Ubuntu

I wrote a few months ago about my difficulty trying to obtain a decent laptop without Microsoft Windows bundled in with it. After all, it seems ridiculous to have to pay for something that costs as much as £250 in the shops, when I'm never going to use it, right? Samsung (from whom I eventually bought the machine) reacted quite strangely when I asked them about the possibility of getting one without an operating system bundled in. In the end, I just swallowed the bitter pill and bought one anyway. I payed my Microsoft tax, and then wiped the software as I was required to do by the licence agreement (given that I didn't agree with its terms). It's not nice to have nothing to show for your money.

A few months later, and the idea of computers being sold bundled with GNU/Linux seems to be taking off a little. Dell announced a while back that they would be offering their computers with Ubuntu, the sister of my distribution of choice, Kubuntu. Despite the fact that currently the offer is only available in the United States, this is real progress.

Thanks to Bryce Harrington, a few photos of one the new Ubuntu-bundled Dell laptops is available here. I imagine many people will be keeping an eye out to see how this develops.

In the meantime, Dell have a website called IdeaStorm, on which members of the public can vote for ideas which they would like to see become reality. There are three separate calls (I know, in the open source world why do something only once, eh?) to extend the offer to Europe. Click on the tick here, here and here!