I apologize for the radio silence since OSCON. Since announcing that we would be delivering a product this fall, our little team has been working hard to get us locked and loaded on the roadmap. We have also been focusing on the Profile tool that Canonical has been building for us.
The other big effort that has consumed a lot of our time is ironing out the logistics for the Beta program we announced last month. Stay tuned, we hope to have some news on this a little later this week.
Who knew?!
Turns out that taking Project Sputnik from incubation project to real product and launching a beta program at the same in a highly accelerated manner involves a lot of uncharted territory within the company. We are learning as we go along.
Thanks everyone for your patience and stay tuned for more Sputnik news.
Pau for now…
Barton's Blog 
What is the estimated date of launch? Also will the Ubuntu version be cheaper?
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We’re still hammering out the exact date and pricing details. Stay tuned!
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No problem, Linux users have a lot of patience, especially for such a great project like this!
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Thanks for the support Claudio!
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[…] and involves alot of uncharted territory for the likes of Dell. Check out the blurb below from Barton’s Blog and let us know what you think in the comments below. Until the next update from Dell and Project […]
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Any idea on how well the drivers will work on an XPS 14? Or whether official XPS 14 support is planned?
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Right now we’re focusing on the XPS13. Id love to expand the line once we get the first one nailed 🙂 Not sure the touchpad drive will work since the provider of the XPS13 and XPS14 touchpads are different vendors.
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I’m excited with Sputnik. It will be available to buy from Argentina on launch?
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We’re still looking at geographical availability. thx
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There’s currently a crisis affecting companies that sell PCs. They’re losing customers against tablets and mobile devices.
I’d suggest Dell to cater to the “long tail” instead of (only) trying to catch up with the tablet and mobile device market.
Dell needs to build devices for several types of user. Rugged computers, gaming computers, coding computers, _Linux_ computers, cheap computers, small computers, etc. It needs to cater to a wide audience. On top of this you need Android and possibly Windows tablets, and maybe even smartphones, although I’m not too hot on that.
I don’t think smartphones are so important to Dell because they’d have to go through the gatekeepers: the mobile operators. They’re going to be obsoleted in five to ten years time as a competing technology arrives that does only IP and replaces all voice stuff with Internet technology. It takes five years to get good products designed and produced, don’t waste time for the current wave, and design for the future. Maybe even Dell can drive this future if they don’t resist it.
Market for PCs and other products is going to become smaller. Just make sure you have a sizable chunk of that small market.
I know it takes a lot of effort to get these through QA and supported, but it’s necessary to have a good selection of products to continue to attract customers.
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thanks for the thoughts!
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Is there a way to buy a Dell XPS 13 (or other Dell ultrabook, etc.) without an operating system (for self-installation)?
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Unfortunately, not at this time. thanks for the feedback
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@Kim : Maybe it’s a good reason to choose other vendors that respect you by allowing you to choose your operating system. In USA system76 are one of those. I agree no Linux vendors propose something that competes with XPS13 though ……
Anyway, Always funny to hear from the dell commercial departement that Windows is free with their computers !
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Dell’s pre-sales chat agents still don’t know anything about it. Hopefully that’s not a portent what the support experience will be like.
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Not surprising at this point but definitely NOT something we want happening at launch. We are working on it on this side. It may not be 100% day one but if not, we will get there pretty quickly.
thanks for the feedback
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Thanks for listening, always appreciated. Don’t mistake my cynicism for a lack of enthusiasm, I’d really like this to succeed and it’s definitely on the wish-list once it’s released.
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While we had hoped to be able to offer the beta systems with Ubuntu pre-loaded this has turned out to be a lot more difficult than we had thought and would require shifting resources from our launch in the fall.
Dell is and will be always a Slut of microsoft.
Don’t think they will ever sell them ever with ubuntu pe-installed only
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Hi Nico,
Here is a list of Dell systems (desktop, laptops, netbooks) that are certified for Ubuntu http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/. All these systems come preloaded at least in some regions.
Next step, get Ubuntu pre-loaded on XPS13 for the Project Sputnik launch this fall!
thanks
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