The ultra-lightweight laptop market is a booming one, with everyone from Intel to Asustek offering a miniaturized system with a price-tag lower than the cost of a tank of gas — well, almost. Linux is the darling of such systems — though Windows is making inroads — and the day has been dawning when the major Linux players would jump into the lightweight Linux game. Today marks the entry of one particularly potent player — a player with an impressive record of adoption.

Canonical Inc., sponsors of Ubuntu — generally considered the most popular desktop Linux distribution — and its Buntu brethren, announced today that it will begin offering a stripped-down, lightweight version of Ubuntu aimed at the surging market of ultra-portable computers. The distribution — dubbed "Ubuntu Linux Remix" — will be offered to manufacturers for pre-loading on low-power, flash-memory systems, particularly the new Atom processor from Intel. Company executives expect to see Remix pre-loaded and in stores by the end of the year.

Unlike all other Ubuntu offerings, Remix will eschew general availability — according to Canonical's Marketing Manager, only manufacturers will offered the distribution, and interested parties will be unable to download it. Though Canonical has no obligation to distribute the distro to the public, as GPL-covered software, they are obligated to provide source code to users of Remix. We suspect it won't take long for a Remix remix to turn up for public consuption.