One is for some courageous hardware maker to do what Dell is unwilling to do and take a stand. It's become common practice for server vendors to narrow their support down to the "big two" enterprise Linux vendors. An ambitious manufacturer could take it one step further: "We sell Linux desktops and they come with Ubuntu, period." Of course, from there you're just a step away from Apple-style integrated hardware and OS offerings, such as I've advocated before in this column.

The other option is for IT managers to simply give up on the idea that hardware and OS support should be had with a single phone call. Let's face it: If you're going to install what remains a specialty OS, it only makes sense that you should get your primary support for that OS from dedicated specialists. Let the best-supported distribution win, and maybe eventually the Dells and HPs of the world will catch up with proper support offerings of their own.

Even this isn't as simple as it sounds, however. For starters, it means customers must have access to top quality, name-brand hardware that's free from the so-called Microsoft Tax. And even then, it places an undue burden on systems administrators to determine whether a given distribution will run at all on each specific hardware configuration.

But these problems aren't insurmountable. I have some ideas of my own as to how they might be solved, but I'll save them for next week's column.