Few days back we reported that Dell has announced Project Sputnik, a six month research effort to explore the possibility of creating an open source Ubuntu laptop targeted directly at developers.
Dell has now announced that the experiment was successful and they were surprised by the amount of interest it has generated.
“Since we announced project Sputnik a lit
Canonical and Dell announced that Dell laptops pre-loaded with Ubuntu will be sold in 850 retail outlets across India.
This initiative is similar to the campaign Canonical and Dell jointly launched to sell Ubuntu computers in about 220 stores in China.
Starting with June 21st, new Inspiron 14R and new Inspiron 15R will be available with Ubuntu pre-installed in India.
The Ubuntu-powered laptop recently released by Dell’s Project Sputnik has generated a lot of buzz, especially in the open source community. Now, many Linux enthusiasts are hoping to see a continued expansion of Dell’s open source hardware lineup. And according to Project Sputnik lead Barton George, they may not be disappointed.
Imported from Google Plus:
Does anyone know anything about the status of the Sputnik project PPA for the Dell XPS 13? Are there any plans to keep it up-to-date or at least ahead of the versions coming out of the standard repos? Also, will it be updated to keep up with Raring? It looks like it may be falling behind - it would be sad if it became unusable.
Today Dell announced its official re-entry into the Linux laptop market. Project Sputnik, first announced in May, is graduating from Dell’s internal incubator program into a real product. According to project lead Barton George, Dell will sell a special “developer edition” of its XPS13 Ultrabook starting this fall.
Ubuntu fans are going to have a gala time ahead of them, and even more so, if you are a developer. Dell is planning to bring in the Ubuntu experience to laptops, and it wants to do things in the proper way. That is why, Dell has a beta-testing program in place for the Dell XPS 13 Ultraboook, with Ubuntu pre-installed.
The name of Dell’s Project Sputnik may not exactly conjure images of cutting-edge computer technology. But the laptop that the endeavor has launched is certainly no piece of outdated space junk. Targeted at developers and based on Ubuntu Linux, the machine potentially represents a new kind of direction for Dell (NASDAQ: DELL).
Dell XPS is really an awesome laptop and today it has become even more awesome. Earlier this year, Dell announced their "Project Sputnik", intended to produce a developer-focused Linux laptop using their popular XPS-13 Ultrabook as base hardware.
Linux fans in Europe have reason to celebrate this week with Dell’s announcement that its “Sputnik” XPS 13 laptop powered by Ubuntu, which the company released in the United States in December 2012, is now available on the other side of the ocean as well. As a bonus, Dell has added some hardware upgrades to the laptop for all markets.