Dell to ship PCs with Ubuntu Feisty

It seems the US blogosphere is abuzz with the news, so you probably have read it somewhere else (/., boing boing or here).  It is obviously great news, signaling as it does just how much Canonical has done to bring Linux to the masses.

Let me be a bit of a contrarian:

• I wonder if people who don’t know how to install Ubuntu on a PC pre-installed with Windows should be getting Ubuntu in the first place.  It is still harder to use than a Mac and comes without the decade or more of experience most people have had with Windows.  Also, I believe it is easier to learn to use than Windows if you are doing it from a fresh start but still fairly unforgivable (wi-fi set-up in Feisty, anyone?).  So I am hoping Dell is not going to promote Ubuntu on their entry-level PCs directed at people with little or no PC knowledge.
• On the same subject of price, clean PCs with Ubuntu are probably going to be more expensive than PCs preloaded with AOL, ShutterFly software… anyway, even without the Windows OEM license, which is very small anyway (around $40, from what I hear).
• Hardware compatibility is a non-issue: none of the PCs I have run LiveCD (many of ‘em Dells) on had hardware that was unsupported in Linux.  None.

So I wonder if this is really going to increase dramatically the number of Ubuntu users.  It is a great PR move, that’s for sure and a sign that this Linux on the desktop is becoming a reality.  But push Linux into the mainstream?  I am not so sure.