I hinted at this before, but today, it's official: Dell announced that consumers in the United Kingdom, France and Germany can order an Inspiron 6400 notebook or an Inspiron 530N desktop with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed.

Now Ubuntu 7.10 is making it's way to Dell's XPS 1330 laptop and Dell takes the Ubuntu initiative to Spain.

Starting today, customers in Germany, United Kingdom, France and now Spain can purchase Ubuntu Linux 7.10 with built-in DVD playback on the XPS 1330n (in addition to the previously-released Inspiron 530n desktop system. U.S. customer will have to hold on a week or so.)

Dell thanks the Linux community for the support and states that the purchases and the community's commitment is the driving force behind this expansion. Hope more OEM manufacturers join soon and offer true choice beyond Microsoft stranglehold to their business

Dell does have plans to offer Linux to more consumers in additional locations outside the United States. More details to come later this summer. We will also offer Ubuntu to small business customers in the future.

With their new Latitude 2100 laptops, Dell is finally allowing Dutch consumers to pick Ubuntu as pre-installed operating system for their netbooks.

More than 20,000 people have signed a petition calling on Dell to offer Linux-based PCs outside of the United States.

It has been over four months since Dell started shipping computers preloaded with Ubuntu GNU/Linux to home consumers in the United States. Lets take a moment to look at the progress that has been made so far. John Hull, manager of the Linux Engineering team in Austin was kind enough to let me interview him by e-mail. Besides commenting on the current state of affairs with Ubuntu on Dell machines, he also offers some insight in how the Linux team at Dell works and opens a small window into the future of Linux at Dell.

We're introducing Ubuntu 7.10-based Dell systems in Canada and Latin America. Beyond that, we're introducing the Inspiron 1525n to customers in the United States. Like Daniel mentioned earlier this week, the 1525n is already available to customers in the U.K., Spain, France and Germany. All of these systems will include built-in DVD playback capability.

[Dell] could hardly do better than to buy Red Hat, or possibly Sun or Novell, for two reasons. The first is that buying Red Hat might be the least painful option for Dell getting into software in earnest, as it would offer Dell a close analog to what it has done to hardware: a commoditized software business that depends heavily on low-cost assembly and distribution.

Hey Greg Davis. You’ve just been named Dell’s (DELL) global channel chief -- in charge of the PC giant’s worldwide partner strategy. What are you going to do to help bolster Dell's profits? Here’s one suggestion: Offer some Ubuntu Linux PCs to Dell's global partner base. Here’s why.