Dell's IdeaStorm site opened earlier this year to a hurricane of strong input from the Linux community. As we reported in the June issue, nearly all of the top ten vote-getters among new ideas for the company were Linux or open source related. Since then Dell has committed to making Linux-based desktops and laptops, and offers a nice array of product choices based on Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu distros. In the U.S., that is.

The top topic on the IdeaStorm site as of mid-June was "Sell Linux PCs Worldwide - not only the United States". It has over 24,000 votes. Next in line was "Dell Ubuntu for Europe", with 11370 votes. Other items on the same page are "Ubuntu Dell Must Cost Le$$ Than Windows Dell", "Same discounts available on Ubuntu and Windows", "Provide Linux Drivers for all your Hardware", "Pre-Installed OpenOffice | alternative to MS Works & MS Office", "Have Firefox pre-installed as default browser" and "TV Commercial for New Ubuntu PCs".

For its part, Dell says it is simply starting in the U.S., and is "still working out details of its global programme". Support in languages other than English is an issue. Look up "linux" at trends.google.com, and you'll find the top country sources of linux searches are: Czech Republic, Russia, Bulgaria, Indonesia, India, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Hungary and Poland. Get similar results with searches for any of the distros. The U.S. isn't in the Top 10 for any of them.

There's also room for improvement in the U.S. Dell still buries Linux details deep in its website. While there are plenty of pages devoted to Linux or Linux-related products, the word "linux" cannot be found on the home page or any pages up to two layers down the Dell site schema. Not even in the pages for enterprise servers. (As it is, say, for HP.) Yet there are plenty of "Dell recommends Windows Vista™ Home Premium" messages at the tops of Dell product pages.

Meanwhile, Michael Dell's interest seems not to be flagging. As of press time, the top computer on Michael's list is still a Dell Precision M90 running Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn.