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Linux On Lenovo Laptops |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Tuesday, 07 August 2007 |
As desktop Linux slowly makes its way from geek experiment to the
bedrock of mainstream computing it is likely to do a Tour of Duty in
the Enterprise arena where Linux is already a familiar site on the
servers used for Web and applications hosting.
So the announcement at the LinuxWorld in San Francisco the Lenovo
ThinkPad will become the second laptop range from a major multinational
PC vendor to come pre-loaded with a Linux operating system, is probably
no real surprise.
Dell, of course was the first with its consumer range of Inspiron
laptops which come pre-installed with the free Ubuntu distribution.
Lenovo's approach is far more corporate with the ThinkPad T60's coming
pre-installed with Novel's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. So the
devices are Microsoft-licensing friendly, as it were.
It sort of makes sense since the ThinkPad is the archetypal enterprise
laptop, but it is a little ironic because Lenovo is a Chinese company
offering a Microsoft alternative when Microsoft recently cut its China pricing to the bone.
Of course the ThinkPad SUSE Lunix laptops will be targeted at
US corporate types rather than Chinese users of pirated operating systems, but it's like, well, ironic.
Dell introduced Linux on its computers in response to
overwhelming Geek demand and similarly Lenovo says its own Linux
offering is the result of pressure from enterprise customers.
"We have seen more customers utilizing and requesting open source
notebook solutions in education, government and the enterprise since
our ThinkPad T60p Linux announcement, and today's announcement expands
upon our efforts by offering customers more Linux options," said Sam
Dusi, vice president, product marketing, Notebook Business Unit, Lenovo.
Lenovo will provide direct support for both the hardware and
operating system, while Novell will provide maintenance updates for the
OS directly to ThinkPad customers.
The ThinkPad notebook's have been Linux-certified for many years as
the result of joint research and development with Novell over a five
year period.
Roger Levy, Novell vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions, said, "We
are extremely pleased to partner with Lenovo in delivering this
pioneering Linux preload to the enterprise client computing market.
Pairing Lenovo's quality and innovation with the stability, flexibility
and security advantages of the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10
operating system gives enterprise customers the fully certified and
supported Linux-based solution they have been seeking."
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