In response to "overwhelming" customer demand, Dell will be selling some consumer models of its PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed. This is fantastic for Ubuntu, of course, but it's not necessarily bad for Novell and Red Hat. Why? First off, let's look at this in a larger context than SUSE vs. Red Hat vs. Ubuntu. As Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes in eWeek:It's a big deal because for the first time, without hemming and In response to “overwhelming” customer demand, Dell will be selling some consumer models of its PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed. This is fantastic for Ubuntu, of course, but it’s not necessarily bad for Novell and Red Hat. Why?First off, let’s look at this in a larger context than SUSE vs. Red Hat vs. Ubuntu. As Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes in eWeek: It’s a big deal because for the first time, without hemming and hawing about it the way Lenovo did with its Linux-powered ThinkPad and Dell with its no-operating-system computers in the past, a top-of-the-line company is saying to the world, “Yes, desktop Linux is real.” Dell also is saying something else that’s equally important about the desktop world. It’s saying, for the first time in more than a decade, that standard x86 PC users have a choice. For the first time since OS/2 mattered, users have a choice again. No more are users stuck with Windows. No more are they forced to pay the Microsoft tax. Even users who never intend on using Linux should be glad to see Microsoft’s iron hand finally lifted, albeit just an inch.So, whatever the near-term implications for Novell and Red Hat, the long-term implications for Linux, generally, are quite good. This is a move for choice. But it’s also when the hard part starts. If this doesn’t go anywhere – if no one ends up buying the machines – then it will be a choice offered in vain. So, it’s now up to Dell and Ubuntu/Canonical to make the Linux desktop worth adopting. Mark Shuttleworth has some great ideas on this topic, and I’m confident if anyone can do it, he can.However, keep in mind that the pre-loaded Linux only comes on consumer-grade machines. That means the business market within Dell is still wide open for Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Novell. Novell’s corporate implementations probably give it the pole position to win that business. But lastly, we need to also keep in mind that this may not be the ideal market opportunity, anyway. Without discounting its significance, I agree with what Scott Crenshaw, Senior Director of Product Management at Red Hat, writes in response to the Ubuntu announcement:One focus area is changing user paradigms to make computing better and more accessible to more people — think One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Another focus is to redefine the cost, complexity and risk of deploying, managing and supporting clients in the enterprise. And a third focus is allowing small businesses in all countries to have access to the the same benefits of information technology that larger companies have. We’ve decided to focus our client investment in a few key areas. We’ve chosen these areas because we don’t think it’s our mission to build a Windows clone. We think it’s our mission to make computing better, more accessible and more powerful. In Red Hat parlance, we want to democratize technology.Lee Gomes writes about this today in the WSJ, and it’s true – desktop innovation will likely come about by solving new types of problems, rather than in cloning yesterday’s solutions to yesterday’s problems. I’m not suggesting that Ubuntu doesn’t plan to do this (After talking with Mark, I feel the exact opposite – I think Ubuntu has a great chance to innovate) – I’m just suggesting that while this announcement is significant, innovating Linux to move the desktop discussion forward is much more interesting, and important. Open Source