Lenovo to ship Linux laptops
Microsoft’s source code departments begin shaking”
Lenovo is to pre-load ThinkPad laptops with a Linux OS, in response to calls from enterprise customers. Novell's SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is to be available across the PC maker's ThinkPad notebook series starting in the fourth quarter of 2007.
The OpenOffice.org productivity suite, an email client and a web browser are also bundled in with Linux pre-load options.
Lenovo, which inherited the ThinkPad notebook line through the acquisition of IBM's PC and laptop manufacturing business for $1.25bn in 2005, announced the news at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo conference in San Francisco, today. A spokesperson for Lenovo said the move was based on increased enterprise customer demand for notebooks featuring open source software, especially in the education, government and enterprise sectors.
In May Dell said it would ship PCs with Ubuntu 7.04 as an option. It too cited customer demand for the move.
Acer is also dipping its toe into the water with Ubuntu Linux pre-loads - but not in the UK, due to lack of demand. "Therefore, those configurations are not an option [for UK customers] at the moment," an Acer representative told ZDNET last week. "If the demand was there, then Acer would sell it."
COMMENTS
@ Morely Dotes:- it's still not the UK...
I have found the Ubuntu systems on the US site, but they won't ship to the UK, so that still leaves my unable to get them over here.
it's a real shame.
@ Jason Rivers: I know a little
Try this, then:
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/ubuntu?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
Please note that I am not in any way affiliated with Dell nor Ubuntu, except as a user of both. I agree, the OS ought to be offered across the full range - but that Inspiron 1420 looks sweet for the price.
The next announcement I'd like to see:
That Fujitsu is going to start preloading Slackware on their laptops. Too bad that probably won't happen...
I know nothing...
How can people like Acer say "the market in the UK is not there" They haven't asked me, or anyone I know for that matter, so where do those stats come from?
Do they ask *Existing* customers - meaning those that weren't too worried about the windows in the first place, and not those that went else where because they didn't do Linux on laptops (like me) - I went else where, and got my self a nice laptop with Linux, I like Acer, but they wouldn't let me have a laptop without paying the Microsoft Tax (tm)
I've never seen a survey asking what O/S I want on a laptop and going to Dells website and actually trying to find their systems with Linux on is actually a headache, A Manufacturer should offer the OS across the whole range, not just on 1 model.
I hope Lenovo will do this across the range, and not offer 1 particular laptop with it but nothing else.
Maybe one day I'll see a survey asking me what O/S I want, and i'll be sure to pass it on to as many people as I know.
J
Re: Why SuSE?
To answer James's question why SuSE, this is merely Lenovo exploiting the work previously done by IBM a few years back.
