Shuttle announced today that its upcoming $199 KPC will ship with the open-source Foresight Linux distribution. In addition to a price that squarely targets the budget market, the KPC features a small form factor and high energy efficiency. Shuttle has teamed up with Foresight and says that the Linux distribution's intuitive interface, user-focused design, and robust selection of included applications make it a win for average consumers.

Although Foresight isn't as popular as more mainstream desktop distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora, it is favored by some enthusiasts because it is closely aligned with upstream GNOME development and quick to integrate emerging technologies like PackageKit. Another compelling advantage of Foresight is that it uses rPath's Conary package manager, which has smart file-based dependency resolution and a nifty roll-back feature. Shuttle says that the KPC will come with a variety of packages preinstalled, including OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Pidgin, Banshee, Totem, and F-Spot. It will also come with Compiz by default and support 3D effects.

A few of the Foresight developers have written blog entries commenting on the new partnership. "I am fortunate enough to have received one of these little boxes already, and I am pretty impressed," wrote Ken VanDine. "Great value for the $199 price tag. And of course it is Linux-friendly, Foresight worked perfectly out of the box. All the way from sound, compiz, to suspend/hibernate, all just worked."

"We're putting a lot of work making sure Foresight 2.0 is ready and polished as we are excited to introduce Foresight to new users who buy Shuttle's KPC," developer Paul Cutler commented.

With a Celeron 420 standard, 512MB of RAM, and integrated graphics, the hardware specs aren't terribly impressive, but seem reasonable for the price. A Core 2 Duo is available as an upgrade option. A factor that might deter some buyers is the absence of an optical drive, though arguably the success of the Eee seems to demonstrate that one isn't necessarily required for a budget computing product. It's hard to guess what demand will be like for a product of this nature, but it's definitely nice to see Shuttle getting into the Linux game.