New from Dell: an Ubuntu Linux Laptop Targeting Developers - trosclairunflithen

Dell has taken what you might call an on-again, off-again come nea to offering Ubuntu-preloaded hardware over the years, but on Monday the company successful an announcement that Linux fans are certainly to cheer.

Specifically, through an effort called Project Sputnik, Dell has been working on a prototype unfold source laptop aimed at developers, based connected Ubuntu Linux 12.04 "Accurate Pangolin" and Dell's XPS 13 hardware.

"Sputnik is part of an effort by Dingle to better understand and serve the needs of developers in Web companies," explained Barton George, director of merchandising for Dell's Web vertical, in a web log post happening Monday. "We want to feel ways to make the developer have atomic number 3 powerful and elementary American Samoa possible. And what better way to do that than opening with a laptop that is some highly mobile and extremely stylish, spurting the 12.04 LTS release of Ubuntu Linux."

An Install Icon Is Visible

The topic of Ubuntu has cropped up repeatedly in discussions with developers, George noted. Not solely that, but "a fair number" of developers cause specifically requested a laptop based connected the free and open source operating system, He said.

"To my knowledge, no opposite OEM has yet made a system specifically targeted at devs," George wrote, so Dingle "figured it was time to take care what that power ungenerous."

Project Sputnik is a six-month effort made possible aside an internal innovation investment firm. Now available in an establis image for the project are drivers and patches for hardware enablement along with a basic assortment of tools and utilities; a software management tool to retrieve developer profiles from GitHub is coming soon, George said.

The project has already been working in collaboration with Canonical to resolve hardware issues involving brightness and the wifi hotkey; still being addressed are touchpad and multitouch accompaniment. The video on a lower floor explains the effort in more point.

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'We Have Big Plans'

The vision for Project Sputnik is "a Launchpad to the cloud," George said.

Among the possibilities for the developer-oriented machine is "a common dictated of tools from client, to test, to production, thereby tying Sputnik via a common puppet strand to a cloud back end powered by OpenStack," he explained. "Developers could create 'micro clouds' locally and then pushing them to the cloud writ large."

If Project Sputnik is successful, "we experience big plans for the effort," George added, though he didn't explicitly address the possibility of a consumer-oriented version.

Still, the news program is particularly for Linux fans given the report published by OMG!Ubuntu! today suggesting that Ubuntu will be included on fully five percent of the PCs that ship next year.

Is Linux dead along the desktop? In for doesn't sound corresponding it to me.