Many enthusiast PC sites create buying guides for people looking to build their own PC’s from components. For instance, The Tech Report released their latest system guide. For the first time they made a recommendation for a “mini-econobox” built around Intel’s Atom processor, and intended to be as small and quiet as possible. Their recommended OS for this machine? Ubuntu, of course.

From the article:

Of course, the next page goes on about how to choose a version of Vista for their other builds, but this endorsement of Ubuntu is yet another marker of the sea-change we are seeing in the industry. People outside of the typical Linux demographic are rightly seeing Ubuntu as the right tool for the job in more and more places.

This is further reinforced by Dell’s expanding portfolio of Ubuntu machines. According to Engadget, the new Vostro A860 and A840 machines destined for “emerging markets” will have Ubuntu as a build option. I get the impression that this will be offered in the “normal”configuration process, not just in the limited configuration system that Dell has offered for their Ubuntu pre-loads so far. Only time will tell if that turns out to be the case, but if it does, it will really be presenting Ubuntu on an equal footing with Windows, which is something that I have yet to see a major manufacturer do with any Linux distro. That emotional parity will be a major milestone when it happens, and with the energy that Ubuntu is gathering, I don’t think it will be too long before we see it.

In fact, we’re seeing it already — as more and more companies hop onto our Works With U 1000, a fast growing list that tracks Ubuntu deployments worldwide.