Dell/Alienware release Ubuntu gaming desktop

http://alienware.com/ubuntu/

by onosendai • 13 years ago

195 99 13 years ago

alienware.com

TsiCClawOfLight6• 13 years ago

Not my usecase at all, but really awesome for this to exist IMO.

mkeung• 13 years ago

like help get better video drivers to linux faster

TsiCClawOfLight6• 13 years ago

I just hope they don't partner too closely with canonical.

primitur6• 13 years ago

Whats wrong with the existing drivers?

darxius• 13 years ago

Nice to see a big name company is doing this. It will surely help Linux adoption by a wider array of users.

On another note, anyone else get that floating ad? Horribly placed and very annoying.

jiggy20116• 13 years ago

Surely it would make sense to at least offer a dual boot option?

I can't really think of a solid reason for buying this, Steam on Linux is great and all but when your marketing is saying "With over 25 gaming titles available"..

MacsHeadroom2• 13 years ago

Wine can run most popular games surprisingly well these days. Many even run better than they do under Windows.

bytefactory2• 13 years ago

That's interesting, I didn't know that! That makes the option of using an HTPC as a 'true' gaming platform (in addition to being a media center) a lot more likely.

Do most of the recent games (Need for Speed, Counter Strike : Source, Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed 3) run well, or is it mostly older games?

jiggy20116• 13 years ago

There's still plenty of popular games that don't run well under WINE and it's a PITA to set up not to mention having 2 versions of Steam installed.

Not really something you can sell as an easy games experience.

vacri2• 13 years ago

Wine requires knowledge of what you're doing and a fair amount of fiddling for most things - this raises the bar too high for general consumers, probably more in terms of effort than skill required.

There are only 141 applications in Wine's 'platinum' list, and a heap of those are multiple entries for variants or DLC of the one game. Things not on the 'platinum' list require further configuration.

seanc722• 13 years ago

Everyone I say to myself "Gosh darn it I'm switching my main desktop so that it boots Linux by default today!" it never ends well. Example: I like to play LoL, I got it to run under wine (though nowhere near Windows performance) and just say screw it and go back to Windows. That and the fact that patches like to break things a lot. I am really hoping that Steam for Linux pushes a lot more companies to port their games to Linux so that I can finally switch over.

mtgx• 13 years ago

Not sure why they say 25. There seem to be 165 now, which is 65 more than Steam for Linux had at launch:

http://store.steampowered.com/browse/linux/

JoshTriplett• 13 years ago

Most game consoles launch with far fewer than 165 titles at launch, and with far fewer third-party players in the market than Steam has.

ndrake• 13 years ago

I wonder how loud it'll be.

jjkmk• 13 years ago

I own an alienware in that config and it's dead quiet.

codebeard• 13 years ago

Too bad the hardware is overpriced... Reflects bad on Ubuntu.

TsiCClawOfLight6• 13 years ago

It's actually pretty expensive to build that powerful of a system in that format.

icegreentea• 13 years ago

This is the crucial point. For the performance specs, the X51 is somewhat overpriced, even if you take into the account usual cut of a distributor. However, given it's form factor (it's basically the size of a game console), it's actually amazingly priced.

mehrzad• 13 years ago

This is Alienware we're talking about.

Jach• 13 years ago

Additionally this is Dell-acquired Alienware.

IheartApplesDix2• 13 years ago

If you do your research Dell/Alienware is actually very competitively priced. Most people discount the service, which is tech-onsite and parts for 1 year.

kyrias• 13 years ago

It's competitively priced compared to computers which are delivered with Windows and thus have that price included.

macco3• 13 years ago

Why should it. Premium OS -> Premium price. Ubuntu is about free as in freedom, not free as in beer. ;)

Actually I think, Dell has a real chance to get better margins with Ubuntu. They can position themself as the computer company for open-source users and maybe even as an Apple alternative is the mass market - impossible with Windows.

klrr3• 13 years ago

Just a note, I think Ubuntu is marketed as an open source OS, the OSI definition says it has to be freely distributed. Strangly enough it's free software that is free as in freedom, not as in free beer, open source is free as in free beer (according to OSI).

BHSPitMonkey2• 13 years ago

I would think cheap, "eMachines" boxes are what would reflect badly on Ubuntu.

Glyptodon• 13 years ago

I have a hard time believing these will have much of a market.

Maybe Dell's just trying to get the jump on Valve's own Steambox?

neya• 13 years ago

This is interesting, but not compelling.

I want:

1) Better video drivers.

2) An option to Dual-boot with another OS.

3) To remove the painful Unity interface.

