During a brief Q&A session after Mark Shuttleworth's keynote here at Ubuntu Live, an audience member asked the Canonical founder if we'll see more top-tier PC manufacturers offering Ubuntu pre-installed. "Absolutely," Mark said, though he was coy about who exactly his company is talking to. He said he wasn't ready to make any announcements today.
Dell recently launched a line of Ubuntu-powered machines. They were a hit, and the partnership immediately set open-source advocates guessing who would be the next major PC manufacturer to offer hardware with Ubuntu pre-installed. Some say Lenovo, some say Toshiba –but at this point it's all speculation.
In a recent post on his blog, Shuttleworth encouraged the Ubuntu community to dream up the perfect free software laptop. He also launched a mailing list and a wiki dedicated to the topic that he hopes will help send a "ripple effect" through the PC industry.
