Dell machines pre-loaded with Ubuntu 7.04

So it’s official, Dell is going to start shipping machines with Ubuntu Feisty preloaded by the end of May. This is great news. Check out the vlog by Mark Shuttleworth (in Ogg Theora format!) for more background information.

The most important part of this announcement is this, in my opinion:

Dell updated its policy on driver support of new Linux desktop and notebook products to use open source drivers in kernel.org where possible

This shows that Dell really understands the GNU/Linux development model. By making sure that hardware is supported in the ‘stock’ kernel.org Linux kernel, companies like Dell can largely sidestep the whole ‘which distribution should we ship with?’ problem. All GNU/Linux distributions track the kernel.org kernel; if the hardware is supported in that kernel, chances are it won’t matter what distribution people want to run – their hardware will just work.

A number of questions remain, of course. What about support for problematic hardware, like most 3D-accelerated video cards and wifi hardware, for which the availability of entirely free drivers is still problematic? And will the price of these new systems finally compare favorably to their cousins with the usual proprietary operating system?