Let's assume Canonical is publicly held. Would Dell still purchase it?
Maybe ... with the greater potential leaning towards "in the past".
Given
it appears MS is one of those behind Dell going private and MS has entered the
agreement it did with Novell over SUSE....
Would MS want Dell to have it's
own Linux distro?
I don't think they would. MS arranged their agreement
with Novell in such a way as to distance themselves as far as possible from
being viewed as distributing Linux.
Whatever strategy MS has in mind for
Dell:
I seriously doubt - based on MS' historical behavior - it involves
Dell being in a position to distribute Linux directly.
As a result a I
fully expect Dell to completely halt it's Linux product line before/when it does
go private.
Whatever the current and future purposes are: the fact Dell
inked service agreements with Ubuntu/RedHat/etc. is rather curious. Perhaps
this is the start to arrange a more distanced Linux on Dell PC's. Something
like:
Dell sells you the hardware and gives you a coupon for a distro of
your choice: Ubuntu, RedHat, SUSE.
You the customer take your empty PC
(or maybe it was sold to you with a version of MS on it) to one of those along
with your coupon.
Said service provider takes your coupon and PC,
installs their distro on it (perhaps dual booting with MS) and provides it back
to you.
With Microsoft in the picture - I wouldn't at all be surprised if
that was the intended setup.
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