Posted on Monday, August 06 2007 @ 9:25 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
According to a spokesperson for Acer, the firm won't offer notebooks with Ubuntu Linux in the UK because there's no demand for it:
The Acer Aspire 5710Z has gone on sale in Singapore pre-loaded with Ubuntu Linux instead of Windows. Ubuntu is currently one of the world's most popular and easiest-to-use Linux distributions.
But a spokesperson for Acer told ZDNet.co.uk on Tuesday that the company — one of the world's top laptop manufacturers — currently had "no plans" to sell any Linux-based systems in the UK. "[Acer models] with Ubuntu pre-loaded are available at the factory level. However, there is no demand for it in the UK. Therefore, those configurations are not an option [for UK customers] at the moment," said the spokesperson.
"If the demand was there, then Acer would sell it," the spokesperson said, adding that such a demand would have to be reported to Acer by its UK resellers.
The only other major manufacturer to include Linux-based systems in its lineup is Dell, which has been offering such systems solely in the US since May. Last week a spokesperson for Dell said there had been a healthy demand for notebooks running on Linux. Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu's main backer, also hinted that Dell could release even more open source-based notebooks, although Dell did not confirm or deny this suggestion.
Source: ZD Net
