Toshiba chose to do it with Sun out of pity, not because they see a market for it or anything, right?

"GNU/Linux" isn't a product, its just a name that is associated with X number of distributions, only a handful of which have enough corporate muscle behind them to arrange a laptop deal with a vendor like Toshiba or Dell.

The simplistic view that "Ubunto works on Dell" doesn't mean much to the Toshiba or Sun executive who wants to take some of Dell's market share. OpenSolaris works on Dell, too. As do the dozens of other Linux distros and BSD variants.

I agree with almost all of your points except for ZFS. ZFS is truly revolutionary and amazing. XFS, Reiser FS (i.e. murder-your-wife-FS) pale in comparison. ZFS renders Veritas and NetApp moot and useless in one fell swoop. No wonder NetApp is suing.

However, unfortunately, I'm pretty sure Ponytail guy and the rest of the C-level nerds will f* things up as usual and fail to capitalize on the technology. Sun = great engineers, shitty management. Someone needs a haircut. Its 2008 for crissakes, get with the decade.