4) More titles to play.

And then I would buy this without a second thought.

With just Ubuntu, with very little games with mediocre Graphic card drivers and a painful interface like unity (try hiding/unhiding/switching between hidden windows for example) it's hard to convince myself to buy this..

Gabler• 13 years ago

I can see the value to your other points, but which desktop environment would you suggest over Unity? I always thought it was a pretty good fit for these type of things but my experience with other Linux desktop environments is pretty limited.

dbbolton• 13 years ago

1. I actually get comparable performance with the proprietary Nvidia driver in Windows and Linux. All of these systems seem to have Nvidia chipsets. If you can't even choose your driver (at the least with jockey), I wouldn't consider buying this.

2. What would stop you from installing your own OS pair? I'd think you could do it at the very least through a network boot, and probably USB.

3. As with 3, what would stop you? Even if you're stuck with Ubuntu, changing Xsessions shouldn't be a problem. The only way this should happen to be a problem is if there is no access to a shell with root privileges. And if it that's the case, almost no serious Linux user would consider buying such an un-free system.

4. With Steam an Humble now supporting Linux, there are quite a few more choices than there were just a couple of years ago, and I'm sure we'll see more in the years to come.

jiggy20116• 13 years ago

Unity is probably the most intuitive system for somebody switching from Win7.

What else would you install by default? Gnome2/MATE/Xfce are showing their age. Gnome3 is even stranger. The only other plausible choice would be KDE.

Unity is actually pretty good as an entertainment oriented interface. The ability to search games, apps, music and movies all from the main menu is very nice.

kostya-kow• 13 years ago

>The only other plausible choice would be KDE.

Not the only one. There is also Cinnamon. And hopefully, Enlightenment will soon be stable enough, and even included in a popular distro.

KerrickStaley2• 13 years ago

Gnome 3 is awesome; what are you talking about?

sepbot• 13 years ago

I have tried getting used to Unity, but I just can't.

It all comes down to the fact that the Unity launcher is forcibly placed on the right hand side and I always accidentally click on it when trying to click somewhere in the region. No other OS I use forces such a thing, which is why I will never get used to it.

I tried changing my mouse sensitivity to compensate for the bar, but it makes everything else harder. There used to be a hack that would let you move the bar to the bottom of the screen, but it has not worked in the 12.x versions.

I use KDE these days. The worse thing they force their users to look at is the Cashew, which can be made transparent by installing a third party widget.

keithpeter3• 13 years ago

Very unscientific trials of my own suggest Win7 users relate to KDE slightly better than Unity.

I simply hand my thinkpad to students in class and get them to start a Web browser and log into the Moodle instance.

KDE mostly ok, Unity getting into browser easy, but most try to close the window by clicking on the System Settings icon on the right top ('cog wheel'). They also find the global menu strange at the start.

It only takes two minutes to explain how Unity works though...

kayoone2• 13 years ago

As this device is aimed at the living room, i think Unity makes alot more sense than on the normal desktop. Video drivers have improved recently and Dual-booting is probably easy todo as its just a PC in a nice looking HTPC enclosure.

25 titles arent many but then again my Xbox360 had like 5 games available when it was released.

rdtsc• 13 years ago

> 3) To remove the painful Unity interface.

I find it quite pleasant. What is it that bothers you about Unity?

notatoad2• 13 years ago

Lack of support for unix beards.

sigkill2• 13 years ago

I'm too used to the 'one icon per window' paradigm which is why even on windows I do not combine icons. To open a program that has multiple windows on unity, one needs to click the relevant icon, and then select the window you want, which is two mouse clicks (well, one mouse click, mouse move, then click again) as compared to a single mouse click. And I somehow prefer a horizontal longer taskbar as compared to a vertical one even though a horizontal taskbar would rob be of vertical space.

primitur6• 13 years ago

You can remove the painful Unity interface with great ease, once you have the machine in front of you. There is no requirement to use Unity as an interface shell by anyone other than Canonical. If you don't like it, switch to another interface when you log in; its that simple.

As for 'very little games', I have to say this: LOL! Linux has thousands and thousands of games, and this continues to grow day by day. Steam may not have everything (yet), but its only a matter of time before the floodgates open: on the other side of that "new thing called Steam on Liux" lays a massive horizon of gaming on Linux that is unrecognized, unseen, but will soon be utilized once the pipe is in place.

Linux has thousands of great games ready for the consumers; the veil of the 'mainstream groupthink' is just preventing a lot of smart people from seeing this fact, but I would wager that Steam and Alienware are indicators that in fact, some very smart people are entirely aware of the potential of whats to come once these lines of communication are open.

