The rumor was started today by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols on Desdesktoplinux.com that Dell was going to provide user with computers preloaded with the latest Ubuntu.

As you may know Dell launched some times ago a website to let people express their ideas of what Dell could do in its business. By far the most popular idea quickly became the fact to pre-install Linux on Dell computers.

Due to this success Dell announced later that they were considering the thing and today it’s seems that they have finally decided to provide Ubuntu as an alternative to the classical Windows on some hardware (one portable and 3 desktop PC apparently though no prices have been announced). Maybe it’s because Michael Dell, who is using Ubuntu on his personal notebook at home, found Ubuntu to be a real alternative to Windows. Nonetheless it’s a really great new and IMO a first step to a wider spread « Linux for Everybody ». Because, even if people may argue that using only Ubuntu is enslaving them in an other OS/Distribution, it’s still a fantastic occasion for user to DISCOVER what Linux is and in the better way possible (you can’t say that Ubuntu isn’t user-friendly moreover with the latest 7.04 version). If they find Linux interesting they will try to find out what other distribution provide and ultimately make they choice so no need to start a flamewar.