Dell Spells Out What They Will Offer on Ubuntu Systems

Wow! It is getting serious… they give us some info on what to expect from their Dell Linux pre-installed systems!

Ubuntu 7.04 Offering—Technical Details

“Before we announce the availability of Ubuntu 7.04 on select Dell client systems, I’d like to give an overview of what customers can expect from our initial Ubuntu offering.

Available Software and Hardware

* The default software from the Ubuntu media will be installed on the system, including kernel and applications.
* The peripheral options offered with Ubuntu will be a subset of what is offered with other operating systems. We’re offering the hardware options on each system that have the most mature and stable Linux driver support. These hardware options have been thoroughly tested by the Linux team here at Dell.
* We configure/install open source drivers for hardware, when possible.
* We use partial open-source or closed source (“restricted” in Ubuntu terms) drivers where there is no equivalent open-source driver. This includes Intel wireless cards and Conexant modems.
* We will have a wiki page on our linux.dell.com website that gives technical details of the supported systems, information on the device drivers used for system peripherals, details of our Ubuntu factory-installation, and information on the problems we found during our testing, with their fixes/workarounds.
* We recommend Linux users buy Dell printers that have PostScript engines in them. The previous hyperlink lists those printers. You can also check in the Tech Specs tab for each printer on Dell.com show if it has PostScript or not.”

Pretty cool… it will be interesting how many of these sell… and, how fast they do sell!

Geek Software of the Week: Ventrilo!

So, you need to record a group of people (or, even a couple of people) for a podcast… or, you want to communicate over headsets while playing computer games on-line. Enter… Ventrilo! High quality voice communication over IP (the Internet.)

Ventrilo Web Site

“Ventrilo 2.3.0 is the next evolutionary step of Voice over IP (VoIP) group communications software. Ventrilo is also the industry standard by which all others measure themselves as they attempt to imitate its features. By offering surround sound positioning and special sound effects on a per user, per channel, per server or global configuration level the program provides each user the option to fully customize exactly how they wish to hear sounds from other users or events. Ventrilo is best known for it’s superior sound quality and minimal use of CPU resources so as not to interfere with day to day operations of the computer or during online game competitions. It is also preferred for the simple user interface that any first time computer user can very quickly learn because the most commonly used features are immediately visible and can be activated with a single click of the mouse.”

Very cool, indeed! I am also checking out “TeamSpeak” to see which is better:

TeamSpeak Web Site

It looks very cool as well… same concept… I’ll let you know which one I went with!