This news that Dell will start pre-installing Ubuntu on some Dell PCs and laptops looks interesting. It sounds incredibly like Dell might actually have listened to its customers. They did a survey a while back and many respondents said that they wanted Linux on their desktop machine. So, Dell in conjunction with Canonical (the company headed by the man who has poured the money into Ubuntu, spaceman Mark Shuttleworth) will be offering Ubuntu on some systems.
I think this is a good move. There are arguments about whether Ubuntu is the ‘right’ Linux distribution to make available in this way, but frankly those arguments would continue endlessly. At least the distribution will be supported, either by Dell or by Canonical.
This will raise the profile of non-Microsoft operating systems on consumer-level goods, which must be a good thing. The Microsoft Monoculture has been going on for long enough, after all.