiting for any article on, specifically, eee or OpenOffice. As soon as there was one, they immediately started stupid trolls on how windows rules (sadly, no rating system on that site) so I asked them: Are you guys professional trolls? I mean, PR agencies could easily be involved in this, so I am asking. They didn't answer and I learned they always quit discussion (trolling) after this little question. I wonder why, they could lie they really believe in what they are saying.

Re:MS ISV astroturf

Well, because Windows IS a better, deeper experience. DUH!

Re:MS ISV astroturf

While I'm a Linux zealot, I am willing to deploy Windows and MAC when I need to and it makes since from a performance/cost perspective.

Then you are not, in fact, a Linux zealot. A zealot wouldn't care about those factors. No, you're a Linux supporter, and have the damn sense to recognize that Linux isn't always the proper choice. This isn't (ok, it is, but it shouldn't be) out of the ordinary.

Re:That is great news! But..

Experienced users are indeed more likely to prefer the Windows option -- as long as they are experienced as in they have Windows experience.

And Windows users who try to use their existing skills and habits generally also find themselves having many issues. In fact, Windows "Power Users" frequently have more problems with Linux than people with little or no computer experience, for this very reason. Typically, the most vehement "Linux is not ready for the desktop yet" arguments come from ingrained Windows users who reason that if they couldn't make the switch, a less-experienced user has no chance. But this is the exact opposite of the truth.

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm [oneandoneis2.org]

Re:That is great news! But..

You a little deliberately short on specifics, your comment might be worthwhile if you were able to pinpoint a device that shipped with Linux on it where the creator of that product has dropped support, but is still around. Even so, you're still very vague with what's supported or not.

It seems that, with the gadget crowd, Linux support is always sweet in the beginning as they oogle over the new machine but as soon as something new comes out the old gadget is left to collect dust. Suddenly Ubuntu moves on a version or two and people still running the old gadget are left in no man's land with support issues. The people who really understand Linux are too busy with the new gadget to support the old. It's the long term user who's left holding the bag.

This is a large company (Dell) buying software from another reasonably large company (Canonical) so it's not really fair to talk about devices that maybe never supported Linux in the first place, made by who knows, supported only by geeks.

You talk specifically about Ubuntu dropping support for features from a previous release and then ignoring the users left out in the cold because of the new-shiny. Could you name an example of that actually happening? Because it's been my experience that my hardware works better with each release, and I haven't seen forums bubbling over with ignored support issues with older hardware as you imply.

Will Dell continue to support this as the distro progresses or should the unit come with a sticker warning the user not to upgrade beyond the current version? It's kind of burned my ass the number of times I tried to pull some older gadgets over to Linux only to find that if I use the distro's 2 or 3 year old package I was fine but if I wanted the latest and greatest I was busied with the work of just getting basic functionality going. The upgrade cycle concerns me too much in some cases to give Linux a try if the only support I have is community based.

Not everyone in the world has the weak consumer laws that you're obviously subject to... if Dell release a product and drop support for it within an unreasonably short timeframe, in much of the world they'll be pilloried and made and example of by the law - because many countries don't allow people to drop a product and run unless they're out of business. So no, I'd say there's no chance whatsoever that Dell will not "continue to support" it, unless they want to be bankrupted in court.

At any rate there's far, far less chance that Dell will fail to support an operating system that they can pick up and fix themselves if necessary, than there is that they'll drop support for something where they have no recourse if the manufacturer decides to discontinue support. Like, Ooh... I don't know... Windows, and most of the third party device drivers for it.

I likely will not go "100%" Linux for a long long time. Most of it has to do with working in a Windows shop and, frankly, liking my games. But even if that wasn't an issue I still haven't warmed up to the community support aspect.

Yes, because Microsoft is just bending over backwards to support it's customers when they have problems. It's not like anyone has to google through forums to find solutions for windows problems because Microsoft's support is SOOOO outstanding.

Seriously, what does Microsoft offer in the way of support to a single home user that isn't available for a cheaper price for Ubuntu or another commercially supported distribution? This supposed support sounds like a fallacy to me, pretty much like the rest of this post. It's fine that you like Windows, but there's no need to make up FUD about Linux to justify your standpoint.

Windows seems like a perfectly fine solution for a certain class of user, and to them I say "To each their own, and mind your fucking bullshit when you talk about mine"

Re:That is great news! But..

I've heard of some people having problems after upgrades but I don't believe they are very widespread.

Actually, I'm running Ubuntu on the EEE-PC due to update problems. To get the advanced Xandros desktop working, I had to do an upgrade. Somehow in there I ended up with a circular dependency involving python, I think, which made it impossible to revert back or go forward. Installing EEEUbuntu via USB thumb drive was the easiest way to fix the issue and get a full desktop.

Re:That's not the only issue with that keyboard

Dammit! I want all 101 keys on my subnotebook! And I don't care if that means that they're all 3mm x 3mm!

Re:That's not the only issue with that keyboard

I've been waiting for a chance to post this rant...

Will someone in charge of the tech sites please ban "Laptop" people from reviewing these Netbook thingies. Please god let the "PDA" people review them instead? I'm sick of reading the constant complaints about the size, travel and weighting of the keyboards compared to top of the range laptops and even desktops. Will someone therefore please review these for what they are - PDAs with keyboards - and compare the keyboard to, say, any Windows-Mobile stylus device or even the iPhone. Yes, those ones without keyboards at all.

And yes, we know you can't play doom 4 on them under vista, that's because WE DONT NEED THE Mhz to do that. 400MHz + 128MB RAM + a few gig storage is perfectly adequate for browsing ebay from the bathtub, cheers /rant

sorry about that