"Microsoft has not talked to us about Linux. If they did, I wouldn't care. It's none of their business,"
Well, not anymore, since they were forced to cease monopolistic OEM licensing.
Agreed.
As an aside note, if Dell wanted to be a linux distributor there's nothing stopping them from rolling their own. They don't need red hat, novell, ubuntu, or whoever else.
Dell Linux. Red Hat's making money doing it. Surely Dell could as well.
Dell sees how terribly the "zealots" as you referred to them hate the world's richest man and other capitalists, and probably wants to steer clear of them. How could you blame him, when the best they have to offer is pennies on the dollar.