They're still not planning on actually shipping any systems with Linux pre-installed.
Until there is a demand making it worth their time, they won't do so. Just simple business sense. It would also be foolish at present seeing as how they aren't certified for any particular Linux distribution. The article mentioned that they're expecting certification from Novell, and they expect others to follow, as they want to retain distribution neutrality (what a concept! Not being tied to an operating system or one particular software company...)
It's still nice to give the customer more flexibility.
Linux could very well come pre-installed, as more and more companies are switching their distros to be based on Ubuntu. Linspire will now be based on Ubuntu, and there is talk of even Xandros being based on Kubuntu in the future.