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..
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.
Not the only one. There is also Cinnamon. And hopefully, Enlightenment will soon be stable enough, and even included in a popular distro.
I don't think it would leave a great first impression on your average ADHD alienware target customer.
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.
Just hide the thing and press the Windows key and type? I used dwm/dmenu for a year or so and never missed having a panel at all!
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...
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.
I find it quite pleasant. What is it that bothers you about Unity?
dwm/dmenu or similar, or xmonad for the adventurous. Sysadmin people might prefer icewm as it is tiny and can tile 12 terminal windows easily!
Ubuntu with default Unity is aiming at a wide market here. Having i7 small form factor PCs available with hardware chosen to run a GNU/Linux is good!
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 ..
25 titles arent many but then again my Xbox360 had like 5 games available when it was released.