May 11th, 2007
No Wine for Ubuntu-powered Dell PCs
Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu, said earlier this month that Dell will not include Wine on PCs shipping with Ubuntu because he doesn't want Ubuntu (and Linux in general) to be seen as a cheap alternative to Windows.
This seems to have come as a bit of a surprise to some, but it makes total sense to me. There's no way that Dell can sell a PC kitted out with Ubuntu and Wine and give people the impression that this will allow people to run Windows applications. When this doesn't work, people would flat out blame Ubuntu for not running Windows apps. I've used Wine a bit and most of my experiences have been less than positive.
Sure, Wine is great for people who like to be adventurous, but there's no way that this is a product that's ready to be shipped on a Dell-badged system. It's far too complex and beta for the average user. For people who know about Wine, or who find out about it, it'll be there waiting for them, but to ship it on the system would be making a promise that couldn't be delivered.
Loading ...This approach does present a few problems though. For example, a while back I was interested in what kind of accessibility options were included with Linux and I was surprised to find that speech recognition is only possible by running Dragon Naturally Speaking through Wine.
Is not shipping Wine on Ubuntu-powered Dell systems a good idea?
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
Want to get in touch? Got a tip? Feel free to drop me a note! I ALWAYS respect anonymity. I'm also on Twitter (@the_pc_doc)
Right to Reply: Should any industry representatives wish to comment on any posts on Hardware 2.0, I will be happy to publish their reply verbatim on this blog.
Subscribe to Hardware 2.0 via Email alerts or RSS.
