HP to ship SuSE on India PCs
No plans for EMEA... yet
HP has agreed to pre-install Novell's Linux distribution on some of its notebook and desktop range in India. However, the computer maker said it currently has no plans to extend that deal to EMEA.
SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10-loaded HP computers will begin shipping to India in the second quarter of this year.
The deal marks HP as the latest big name vendor to provide systems pre-installed with the Linux distribution to the consumer market.
Dell already sells Ubuntu computers to customers worldwide and has its own agreement with Novell in Asia. Lenovo has been globally punting SLED-based ThinkPad notebooks since late last year.
HP told The Register in an email that "at the moment this agreement covers products only available in India".
"HP has currently no plans to pre-install Linux on its notebooks and desktops in EMEA, but will continue to evaluate the demand." ®
COMMENTS
A SuSE snob? Moi?
I've been using SuSE since around V6, and I like it. I'm hardly likely to try and cop an attitude over anyone else's distro, however, since a lot of the reason why I switched had more to do with my dislike of Redhat, not a specific liking for SuSE.
But I can't answer for anyone else. You see, generalisations can be dangerous. Including that one!
I'm using opensuse right now.
One reason I like it so much, is the ability to log into root as a user ,(no fiddling with command lines)... good hardware support too...
Now if only there was an RPM version of AptOnCd, it'd be perfect.
@Rick Leeming
I'm with you. Out of all the distros I've played with, I keep sticking with SuSe. It's the only one that's installed first time of asking on everything I've thrown it at and I've only had one mare over a driver (which was partially my fault for not being more thorough researching it).
From reading round here, I guess I must be the only one who finds the Ubuntu installer more hardware-intolerant than MacOS........
Pirated Windows...
will be installed on the computers the minute you buy them. My friend bought an Acer notebook with Linux, and the dealer installed Windows from the OEM disks on it without any hassle. I can't imagine a lot of people who would want their computer without Windows and MS Office (that'll be pirated too, most of the time)
Pinko progress
@ jedd
actually, to be fair to RedHat, they've come a long way in package and process management. there are service scripts and chkconfig for many standard processes, and yum is now the default package manager. it's all quite manageable (for the most part), actually. much like Debian is, eh?
trash not what ye find unfamiliar. there's something about Debian, that Ubuntu has become so popular, mostly at Debian expense. all UNIX/Linux versions have their weaknesses. derivative versions and forks are the result (just ask the DragonflyBSD project).
that being said, SuSE is still crap by comparison, even if they get indemnified access to all the proprietary stuff from their "partner" in Redmond (got to hand it to Ballmer, he'd look right at home in a pimp suit - makes sense, he's from Detroit).
