A few months ago I knew about a cool small company: System 76, embraced by many in the Linux GNU community because they were one of the few selling desktops and, specially, laptops with Linux preinstalled.

Running Linux on laptops has always been problematic because many hardware manufacturers are too reserved with their software, hence the development of open source drivers is harder or sometimes just impossible.

Even if any modern Linux distribution includes many drivers and can detect a lot of current hardware, expecting full wireless, video and multimedia support in laptops was often some kind of a gamble.

But that's started to change and System76 has been one of the best examples of companies providing open hardware and writing their own drivers for Linux. The company even has a forum hosted by Ubuntu, the distribution pre-installed on all their machines.

And there were so many great testimonials of people using System76's laptops with Ubuntu that I couldn't resist and ordered mine a few days ago, it should be arriving next week.

But that's not all, the biggest computer manufacturer in the world, Dell, started listening to their users some months ago, they asked for, actually screamed for, you guessed, Linux. After a few weeks Dell told the world the good news, they would start offering desktops and laptops with Linux pre-installed, goodbye Windows tax!

Yesterday, May 1st, 2007, we reached what I think is the tipping point of Linux:
Dell announced a deal with Ubuntu, which will be preinstalled in their Linux desktops and laptops.

There's no doubt that this move will make the number of Linux users skyrocket.

The world is changing, there's no coming back, and you know what? Even if the change started many years ago thanks to a few great minds and now we are millions of Linux geeks around the globe, Ubuntu, System76 and Dell have already earned their place as very important players.

And of course, I already have a Linux Dell laptop in my wishlist.