Open letter to Mark Shuttleworth: Get into the hardware business.
Jermiah Foster has written an open letter to Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical, the company behind an extremely succesful (so far) GNU/Linux distribution Ubuntu urging him to take the next step and enter the business of selling computers with GNU/Linux pre-installed:
"Your company has been building a support network to support Ubuntu, this is a key ingredient in any successful hardware offering. Lack of a support system for linux is cited by Dell as a reason why it cannot just open the floodgates and soak the masses with cheap laptops. But you have that support network already built."
I agree with Jeremiah 100% here. Instead of putting ever more proprietary components into Ubuntu hoping that will somehow make people flock over, they should start bridging what presents a much more real gap towards adoption, and that is pre-installing.
(This is also going to be the main theme of our next article about an alternative strategy for "world domination". 
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Ubuntu
That's a very good idea. I'm hoping that if hardware makers start preinstalling "Linux" that they don't supply the hardware support using proprietary drivers, because that doesn't solve any problems for people who use GNU/Linux because it respects their freedom. If the Ubuntu people are involved with the hardware, that should be beneficial, because at least they're aware of the issues of software freedom, unlike most distributors, and they claim to have a commitment to it (I think it says somewhere on the website that "no part of it will ever be proprietary"), even if they just mean they're working towards it in the long run, and even if they don't seem to stick to it particularly well (with seemingly more and more proprietary software being installed by default).
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Yes, absolutely, they should
Yes, absolutely, they should stick with hardware supported only by free drivers.
I have sent this (not this report, but the original source) to digg and slashdot. I just think GNU/Linux pre-installs are one of the most important things to rally for right now.
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Dell, say hello to
Dell, say hello to Canonical. Canonical, meet Dell.
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You know.. there is
You know.. there is something in that.
Dell could use a separate entity for their GNU/Linux business and Canonical could play that role, there's a nice partnership! 
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