Dell Officially Offering Linux, Free LoJack for Laptops

Fri Mar 30, 2007 5:58PM EDT

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As a follow-up to these previous stories on Dell's flirtation with Linux for its PC customers, the company is finally making it official: Linux will be rolling out in the near future, though the company has not set a date for the launch nor has it picked a distribution it will be offering. Ensuring drivers work properly is probably the company's next big challenge: Many may have to be created from scratch, depending on which flavor of Linux the company goes with, and how many peripherals it plans to support by default.

In related news, Dell is quietly upgrading its LoJack for Laptops offering, rolled out in February. If you purchase an XPS laptop, Dell is now including one year of LoJack for free. All you have to do is register your computer with Computrace (which sells the LoJack software) to activate the service. (I just got the word on this direct from Dell this morning, so there's no link yet for additional information.)

Lots of great news out of Dell these days. Now that Michael Dell is back at the helm as CEO, is the company experiencing a renaissance of sorts? Something to chew on over the weekend. But, if nothing else, Dell PCs are certainly looking more enticing than ever.

LINK: Dell gives the go-ahead for Linux 

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  • 6 Posted by dragonland2001 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:47PM EDT Report Abuse

    Move to *nix? Great idea - perhaps that would improve software avaialability in the mainstream (not all who use *nix are programmers...) Moving away from Vista? I somehow fail to be surprised by this. My only real complaint with that idea is that I've not been impressed enough with XP to bother with upgrading from W2K (which I upgraded a couple of personal machines to ~2003. Win98 saw my first use in late 1999, and Win95 in 1997 or so. I'm an old DOS guy - DOS didn't break. *nix doesn't really break, either - not like Windows...) While this doesn't make me more likely to buy a Dell - I'm more of an IBM guy - this does speak well for the idea of putting out an operating system that actually /works/ - like Win2K does (most of the time...) Vista just seems to me to be a later version of WinME, with high susceptibility to "feature creep." What about those of us who don't want to load our computers down with all this software of dubious utility? Jon Kelley San Jose, CA.

  • 7 Posted by chspyder on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:25PM EDT Report Abuse

    XP Pro or even Home is great, it finally works and works with nearly everything, and as for drivers they are all there also, unlike Vista, which will be forced upon us but may be delayed longer than the expected Dec 2007 date. But Linux, I think you guys that are die hard "Microsoft Haters" will be the few purchasers of Linux boxes after all Vista may be light on driver and software support, but Linux is for some super geeks. (No offense, I am a Super Geek also, and have tried Linux, and just don't see the need since it is so incompatible) If security is the issue, anything is hackable. If money is the issue, then trade in the PC for a calculator and file box! :)

  • 8 Posted by kapiladeshapriya on Mon Oct 5, 2009 5:13AM EDT Report Abuse

    This is great! I hope this is the start of a mass exodus from Windows to Linux. At a bare minimum, this should force Microsoft to develop some better products. Any way you look at it,his is good news for the computing world.Like xp pro and intend on using it untill i'm forced offThis is a nice change and hopefully a step forward for the more widespread acceptance of Linux.

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