HP PCs with Linux Pre-Installed

Hewlett-Packard will try selling pre-installed Linux on PCs in some countries as it expands a test program to evaluate the Linux market and moves its PC business into a brand new generation of design factors and functionality.

Hewlett Packard offers through a pilot program in Australia a model of its HP PCs with Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 pre-installed for small and medium-sized businesses.

Brian Schmitz, director of product marketing for HP's business PCs said: "We have seen interest in certain parts of the world. We're going to try some things in other countries with pre-loaded Linux. It's really hard to gauge. There's always a lot of noise around Linux but the demand isn't there."

The results from Australia are very good until now and HP is starting to take the Linux pre-loads on an international level. It seems USA will be the next country on their list, because of the large Linux deployments made in the education system, especially in public schools in the state of Indiana.

Two other companies that were a little bit faster than HP in choosing Linux are Lenovo and Dell. Dell began offering PCs pre-loaded with Ubuntu Linux and Lenovo offered ThinkPads with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. Lenovo contracted the solution provider Arey Jones to deliver their system loaded with SLED 10 in San Diego.

At this moment HP certifies SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and Red Hat Linux for its computers, cooperates with companies and organizations to deliver piece parts needed to load a modified Linux-based image on the PCs and offers drivers for download on the Web.

Custom system builders like Ace Computers joined in to help deploy Linux PCs. HP is not at its first attempt to deliver Linux pre-loaded onto PCs; another try was made a few years ago, but the systems didn't have the expected success.

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