Dell’s chief technology officer, Kevin Kettler, announced the plan is his keynote at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco, California. No further details were given as to which configurations will be offered or why the company chose SLED for the Chinese market when it is pre-installing the Ubuntu distribution in the US and Europe.
Dell’s transactional desktop product manager for Europe, Adam Griffin, was unable to shed any light on that decision, but said that the global expansion of Dell’s Linux desktop project was driven by feedback on the company’s IdeaStorm and Direct2Dell sites.
Dell this week launched two configurations in Europe: Inspiron 6400n laptop and Inspiron 530n desktop. The 530n is also available with Ubuntu in the US, while Griffin revealed that the 6400n is actually the same as the E1505n Dell originally offered with Ubuntu in the US but with different branding.
The E1505n has since been discontinued in the US and replaced with the 1420n in the Ubuntu line-up. Griffin added that the company would be looking to develop more consistent branding for its Linux-based machines in the future.
As for business customers, Griffin said the company currently had no plans to offer Ubuntu-based machines for enterprises large or small but would continue to monitor demand.
We continue to read the blogs and work through IdeaStorm and if there is demand we’ll take a look at that, he said, noting that the company continues to ship nSeries desktops and laptops with FreeDOS for enterprises to install the Linux distribution of their choice.
