Tim Almond

Dell have announced that they intend to offer greater Linux support on their desktop lines. This is great news.

I’m currently running Ubuntu on a Dell Inspiron Laptop, and it runs well. But it took some tweaking, and buying of a new wireless card to get it to work. When the laptop finally gives up the ghost, I’d rather not go through it again.

There’s some extra news in one of Dell’s blogs…

For new Linux desktops and notebooks,  we’ll use drivers already in the mainline kernel.org kernels for as many components as possible. In these cases, the drivers will be included in your distribution of choice. This includes storage, wired networking, power management, USB, and more.
For device types where a choice exists between a component with a non-Free driver and one with Free driver availability, in our Linux offering we’ll opt to bundle the component with the Free driver.

Good. Using free drivers makes sense for both Dell, and their customers. It allows for greater independence of distro use, and more flexibility.

Tags: Technology, Linux //