Dell announced yesterday that more than 100,000 people had responded in the past two weeks to an online survey about pre-loaded Linux.
“Dell has heard you and we will expand our Linux support beyond our existing servers and Precision workstation line,” the company announced through a corporate blog yesterday.
“Our first step in this effort is offering Linux pre-installed on select desktop and notebook systems. We will provide an update in the coming weeks that includes detailed information on which systems we will offer … and the Linux distribution(s) that will be available.”
“The countdown begins today.”
The decision has enormous implications for the PC software industry. Other PC-makers would be expected to follow Dell down the Linux path, and HP is known to already be considering such a plan.
The company issued the survey as part of its IdeaStorm customer consultation process that began in February. Dell launched IdeaStorm to seek direct input – ideas – from its customers.
Overwhelmingly, the biggest IdeaStorm talking point was open source software. Dell then posted the online survey to descover more precisely the open source preferences of its customers.
In announcing the Linux plan, Dell also released some of the broad findings of its survey, including that 70 per cent of its respondents said they would use a Dell system with Linux for both home and office use.
Survey respondents said they wanted to be able to choose Linux on a variety of different Dell notebook and desktop products. They also said existing, community-based support forums would meet their technical support needs for a tested and validated Linux OS.
They also said that improved hardware support for Linux is just as important as which Linux distributions are offered.
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