Asus, one of the leading manufacturers of netbooks, has announced that three Eee PCs will ship with Ubuntu Linux. Asus is not releasing new netbooks to celebrate this momentous decision — rather, it is retrofitting this year’s Eee PC 1001PXD, 1011PX, and 1015PX with Ubuntu 10.10. While these models are technically available as of June 1, they have not yet been stocked by retailers. Price-wise, they should range from around $220 for the Eee PC 1001PXD, up to $320 for the 1015PX.

Beyond the fact that Canonical has finally scored a big deal with a sizable OEM, the one thing that stands out is the old version of Ubuntu. The newest version, 11.04, was released in April and features the netbook-optimized Unity interface. Ubuntu 10.10 is great, and it’s definitely a light-weight, nippy alternative to Windows, but it’s based on technologies that are now quite old. Is Asus not a fan of Unity? Or have these Ubuntu-powered netbooks been in the pipeline since before April?

It’s worth noting that Linux itself is no stranger to netbooks. The first Eee PC, which was also the very first netbook, ran Xandros Linux, a Debian-like distro. Microsoft eventually squeezed Xandros out, though — as always — and most OEM notebooks moved to Windows XP or a netbook-optimized version of Windows 7. Asus’s move to embrace Ubuntu, accompanied by such flowery phrases as “the strategic alliance with Ubuntu is absolutely a win-win cooperation” from its Product Director, is a sign that Microsoft could be losing its stranglehold over the netbook form-factor.

To top it off, Asus even said that “many more” Ubuntu-powered netbooks will be available later in the year — and presumably, some of them will even run Ubuntu 11.10.

Read more at The Inquirer