Ubuntu + Dell for sale soon.

They dropped PPC support because nobody with money is using it. Canonical is by no means an "evil" company, but they are interested in selling support contracts for Ubuntu, and it's a stupid drain on their resources to invest actual *company* time in QA-ing builds for a platform no one is going to pay them to support. If even *one* customer with a flock of elderly iBooks was willing to write Canonical a check Ubuntu would be back to "official" the next day.

Anyway. As it is, all the sources to Ubuntu are publicly available, meaning any shmo can release and maintain their own spin for whatever platform they want, which means Dell has essentially zero leverage to issue an "Ultimatum". Further, There is simply *zero* reason for Dell gives a rat's rear what's on Ubuntu's "supported" list as long as it includes the subset of Dell hardware they plan to install it on. They're in the business in selling computers and Ubuntu i386/x86_64 runs on a *lot* more computers then Ubuntu PPC. (Including computers that are actually still being manufactured.) Crushing Ubuntu PPC to somehow limit competition with their products would be a *really* pointless move. It would be sort of like the Boeing Aircraft corporation as part of some sort of arrangement with a new seat manufacturer insisting that they stop selling upholstery products to the plants in Central America that still manufacture the original Volkswagen Beetle. I'm sure you could come up with some convoluted chain of logic suggesting that doing so would increase the demand for 787 Dreamliners (after all, both Beetles and Airliners are *vehicles*), but... it'd probably make about as much sense as Dell caring about PPC Ubuntu. ;^)

--Peace

It's about time that M$ get's competetion on the x86 OEM side. Hopefully other companies follow suit, and that M$ will become a minor company again!

I think, with the release of Vista, M$ is going into a death spiral.
No one wants the new Operating System, and It is VERY difficult to deal with (ever seen the commercial from apple "Cancel or Allow?" That's basically it.) Plus, not everything works out of the box. nVidia's drivers suck for it (the ones they HAVE Released) plus a lot of hardware that works with XP and 2K, will no longer work with Vista. I have had 9 pieces of hardware (which I bought between 2-3yrs ago) no longer work on Vista. Of them being a RAID IDE Card. Will not work no matter what. Camera's also. No worky for 2 of mine.

A lot of computer hacks that made Components faster (like overclocking FSB/Video cards through software) no longer work. So you no longer have a free advantage. People don't have the money to run out and buy a new machine every year to get a system that works fast. Vista is really a failure. And M$ needs to do SOMETHING about it.

/rant

Getting back to dell with Ubuntu, I am thankful that an OEM Equipment Producer is finally picking up Linux seriously. Maybe this means that Linux will start to have people pick up in development, and have people go "What's that? Maybe I should try it!"

As we know, as more people flock to something, Innnovation picks up quicker. Not only will it continue to get easier to use, but major equipment/peripheral companies will start producing some serious drivers for linux.

Dell's gonna make a bundle just from the announcement. But I think they may loose some face trying to support something that changes all the time. The theory is sound... but in practice, seems to me it will get a bit unwieldy pretty quick.

The linux desktop, whatever flavor, is for the insatiable tinkerer... who won't need support. We never needed it before. The people that need support, the n00bs, the elderly, heck, anyone not in the tech industry, the suits, the business class, the "users" and "clients," these people will need support... but in regards to something like linux, they are unsupportable... just sounds like a way to lose money (on more and more tech support call centers filled with underpaid linux experts).

However, knowing Dell, they'll have a tidy CD or DVD filled with all the linux drivers needed for the hardware. Nice. But they may end up supporting a lot more than just Dell hardware.