This doesn't surprise me at all. The Linux community is as such that there would be many people that have no intention of ever buying a Dell with Linux pre-installed voting just to vote in favor of Linux. In doing so they purposely overinflate the number of prospective buyer votes so that Dell would be more likely to adopt Linux as a pre-installed OS. It makes one wonder had only the people that were planning on specifically buying a Dell pre-loaded with Linux voted if Dell would have ever started selling them in the first place?

You can already tell by the fact that Dell has obscured the location for actually buying a Linux PC that their true intention is to sell as few of them as they possibly can. I bet support alone on those systems costs them far more than the support they provide on a Windows PC. If there hadn't been the Linux fanboism going on during the voting I would be willing to guess that Dell would have decided against selling pre-loaded Linux systems.

Considering it's Dell, and that Microsoft stiff armed many consumers into Vista by their prepackaging strategy, 40,000 units with Ubuntu sounds like a good start.

"Only"? I'd call that a coup, really. Considering how completely passive Dell has been about promoting it, that's a great result.

Every bit of diversity helps in the PC ecosystem. Every alternative OS system sold new is a step towards better consumer freedom -- freedom from oppressive, enforced DRM schemes and oppressive subscription models.

I'm happy to hear the news.

They don't even sell them in Europe, where Linux is more popular.

You mean only Internet nerds want to use Linux not the general public?

I'm shocked, shocked, that several times as many people say they want something Linux-related on the Internet as are actually willing to buy it.

Wait wait, you mean Linux ISN'T extremely popular??

I think those numbers are quite positive.

That's 40,000 machines that's either new or has replaced a machine that DON'T have windows on it.

Lovely.

This is news? More like borderline flamebait IMO. The market for this machine is very very small compared to the market for Windows machines. I can imagine three possible groups willing to buy this: university computer science labs, companies that develop on Linux, and the occasional Linux programmer who isn't into building their own machine. Those are the only ones I can think of that would even know where to find the Linux page on Dell's site. Until Dell offers Linux as an option on most (if not all) of their machines, and lowers the price compared to Windows, there is no way it's going to take off.

It took me just shy of 15 minutes of active hunting to find the single Ubuntu equipped PC on DELLs UK website. The machine that I found was priced at £399/$824 for;

1.6GHz Pentium E2140
1Gb Dual Channel DDR2 RAM
250Gb SATA HDD
Geforce 8300GS TC 128Mb
DVD-RW
Basic Keyboard and mouse
19" Widescreen monitor
1 year Base Warranty

For some reason I have elected not to buy. Gosh, I wonder why?

EDIT:
I thought I would spec a similar Vista PC from their site and for £424/$875 you can pick up the same spec barring a 320Gb HDD instead of 250Gb and Windows Vista Home Basic. Over here, you would pay the £25 for the extra hard drive capacity.

Went to Dell's online store, and really for $329 (sans monitor) that's a pretty nice machine.

I like Dell products, atleast when it comes to notebooks. I hope they keep this progam, because the next notebook that I buy from them will be the pre-installed Ubuntu. If you have ever used Ubuntu on a desktop, you know that it easy to install new applications. I do have to admit that ATI driver support kinda suck, but Nvidia driver support is solid. With Compiz Fusion the enviroment is awesome.

Is anyone suprised? At all?

Dell is full elephant dung if they say they dont track those numbers. That is such a laugh....and major computer maker does not track how many people order PC's with a specific OS!!!! Well mabye that is why they are getting their ass handed to them by HP....

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4118

Anyone notice that Dell doesn't even offer Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon yet?

OMGZ!!1!!!1!1! Vista is t3h suk! Dell will rulz t3h \/\/0r1d wit Ubuntu!1!1One!

Color me not surprised.

I think it's a credible number.

I'm sure it wasn't hard to mobilize 130,000 Linux users (or scripts operating on behalf of a much smaller number) to submit suggestions to Dell to offer Linux, but that doesn't mean those people really intended to buy Dell computers. I suspect that the people who signed that petition aren't the kinds of people who buy their PCs from Dell.

More generally, I think that Linux will not succeed in a consumer space unless a major company makes a big commitment to using it (almost a "bet the company" level of commitment). Even then success would not be guaranteed, but I think that is a necessary condition. Right now I think Dell has even less commitment to Linux on the desktop than Apple has to AppleTV.

Maybe people were expecting more of a price drop when selecting Ubuntu as the OS.