It was recently announced that Dell will begin to offer computers with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled. Dell has stated that it will use open source drivers where available, but will include proprietary drivers where necessary. Along with this news, comes Dell saying that it will work with hardware vendors to “improve the maturity and stability” for components in systems other than the ones that come preinstalled with Ubuntu. In short, Dell seems to want to get better Linux support for their hardware all around. This is good news for the Linux world. With Dell being a rather large computer manufacturer, perhaps this will help light the fire under certain hardware manufacturers to develop better drivers for Linux(you hear that ATI?).

Along with this, Dell had said that they were not going to provide support for playing proprietary media files that do not already come with an Ubuntu install. Fortunately, getting that support is brutally easy in Ubuntu. Plying your .mov, .rm, non-DRM’d .wmv, etc works quite well.

Dell also plans to host a wiki for information regarding getting their products working with Linux.

It will be interesting to see if this move by Dell will cause a ripple effect with other computer and hardware manufacturers to provide better support for Linux. As always it seems, time will tell.

Source: Ars Technica