With their new Latitude 2100 laptops, Dell is finally allowing Dutch consumers to pick Ubuntu as pre-installed operating system for their netbooks.

Update: And it looks like Belgian customers can enjoy this deal too.

The Latitude 2100 is targeted at small and medium businesses and costs €299, compared to €366 for its Windows counterpart (both VAT excluded). It does come with a hard drive of only 80 GB as opposed to 160 GB and without a camera, though. Of course, a camera and a hard drive up to 250 GB can be added, as well as a touch screen, additional RAM and a more powerful battery. The version of the installed Ubuntu system is 8.10, a.k.a. Intrepid Ibex.

Dell isn't exactly shouting this one from the rooftops though. Dell.nl/ubuntu still leads to the Dell US Ubuntu page, and a search for "ubuntu" on the Dutch Dell website still informs you that: Dell-pc's met Ubuntu-besturingssysteem zijn niet verkrijgbaar in Nederland. In other words, Dell Ubuntu PC's supposedly aren't available in the Netherlands. Furthermore, in its list of available operating systems for small and medium businesses, Ubuntu is not included.

Unfortunately, the Netherlands is not known for its large share of users of open source software (even though there's a very large number of contributors). That Dell still dares to enter this market with its Ubuntu offering shows, once again, that its current offering in other countries is a success - so much, that it dares to compete with established Dutch companies with an Ubuntu tradition. Personally, I'm very excited by Dell's latest move and wish them a lot of success on making a successful entry in the Dutch market.