Greetings all and welcome to another Weekly Rewind, number 24. Half way to the meaning of life, which as everyone knows is 42. (EDIT: Thanks to Barry for pointing out in the comments that 24 is not half of 42, FAIL!!! It realy has been a long week ) Expect a reprise of that reference sometime near Christmas I imagine when we hit 42. It’s been quite a week and for some reason I’m sore as hell today. I think I must have done something to my back, it’s killing me but enough complaining, let’s get into what happened in the last 7 days:

On Monday night we recorded and streamed Linux Outlaws 103, which at the time of writing still hasn’t actually been released yet. Fab has had a hell of a busy week and I believe he’s actually working on it today. It takes a lot of time to edit and produce a show every week so I’m sure people understand. We’ll have it out ASAP. On Tuesday night I headed to Manchester to give my talk about audio production with Free Software. I’ve written a bit about already so I won’t go into all the details again here, but I had a great time. I’m told it was a record turnout for Manchester Free Software so that’s very satisfying. I hope everyone who saw it enjoyed the talk and I’ve had some really nice feedback. There was HD video taken on the night by Tim Dobson, and I hope you’ll be able to see that in the near future. He also gave me an old PC to set up as an Icecast streaming machine for Linux Outlaws, how cool is that? More on that later. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dell Logo

Most of you probably saw my earlier rant at Dell for removing Linux laptops from their UK website last week. The post caused quite a bit of interest it seems which is always nice and I’m grateful people read and enjoyed it. There’s still quite an active discussion going on in the comments which you’re quite welcome to join in with if you like. My reason for posting this quick follow up article is to address a couple of points that came out of the discussion.

Firstly, a lot of people said I should be supporting smaller companies like System76 who really promote Linux rather then large corporations like Dell who just pay lip service to open source. This is a fair point and I do try to support smaller companies whenever I can, I’ve said many times over the last 18 months or so that I’d love a System76 machine but they don’t ship to the UK. They make really stylish computers and fully support Linux, so if you do live in the US I’d urge you to give them a look before purchasing from Dell. There’s also other US sellers like Emperor Linux who do a great job. It seems as though there are far more options available to Linux fans in America than this side of the pond and I hope people check them out rather than just going to the big boys first. In the UK we only have a couple of companies I know of who specialise in Linux hardware, Efficient PC and the Linux Emporium. I met Dale from Efficient PC at LugRadio Live 08 and he’s a lovely guy who works really hard, however there aren’t any laptops on the company’s website at the moment so I don’t know what the situation is. They do still sell great netbooks with Ubuntu installed and MythTV boxes with multimedia remotes that make great PVR solutions out of the box. Well worth a look I’d say. The Linux Emporium has a nice range of Linux laptops and netbooks, I’ve just been having a look through their site and the range seems to have expanded dramatically since I bought this Dell machine. The last time I properly looked at them must have been Christmas 2007 so I was well out of touch. I’ll be sure to rectify this situation and recommend the company to any other UK Linux lovers I know, if you’re in the UK check them out!

The other thing I wanted to mention was a change to the Dell UK website since my original post, the Ubuntu m1330n laptop has reappeared! Thanks to eagle eyed reader Grant for his comment informing me of this, I hadn’t noticed. I’m observant as ever so it’s a good job there’s somebody around to point these things out to me. It looks as though the Ubuntu Mini 12 has had to make way to accommodate the change though. This is what you can see on the Linux section (and I hesitate to call it a section) of the Dell UK site:

Dell UK Offerings Feb 12th 09

I thought I should let everyone know the machine was available again in the interests of fairness but according to many people who’ve written to me in the wake of the first article, the actual Linux models for sale at Dell UK change more often than a set of hyperactive traffic lights. It makes me wonder if they only list the machines they have in stock prebuilt and installed with Ubuntu already? This goes against the company’s business model as far as I understood it, they always promote themselves as bespoke PC builders. I’ll see what I can find out but for now I just wanted to let everyone know the Ubuntu m1330 is back, for how long though I can’t say. This is correct as of 12/02/09

Thanks to everyone who read and commented on the first article and also everyone who emailed me, your input is always greatly valued

No Laptops In Sight

Ok most of you who know me will know that I’m usually an easy going guy, I like to get along with people and have a laugh, I don’t often get mad but a few people have brought something to my attention lately which has caused me to furrow my brow and considerably raised my blood pressure. It concerns the availability of Linux laptops from Dell UK, or should I say the lack thereof. Last year I bought an m1330n from Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed because I wanted to help support both consumer Linux and a company prepared to try out something new in standing up against Microsoft. Despite a few very minor gripes over the lack of a media remote in the Ubuntu model I’ve been nothing but happy with this machine, I’m typing on it right now. For almost a year it’s rarely left my side and it’s never let me down. Someone posted recently on the Linux Outlaws forums that they were looking for a new Linux laptop in the UK so I directed them to the Dell website. It turned out through the discussion that there are no longer any Linux laptops for sale on Dell’s UK website. There’s only 3 options, 1 desktop and 2 Ubuntu netbooks, the Mini 9 and Mini 12. They’re all nice machines but they used to also sell the m1330 and Studio 15 laptops with Ubuntu. So my question for Dell is this, what’s happened to them?!

I was even told by another forum user they were given short shrift on the phone to Dell UK when trying to order one of the XPS laptops with Ubuntu. Apparently the sales representative told them they no longer sold any XPS laptops with Ubuntu in the UK. When the customer persevered and asked if they could just order the hardware with no OS they were flatly told no. An American friend checked the US website for us and confirmed the Ubuntu options there still include 3 decent spec laptops: XPS M1530n, XPS M1330n and Studio 15n. This is on top of the Mini 9 netbook and a desktop pc. The netbooks are very nice and do their job well but I’m talking about proper desktop replacements here.

Hardly At Front Of The Shop

Now, I know some people will think this is just another ungrateful Linux hippie not understanding commerce but I know exactly how the world works and that Dell exists to make money. I appreciated their efforts in supplying a top of the range laptop like the m1330 with Linux and I still do. I’ve been very positive about Dell to everyone I know in the last year or so because of this and while I’ve been upset to see the Linux machines buried in some dusty corner of the website I’ve kept it to myself, well no more. Forgive my French but this is bullshit!! Pure and simple. If it’s just a matter of not enough sales in the UK to justify offering the machines any more then fine, I’d be disappointed but I’d accept it. I understand they’re not a charity but honestly how much extra work is it to install Ubuntu on a machine instead of Winblows Vista? Ok so there’s training of staff and so on, I can see that. We’re not even asking them to go that far, just shipping the machine with no OS and letting Linux users install their own software wouldn’t be any extra work at all as far as I can see. It’s not like we were getting any discount for the Windows license, the machines were the same price as their Vista counterparts and I never complained about this, I just put my money where my mouth was and bought one. A lot of people will say “just buy the Vista model if it’s the same price and wipe it” but for me this is missing the fundamental point. Why should I pay Microsoft for software I neither want nor need and subsidize their business? “Oh you failed again, never mind, here’s some more money for nothing”. You can decline the EULA and try to force Dell to give you a refund if you like but that’s far from easy. I want to support Linux and not be treated like a 2nd class citizen for doing so, my money is as good as anyone else’s, especially in a time of apparent economic crisis.

Ok I’ll take a breath now, I apologise for venting this in public but it had to go somewhere. It’s possible that they’ve removed the old offerings while they work on new ones which will appear soon and I sincerely hope this is the case. If it is I will hold my hands up and applogise to Dell 1000 times over but for now I simply want to know… what’s up??