the OEMs wouldn't fear putting another OS on a machine.

MS wrists have been slapped quite a few times now, and the GUI is ready for numpty consumption, they will have an easier time on a Linux desktop rather than a Vista one, so makes sense.

Has SUSE or RedHat actually been preinstalled by anyone, ASUS used their own bastardised Xandros variant for the EEE. Hmm Dell seem to have gone RedHat and Ubuntu.

No point to server preinstalls - the server geeks (of which I'm one) want to set up the OS the way they like it. Especially considering that if a server has N disk drives, there are several times N! ways of configuring them.

(BTW Suse is preinstalled on HP's netbooks, but I can't recall seeing RH preinstalls)

We're talking server certification, not pre-installs. If Dell, HP, or heck, even Sun, say "Red Hat, SuSE, and Ubuntu certified" about their servers, then Canonical is going to gain some traction.

@Rich:

Dell servers already are Red Hat, Suse AND Solaris certified, and have been for a long time, and have full driver and software support:

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/alliances/en/os_certifications?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz&~tab=5