[ILUG] Fwd: Dell: Ubuntu Linux 9.04 now available

[Andrew McCarthy]

Hi folks,

The e-mail below is the first in a loooong time to the
linux-announce at dell.com list. Might be interesting to some of ye.

Cheers,

Andrew

----- Forwarded message from Matt Domsch <Matt_Domsch at dell.com> -----

Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:48:17 -0500
From: Matt Domsch <Matt_Domsch at dell.com>
To: linux-announce at dell.com
Subject: Ubuntu Linux 9.04 now available

John Hull, in this blog post, describes Dell's Ubuntu Linux 9.04
product offering.

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/10/09/ubuntu-linux-904-technical-details.aspx

Note from Lionel: It's been a while since I've talked about Linux on
Direct2Dell. Shortly after Ubuntu 9.04 was released in April 2009, we
had a request from IdeaStorm user Shannon VanWagner to start
pre-loading 9.04. Though it's late, we're now offering Ubuntu 9.04 on
a few more Dell machines to customers in the United
States. Specifically the Studio XPS 13, Inspiron 15, and the Inspiron
537 desktop. The Mini 10 and the 10v are still running a customized
version of the 8.04 version of the Ubuntu OS. And the Mini 10v can be
ordered with Ubuntu Moblin Remix Developer Edition.

To see all the systems we're offering with Linux, go to
www.dell.com/ubuntu.

With that context, I'll turn things over to John Hull so he can shed
light on what to expect from Ubunu 9.04.

--Lionel

----------------------------------

I'd like to give a quick update on the technical details for what we
have added with our 9.04 release. We have continued to build and
improve upon on what we did for our previous Ubuntu offerings, and
here are some of the highlights:

    * We now provide Cyberlink's PowerDVD application for DVD playback
      (instead of LinDVD which we previously shipped). We also
      continue to provide Fluendo GStreamer codecs for mp3, wma, and
      wmv playback, which will work with your favorite Linux media
      player.
    * We created and provided a new GUI tool for creating
      recovery/restore media for the OS
    * We provide a new method to recover your Ubuntu preload from the
      hard drive
    * We have chosen to use GRUB 2 bootloader instead of the Ubuntu
      default GRUB 1 (a.k.a. GRUB legacy) bootloader. We have been
      testing GRUB 2 for over a year now, and feel it is ready for
      general use. The Ubuntu community has decided to make GRUB 2 the
      default in Ubuntu 9.10, so our customers will already have that
      feature enabled.
    * A common complaint we heard a few years ago was that there were
      no Linux drivers for Dell wireless cards. As of the date of this
      blog post, all currently-shipping Intel- and Dell-branded
      wireless cards (as well as most from the past several years) are
      now supported natively in Ubuntu 9.04. These drivers should also
      be included in most other newer Linux distributions as well.
    * Our Ubuntu 9.04 offering is still the 32-bit version and not the
      64-bit version ("amd64" architecture). We continue to evaluate
      when to make the transition, and the main sticking point
      continues to be solid, stable Adobe Flash support for
      64-bit. There are currently options
      available in the community, including a beta of a native 64-bit
      Flash
      plugin. However, none of these have proven to be reliably
      stable, so we'll continue working with Adobe until a viable
      option is available.

For more information, our Dell wiki page for 9.04 can be found at the
previous link.  If you would like to download and install 9.04 with
our custom Ubuntu ISO, it can be downloaded here.

As always, please report any OS issues in Launchpad, or you can always
ask any general questions to our linux-desktops mailing list..





-- 
Matt Domsch
Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO
linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux

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----- End forwarded message -----