During a press briefing at LinuxWorld today in San Francisco, IBM announced a new partnership with Red Hat, Novell, and Canonical to offer "Microsoft-free" personal computers with IBM's Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony software. The goal is to provide a preintegrated stack that can serve as a complete alternative to Windows and Microsoft Office.

IBM hopes that disillusionment with Vista and uncertainty about Microsoft's long-term roadmap will create an opening for Linux to emerge as a stronger contender in the desktop market. The Linux and Lotus bundle will give consumers a low-cost desktop productivity option that is built around open standards from the ground up.

IBM's Jeff Smith describes the desktop as "one of the last bastions of proprietary technology" and notes that it is "disproportionately dominated by one vendor."

He says that IBM aims to change that and he believes "bring[ing] openness and choice to the client and desktop side of the [IT] environment is one of the next things to explode in the march for Linux."

Improvements in desktop Linux usability and broader support for interoperability with Windows client systems in mixed environments are making Linux an increasingly viable option, IBM contends. Another major factor is growing awareness of the need for open technologies and open standards.

The Linux vendors will deploy IBM's Lotus-based open collaboration client software in preinstalled configurations through various hardware distribution channels. Canonical will also be offering the software through its software repositories.

Unseating Microsoft's desktop dominance is not something that will happen overnight, but efforts to provide preintegrated open alternatives could accelerate Linux adoption and make software freedom a practical choice for some businesses and home computer users.