After weeks of speculation, Dell, the second largest PC manufacturer in the world, have finally announced that they are going to ship desktops and notebooks pre-installed with Linux. This is great news, regardless of what you think of Dell.

It’s great news because Linux geeks will be able to get their OS of choice pre-installed, even though the geeky amongst us would still prefer to build our own PCs and install Linux ourselves. It’s great news because maybe we can get notebooks which contain components known to work with Linux, without having to resort to using ndiswrapper, binary userspace daemons and all manner of other crap to get wireless support.

It’s great news because, although it took a long time, maybe other PC manufacturers will want to make sure that Dell don’t corner the pre-installed Linux market, which is likely to see a tidal wave of purchases (we’ve been waiting for this for yeeeeeeaaars) and want a piece of the action themselves, which leads to competition, which leads to a better deal for customers and an array of choices.

It’s great news because people will be able to buy Linux PCs off the shelf if they want to. It’s great news because a vendor has finally stood up to Microsoft regarding their discounts on Windows licenses for vendors who refuse to ship anything other than Windows. Yeah maybe Dell did this a while ago, but still…

I don’t care whether you like Dell or not, but at least we have a choice now. Maybe your choice won’t be Dell, or even Linux, but at least we have the choice and hopefully soon we will see similar announcements from other manufacturers.

Whatever you views, having the second largest PC manufacturer in the world agree that Linux has enough demand to provide it on the desktop is a large step towards becoming a real option in normal people’s front rooms and workplaces at a time when most businesses are deciding whether to stick with Windows 2000/XP for as long as possible, move to Vista or try Linux.