So this is nothing but positive. Even if you don't want to be an early-adopter for this line of communication, its the line of communication which has been deficient; not the lack of content. The content (Games for Linux) is well and truly out there, it is ripe for harvesting, and this is the beginning of that effort ..

Apocryphon• 13 years ago

Window 8 has really gotten the OEMs running scared.

dbecker• 13 years ago

I don't know anything about gaming. But I assume that means it has a great GPU as well as a solid CPU... in which case this might be a good option for those of us doing scientific computing.

TheEskimo• 13 years ago

Well, the "Featured Systems" tab conveniently lists the GPU. It happens to be a GeForce GTX 645 on the cheap end and a GTX 660 on the high end. A 660 costs roughly $200. In addition, if your 'scientific computing' includes hashing or any of a number of other things, it will be orders of magnitude slower than an AMD card.

Overall, it's slightly overpriced. In addition, OEM hardware is invariably uncustomizable (no extra PCI-E slots, lowest end power supply possible). If you wanted to do scientific computing then there would be much more efficient options. This is no better an option (and probably worse) than other run of the mill OEM hardware. I especially like how your comment began with "I don't know anything about <related topic>. But...".

timbre• 13 years ago

The Geforce 600-level cards are all terrible for scientific computing, which surprised no one as Nvidia has been slowly removing CUDA features from the Geforce cards since the 200s, trying to get everyone to upgrade to Teslas.

reactor• 13 years ago

I think it looks promising if you have an external monitor and considering to buy the box alone for your dev/day-to-day purpose, more like an alternative to desktop. You get 1 TB additional for 50 bucks as well.

notatoad2• 13 years ago

This seems like the sort of thing where they don't really care whether they sell any or not. Gaming on Ubuntu is a hot blog topic right now, so they took an existing product and put Ubuntu on it. Probably cost a couple thousand to do all the paperwork surrounding a new SKU, and they'll probably sell enough of these to make cover that. Boom, Free marketing and some cred with the indie gaming & Linux community. And if Steam on Linux does take off, they've already got their foot in the door.

It's kind of awesome that we're at a place where releasing a Ubuntu desktop is a matter of "why not?" Rather than "why?"

kayoone2• 13 years ago

Agreed, this probably was a minimal cost compared to the positive publicity among the tech crowd. I hope Dell is going to be more innovative in the future and tries a few things as they are no public company anymore, i guess this can only help in the long term.

macco3• 13 years ago

In my oppinion Ubuntu give Dell the opportunity to differentiate from the market. A good idea would be exklusive Ubuntu machines.

Evbn• 13 years ago

Sort of.. We begged Dell for Linux/Ubuntu for years, and they finally give it to us.... Right after Ubuntu drove away a huge portion of their users with the Unity/Precise fiasco. Big corporations, always a lap behind.

SkyMarshal• 13 years ago

>drove away a huge portion of their users

We have any actual data or even reasonable estimates about just what proportion they drove away?

AmVess• 13 years ago

High price/low spec. No thanks.

The $300 Windows RT 32GB tab offer cracks me up, though.

jcr3• 13 years ago

http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-x51/pd.aspx

> Equipped with the new NVIDIA® GTX 645 graphics card

Don't bother. They want you to use proprietary driver blobs without any source code for them.

xentronium2• 13 years ago

What stops you from using nouveau drivers?

primitur6• 13 years ago

The answer: nothing. His is a straw man argument. I thought this was a gaming machine, not a device-driver-development machine (why else would you need the source code?)

jcr3• 13 years ago

To do hardware accelerated 3D with nouveau, you need the to use the experimental nouveau mesa driver. It kind of works for some situations, but it still unstable and incomplete. You can find details here:

http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/MesaDrivers

At present, nouveau is only working in a handful of linux distributions (with or without experimental hardware accelerated 3D support). All of the other UNIX-like systems are presently unable to run nouveau (e.g. all of the BSD's)

The most important issue is actually the wasted developer time. Countless hours of developer time have been wasted in the attempt to reverse engineer the proprietary binary nVidia drivers for the sake of recreating their functionality in the open source nouveau driver. If nVidia wants the business and support of open source developers and users, then they should provide all of the required specs and documentation for their hardware needed to write open source drivers.

Shorel2• 13 years ago

He follows RMS religion.

liljimmytables• 13 years ago

It's a nifty form factor and a reasonable graphics card, I would consider getting one as a portable VR station for use with the Oculus Rift (whenever, uh, you know, Oculus release the linux SDK).

Dell/Alienware release Ubuntu gaming desktop

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