Dell's announcement to support Ubuntu, combined with the fact that they appear to be actually promoting and marketing it, is an industry bellwether.
Computers are so ubiquitous that the up-and-coming generation (Gen D - digital?, Gen-G - good enough?) don't care enough to support an OS near-monopoly like Microsoft. They care about their user experience - but they don't care about the details. They don't care about comprehensive platform strategies. Life is a platform. A computer is a disposable device to be consumed like so much Red Bull and Twizzlers. They want color, style, a browser, a way to find applications, a way to chat, and when feeling fey and ancient, an email program.
And they want a user experience that perhaps pretends it is there to serve them, rather than they, the user, are part of some larger commercial purpose. "There are unused icons on your desktop" anyone?
Remember when Dell first started building computers from a supply chain of component vendors (hard drives, disks, video cards, etc)? A significant number of the experts and business types gasped and said "how do you know where the parts come from?", "how will it work without a single vendor building the whole system top to bottom?, "I want a real computer from someone like (fill in blank DEC, NEC, Fujitsu, Data General, IBM) where they built all the parts themselves.
Linux/Ubuntu is a focal point of industry innovation and like Dell did with sourcing innovative high performance components for its hardware boxes, Dell now realizes that the OS is just another high performance component to be made part of the solution.
While you are at it, look at the Dell Servers page if you haven't in a while. The OS is a component; choices like Red Hat, SUSE, VMware, and I would believe XenSource XEN or Virtual Iron XEN sometime soon.
So remember the Ubuntu-Dell deal and then insert the appropriate William Gibson quote about the "future" here.
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