I certainly don't want to put you off of buying a Dell. Props to them for shipping hardware with Linux pre-installed. I have no experience with them, but I would seriously consider what they have to offer when shopping as well.
When I was looking for a laptop to buy recently, it never occurred to me that Dell might offer an Ubuntu system over the phone without also offering it on their (UK) website.
Yeah, you can get a great Dell for really cheap. They now come preinstalled with Ubuntu (http://dell.com/ubuntu), so you don't have to pay for Windoze.
At my company, most of the developers use Ubuntu end-user machines, all from Dell. Not only does this avoid us having to pay for Windows licenses we never use, but we know the hardware is actually going to work fine with it. There's some quirks, of course - Ubuntu doesn't much like the 4k screens in our 13" XPSen so there's a lot of tweaking involved, but we're getting some very good hardware at a good price, and stuff just works. It's the right choice to target the high-end of the market, since the users are likely highly Linux-knowledgeable and so far we've never had to contact Dell for any software issues, which is going to improve their profits while our stuff just keeps working.
The only issue is the long lead times between actually ordering a batch of laptops and them being dispatched. It can be a fortnight or more. Currently I (as the sysadmin) keep a cupboard full of them ready for use, but I never look forward to ordering more.
Same here. I bought a Dell Inspiron back in 2009 with Ubuntu pre-installed. I still use it to this day though it is pretty much on its last leg. I think the title is a little confusing. It should be that Dell is expanding the number of computers they offer with Ubuntu. This title makes it sound like they haven't been offering it for years now.
Dell does already ship a laptop with Ubuntu installed. No I don't think Best Buy and Walmart carry it, because the only target market for it is developers.
I'd really like to know what happened to Ubuntu being supported by Dell a while ago. http://www.dell.com/ubuntu only lists one machine that you can buy with Ubuntu pre-installed.
If this had kept up, and more suppliers had joined the bandwagon, it would have been exactly the major support you are talking about. Why did things move backwards?
Dell is definitely weird about this; I had the same experience. Perfectly satisfied with my laptop (an XPS 13 with Ubuntu on it bought a few years ago), but Dell's online store is just bonkers.
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