As many stories have reported in the past few days, it looks like Dell is going to offer Ubuntu on select machines. In general, I think I like this move. I’m not sure if they’re going to offer any additional distributions, but at the very least, offering a Debian-derived system, as opposed to an RPM-based one strikes me as a good thing. From what I’ve seen, upgrading between major releases is far easier on Debian-derived systems, with RPM ones requiring essentially a reinstall, though you get to keep your data in most cases.

In any case, I’ve felt for a while that Ubuntu offered the best hope for a mainstream desktop Linux, despite its shortcomings. It’s by no means perfect, but Windows isn’t either. With Dell preinstalling it, they’ll be able to at least make sure the appropriate drivers are installed, which is probably the most difficult part of getting any operating system running. For now, most users will inevitably end up with Windows, simply because it’s almost expected in many cases. I maintain, however, that for completely beginning computer users who are unlikely to play the latest games, learning Ubuntu is no more difficult than learning Windows, and these users are the prime target of any desktop Linux initiative. I only hope that in the coming few years, a Linux distribution (not necessarily Ubuntu) can become the default, and Windows can be relegated to secondary status. After all, desktop Linux is improving rapidly, and Microsoft is going to end up with more of a fight than they’d like.

The next step is, of course, that Microsoft will finally open-source some version of Windows. Sure, it seems unlikely, but that’s my ultimate prediction.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.