Which Linux will Dell choose?

If you have been under a rock, Dell is really close to offering Linux to consumers as well as business customers. There are quite a few guesses on which distributions Dell will choose, I thought I would throw my hat into the ring and offer the odds on a few distributions.

Analysts are saying an announcement could be any day now. Dell began running Linux desktop ads in late March. It was recently surfaced that Michael Dell himself is running Ubuntu’s latest release on his personal laptop. I am not sure if that is a marketing jewel or not, but it’s been outed nonetheless.

It’s good cause for speculation as to what Microsoft’s reaction will be as it relates to licensing fees. They have already had to be snapped on the whole Vista situation, (Dell consumers forcibly request Windows XP as a purchase option) but it’s not that uncommon for Microsoft to un-kindly renegotiate Windows licensing fees in direct relationship with how much the vendor plays ball.

So on that mercenarily note, lets take a look at the contestants, shall we?

• Ubuntu 7.04 is in my opinion by far and large the favorite here. Beyond the Michael Dell connection, it’s probably the simplest to set up and most widely supported version of Linux. Having used several distributions myself, and Ubuntu on four different systems (one a laptop) I have yet to have driver issues with Ubuntu, the interface works well and it has basically everything you would need out of the box.
• Fedora Core 7 is what I would consider the next contender. Since the currently corporate build is Red Hat Enterprise, and Fedora Core 7 is a very close cousin, I would say it’s a pretty easy fit. On a related note, Fedora is losing the Core moniker and will be referred to only as Fedora 7. The live CD for Fedora 7 Test 3 is available for both Gnome and KDE for you to test.
• OpenSUSE is what I would consider the only other viable option. Well supported by Novell and now Microsoft, SUSE is a very polished operating system. I would say it’s geared more towards the novice on the canned install, and isn’t quite as widely supported as Ubuntu (although better than Fedora in my opinion) but I don’t think you will find a large amount of non-Linux savvy users purchasing Linux systems from Dell.

That’s where I feel the real problem lies here. I don’t think that any Linux distributions are quite ready for my mom and dad, or my sisters. These are the users that I use as my standard of “Is this user friendly?”

You never know, Dell could offer several distributions, but I would bet that it would come with a severly limited user support agreement and a help desk nightmare. I wouldn’t suggest it.

The question I have to ask is, would Dell be better off selling a blank box? Most of the users who want Linux would rather install it themselves I would think.

The last question of the day is, will there be Linux bloatware? God I hope not.

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