My answer was that for me personally the hope was to have more Linux ready machines and laptops available in the end consumer market (i.e. non server, non cloud market). Although the Thinkpads are long not anymore IBM products, somehow I was still hoping for the closer connection between hardware and OS know how in the form of the IBM-Red Hat relationship would trickle through.
Seeing Red Hat next to Ubuntu as supported Linux OS makes me think that Red Hat made actually some contributions to making this announcement possible.
It's great to see that it's not just one model but all models in all configurations will be supported. This is great news to businesses who need computers only as a gateway to cloud apps. Why would you pay windows licenses (particularly professional), if you can get a decent OS that can be managed better by IT for free? This is will weigh in particularly with cheap machines that are used by office workers in the throughout of the service economy.
Edit: maybe this will be the start of the height of the current trend to push all applications into the cloud, which is the SUN workstation 2.0 model. I wonder if the cyclical nature of this trend makes a comeback in the form of bringing cloud compute back to edge devices in 10 years. I would wonder what could drive such a comeback for the average Joe?