HP will start shipping Linux-based notebooks and desktop computers in the second quarter of the year. The company has been reported to introduce PCs with a pre-installed version of Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop operating system on the selected markets worldwide.

The two companies will start working on the required software drivers to support HP's computing architectures, and will offer SUSE Linux support to its customers. According to Roger Levy, vice president for open platform solutions with Novell, the agreement between HP and Novell is an important step in promoting Novell's products.

"Having any additional distributor that has worldwide reach and has a large market share who will bring enterprise grade Linux in as an option, is very significant to us," Levy said. However, he refused to give further details about the agreement with HP.

Linux-based computers have become more and more popular lately, mainly because the GNU/GPL license helps companies keep the price tags down for their computer systems, and partly because the Windows XP operating system (users' favorite pick) will stop selling as of June 31.

Dell is currently offering Ubuntu as an option in a broad range of products, available worldwide, while its SUSE Linux distribution is currently reserved to the Asian market. Lenovo also adopted SUSE Linux for its notebook PCs, and the company has been shipping them worldwide for quite a while now. HP was the only major PC vendor that adopted Linux only for its workstation market segment.

The SUSE Linux flavor is being developed and maintained by Novell, which ships it with an annual support contract. That is why it has been mostly targeted at the enterprise sector rather than at the consumer market. According to Levy, Novell is not pitching at providing consumer computing systems with pre-installed versions of the SUSE Linux operating system.

"We do look at the consumer side from the nature of increasing our developer community," claimed Levy. "But from a business point of view, our focus is on the enterprise."