Dell’s new netbooks wont contain the latest version of Ubuntu
28 May2009
Dell‘s netbook Mini 10v was released last week. As expected, this latest release contained a few interesting updates. Speaking of updates, I would like to inform you that the latest netbooks from Dell wont be using the latest version of Ubuntu. So if you are expecting to get version 9.04 of Ubuntu on the Dell’s netbook, then you should stop doing so. Dell has decided to provide Ubuntu 8.04 instead of going for Ubuntu 9.04 or even 8.10 for that matter.
Dell has explained the rationale behind this decision using a couple of reasons as the basis. A spokesperson from Dell said
We are trying to stay on a 12-month cadence to keep costs down, and build a stable platform. A mainstream user does not care if it’s 8.04 or 8.10 or 9.04 (he/she does not know what those are) — she just wants it to work right and be stable/safe… most of the Linux enthusiasts would not like to be so far behind, but they are not our primary target audience for the [operating system] image
Dell still maintained that they are more than happy with Ubuntu and are satisfied with their selection of this OS for their netbooks. Dell stated:
We have offered Ubuntu pre-installed on our consumer systems for two years now, based on customer feedback on Ideastorm. Canonical has been enthusiastic about working with us to deliver a rock-solid Linux experience for the general non-technical community, and we look forward to continuing this dedicated team effort going forward.
Dell places quite an emphasis on the stability concept and want their devices to possess this value as much as possible. They state:
In addition to 8.04, we chose to control our updates (via our own update repository — similar to MS update). We go the extra mile in double qualifying all updates (that one would see in stock 8.10 and 9.04) and only publish those that are rock-stable. We will [put in] select features over the course of the year that make sense for the product, like wireless improvements.
I myself, being the user of a Dell laptop, can say that they really go for incorporating stability into their products. Let us hope that they continue to do that in the future as well.
