Is Dell planning an open source laptop?

For many years now companies like Dell and HP tried to market open source laptops but without any success. Now again Dell is having another go at this project. They have named this project as Sputnik.

Sputnik is a project that is designed for the developers who likes to customize their computers from Windows based operating system to open source operating system. Dell is trying to reach in-house corporate software developers who prefer Ubuntu Linux operating system

A few months back, HP offered some of its servers with Ubuntu operating system.

Dell’s new project Sputniks XPS13 computers will allow software developers to develop applications for different programming languages like Android OS, Ruby and Java. It will bring all the applications online with the help of one common set of programming tools. According to the Director of Dell’s Web Vertical Business Barton George “The long term vision is that we serve as a launch pad for cloud applications” told in CIO Journal.

Charles King an Analyst of research firm Pund-IT has singled out the developers as highly valuable to computer makers.

The main aim is to make an open source operating system like Ubuntu very much popular among the developers. This will also help the CIO to open its market. It will also reduce costs as Ubuntu is free; otherwise they have to pay for Windows computers and Microsoft for licenses and supporting software. Till now Dell has not cleared what they would be charging for an XPS13 laptop powered by Ubuntu. As for the current Windows version starts at $999.

Lately one of the major concerns for Dell is their PC sales, which have been very low. According to a source in the first quarter PC market rose by 2.3% worldwide. But Dell’s PC market fell 2.1% to 11.6%, and trailing them is Lenovo at 13.4% and then HP at 18%.

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