DoctorMo's Blog

It looks like the Dell USA website has been updated and is now selling 2 models of Ubuntu laptop. The first is a 10 inch almost netbook which ships with Ubuntu 10.10 (so it’s likely to be a recent addition) and an older Latitude 13-N which comes with Ubuntu 9.10 (which shows it’s likely to be an older model that might not have been properly advertised on the website previously)

What is interesting is that while there are 2 models of Ubuntu laptop, there are 86 models of Windows 7 computer. Clearly showing how far we have to go in order to convince Dell to be more serious about it’s Ubuntu sales and perhaps how far we have to go to cross the chasm.

Your thoughts?

According to the blog of ever increasing entropy, HP have decided to kill off it’s FreeDesktop based Mi netbook on the same day that Microsoft Windows 7 came out.

In a way this is both surprising and not surprising to me.

It’s a surprise because I never figured Hewlett Packard for being this short sighted. Throwing away large sums of development money in order to help short term OEM deals with Microsoft? Well sure, HP might be in pain from OEM contract terms from Microsoft Windows and it might make business sense this quarter. But surely someone in HP must have a sore arse, or are they all cowering behind their “good for business” mantra which must be fairly strong to protect them from doing the right thing for their future business strength and independence.

Now I’m not surprised that the Mi with Ubuntu pre-installed has ended. Yes that’s right folks, it was Ubuntu and it was even developed by Canonical on behalf of HP. They paid a pretty penny to have their own interface and customizations put into the OS.

But look at what they did, they rejected the idea of including the Ubuntu brand with their shipments. The only mention that it was a FreeDesktop at all comes from a note about it being “Linux based” (whatever that means these days).

There is a mutually beneficial arrangement when it comes to brand marketing in the community. Dell sells machines with Ubuntu on them and both Dell and the Ubuntu community benefit from that arrangement. Instead of my LoCo group marketing Ubuntu for just old machines that came with Windows, I could safely point people at Dell and let them buy new computers complete with Ubuntu. Dell benefits because they get customers from the community advocacy and the community gets a big well known OEM to give it credibility and a partner that can ship working systems for cheap.

But HP didn’t want that, they wanted to control the branding of the OS and it’s not a surprise that they didn’t get many people from the Ubuntu community recommending their products. It’s not a surprise that every time someone said “Lets get me an Ubuntu machine” they went to Dell instead of HP.

Which is shame, because HP’s printer division is a much better collaborator. And most of my LoCo peers recommend HP printers simply because we can be almost pretty assured that no matter which one is bought, it’ll work.

So to get back to Microsoft, they’ve shaped the market to make Windows more attractive than it would be on a level playing field, they’ve manipulated OEMs to such a degree that it makes a mockery of anti-competition laws. If you’ve got any doubt of the reasons why bug #1 has to be fixed, it’s because we shouldn’t have to put up with this reduction in fair competition.

If I were dictator of the world, I’d tax any desktops shipped without a FreeDesktop dual boot.

Today I was called out to help a young mother who got a Dell Mini 12 refurbished some months ago, which had come with Ubuntu on it. I was surprised again because there are contacts who are obviously geeky and who have participated in the community to some degree and then there are those out of the blue contacts who need help because they bought a computer directly from the OEM and now it needs someone to give it some attention.

This machine only had one problem, she couldn’t remember the password. The guides on-line that she had tried had told her to press [Esc] and load up the recovery mode. But Dell has stripped that option away, yay Dell. So I reinstalled the computer with 9.04 replacing the Dell crusted 8.04 install and making sure it had skype and all the other user facing goodies that people expect; obviously making sure to back up her 35MB of photos and documents. I backed up and installed from a single 4GB memory stick (800MiB for the installer, 3.3GiB for data) which I now carry around with me everywhere (Very useful device).

We made arrangements to meet at a coffee shop, not that it’s too much of a problem installing Ubuntu on battery power and I can certainly understand the need for public places when meeting some stranger. Fortunately the battery power at 45% on this machine lasted 2 hours, so the whole install and medibuntu + restricted extras completed on battery even with the coffee shop’s 60MiB/s wifi connection.

I do love helping people who have come to Ubuntu, although this refurbished machine was kinda odd since I didn’t think Dell shipped Mini12s with Ubuntu and it did have a ‘Designed for Windows XP’ sticker (but no license sticker). But everything seemed to work out ok, she’ll get in touch if there are problems. We finished up and she headed out.

As I was getting up, someone on the next table raised her voice and asked if I knew anything about Ubuntu. Now i think I’ve entered the twilight zone where everyone in the coffee shop appears to be using Macs but are actually Ubuntu users. Anyway, turns out her computer has a duel boot with Ubuntu 7.04 and windows xp, she wanted to know if I could remove Windows and upgrade Ubuntu. I gave her details of my private support and of the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo Tuesday Education and Support sessions that we run for free and hopefully she’ll be in touch to sort out her machine too.

As an aside to my utter surprise at coming across two Ubuntu users at random. I am starting to note a pattern, of the 5 chance encounters that have needed Ubuntu support in the last year: all have all been women. Now either it’s because women are more willing to try something new when offered by Dell, are less invested in Microsoft’s desktop familiarity, are more willing to go out and find help (and thus find me or the LoCo group) or some unforeseen force, but I’m very happy to see the 50% of people who have been typically excluded from technical areas coming to Ubuntu naturally.

Anyone else found Ubuntu users randomly because you were helping someone else with their Ubuntu machine in a coffee shop? Because I think there is progress in the air.