First, Dell has publicly stated that it plans to announce a Linux desktop strategy within a few weeks. The company wrapped up a Linux customer survey on March 23. Shortly thereafter, Dell announced that it was prepping Linux desktops and notebooks. Wonderful. Three cheers for freedom of choice in the software market.
But which Linux will Dell choose? Michael Dell himself is running Ubuntu Linux at home--in addition to three Windows-based PCs. So there's growing speculation that Dell will offer Ubuntu on selected systems. If it's good enough for Michael, it's good enough for the rest of us--right?
But wait. Hold everything. Now, sources close to Red Hat tell me the company could have some desktop-related news to share in a few weeks or by the summer at the latest.
So let's review the situation: Dell is prepping Linux desktops. Red Hat is prepping potential desktop PC news. Hmmm. Coincidence, right? Could be... but I suspect otherwise. Red Hat's strong position on corporate servers makes it a natural option for administrator workstations from Dell. And it's possible to imagine Dell offering a mix of Red Hat and Ubuntu Linux on certain desktops and notebooks.
Where does that leave Novell (NOVL) SuSE Linux? I'm still digging around Dell's desktop and mobile businesses for the answer to that question.
