Dell believes that better virtualization technology is key to increasing the use of Linux on business and consumer desktops, and called on the open source community to help develop the necessary software.

During his keynote Tuesday at LinuxWorld in San Francisco, Kevin Kettler, chief technology officer for Dell, gave the company's "vision" of how to drive Linux adoption on the desktop, an area in which the open source operating system has failed to make a dent against Microsoft's Windows monopoly.

To Dell, it's all about giving corporations and consumers everything they want on one PC, whether its Windows, Linux, or both. Virtualization software can provide choice by enabling the creation of multiple virtual machines to run either operating system.

Dell's view is similar to Apple, which offers software for installing and running Windows on the Mac. The idea behind Apple's Boot Camp is to remove the barrier of not being able to access your favorite Windows applications on the Mac. Apple sold more Macs in its fiscal third quarter, which ended June 30, than ever before. The company shipped 1.76 million units, a 33% increase over a year ago.

In order to realize the full potential of virtualization on a PC, the technology must first be very easy to use, Kettler said. In Dell labs, researchers are working on embedding the hypervisor, a system program that provides a virtual machine environment, in a flash drive in a computer server. The architecture offers higher performing virtual machines for running multiple OSes. "The overall benefit is time to boot -- ready to go -- and the management of these servers as well -- very critical," Kettler said.

Moving to the business and consumer client, Kettler demonstrated running multiple operating environments using a Dell OptiPlex 745 powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Pricing for the business machine starts at $572 on Dell's Web site.

Using the XenSource hypervisor to create the necessary virtual machines, Kettler ran Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop, Windows Vista, and Windows XP, which was running the legacy project management software Microsoft Project 95. In addition, Kettler simultaneously ran a Mozilla Firefox Web browser on its own VM, in case a business for security reasons wanted to isolate accessing the Internet. Also running on a separate VM was a computer-assisted design program. Kettler said this level of flexibility was pivotal in attracting businesses. "This is what we think is the future of computing on the business client," he said. Of course, application management and security would have to be hassle free, as would the ability to create VMs as needed.

For consumers, the concept was the same but the applications were different. Kettler said a home PC could run productivity applications on Windows XP, and Web browsing, gaming, and a media server on Linux. "These are all things we have up and running in the lab, and it's just a matter of time before we see deployment on the client side," he said.

Kettler did not give any timetable on when Dell would be offering such options on PCs The company, however, has already entered the consumer market with Linux. In May, Dell started offering XPS 410n and Dimension E520n desktops and the Inspiron E1505n notebook with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled.

While Dell has not released any numbers, Ubuntu creator Mark Shuttleworth told Reuters news agency that Dell was happy with the demand of its Linux PCs, and would eventually offer more systems.

Kettler on Tuesday announced that Dell would soon start selling PCs preinstalled with Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 in China. Dell currently sells PCs with Red Flag Linux in China. Dell also would start selling Inspiron desktops and notebooks with Ubuntu in the United Kingdom, Germany and France, Kettler said.

Kettler made a "call to action" to the open source community to focus on delivering better software to offer virtualization technology that can easily run Linux on the desktop alongside Windows, giving companies no excuse for not using the OS when it makes sense to run certain applications. "Virtualization can play a strong role in getting the CIO's apprehension over the hump," Kettler said.

Beyond the technology, Kettler said changes in software licensing would be needed to make it cost effective to run multiple operating systems on a desktop. If an increasing number of PCs shipped with multiple OSes, market research firms would also have to come up with new metrics for tracking OS usage.

Dell has more than 3,000 Linux servers in its data center, running its internal employee management system, as well as mission critical software. The latter includes its supply chain-management system, factory planner, customer order management system in Europe, financial management system, and almost all its database servers, Kettler said.