Breaking Down Michael Dell's Linux Notebook

a branded mobile workstation, pre-loaded with Linux,

The Dell Precision M90 is built on an Intel Core2Duo T7600 processor and loaded with Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn. Other hardware specs include:

- 4 GB of DDR2 at 667 MHz; - NVIDIA Quadro FX 3500 512 mb; - 160 GB 7200 SATA HDD; - A 17-inch LCD.

There's no promise that Dell will productize this particular configuration, although this item on Dell's corporate blog has a certain wink-nod feel to it. (The comments on the blog tend to be very supportive.)

A Precision M90, with the same processor, NVIDIA chip and LCD, but with Windows XP, less memory and a smaller hard drive is priced at $3,523 on Dell's web site. Add more memory and a bigger hard drive, subtract Windows XP and add Ubuntu, and it's not outrageous to believe that would still be the ballpark price for Michael Dell's Linux configuration.

How does that compare to other vendor offerings?

Sun Microsystems just launched a series of workstations with Novell's SLED 10 operating system which, configured with an AMD Opteron and the lowest-cost components, runs just shy of $5,000. An IBM Intellistation Z Pro workstation, configured with Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS (v4 for xSeries) and a dual-core Xeon, is tagged at $3,987.

Obviously, mileage may vary.

So questions that remain if Dell offers a workstation that's factory-loaded with Linux are not whether it will be the first company down this road (it's not), or what sort of components you might expect. They are: How much support is Dell willing to provide on thorny issues like driver availability? What will that support do to the system cost? Will it be competitive with IBM and Sun? Will Dell be able to make a profit on it? And will it live up to the hype?

Stay tuned.