From: "Rich Gauszka" 

Hopefully this will come to fruition. I fear we'll just have yet another
press release for one large Linux order, Microsoft will grease some palms
at HP and nothng will come of it as Vista will be force fed to the great
unwashed masses

Dell has blathered about this in the past

"Ad"  wrote in
message news:45ef0e65{at}w3.nls.net...
> http://www.crn.com/hardware/197800591
>
> "Hewlett-Packard is closing custom deals for thousands of desktop PCs
> running Linux, which has the company assessing the possibility of offering
> factory-loaded Linux systems, an HP executive said.
>
> "We are involved in a number of massive deals for Linux desktops, and
> those are the kinds of things that are indicators of critical mass. So we
> are really looking at it very hard," said Doug Small, worldwide director
> of open source and Linux marketing at HP. "We are in a massive deal right
> now for ... multi-thousands of units of a desktop opportunity for Linux.
> That's an indicator." He declined to give details about the Linux deals.
>
> Though HP doesn't offer a specific SKU of a notebook or desktop PC
> preloaded with Linux, several of its notebooks are certified to work with
> Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 operating system and with Red
> Hat Linux. The Palo Alto, Calif., IT giant also provides Linux-loaded PCs
> for custom orders, such as large enterprise deals.
>
> HP has preloaded PCs with Linux in previous years, but the market
> acceptance wasn't there to do that on a broader scale, according to Small.
> "Frankly, we did that in the past and didn't see the results for
it," he
> said.
>
> While no tier-one vendor currently provides a factory-loaded SKU of Linux
> desktops or notebooks, the marketplace chatter is increasing.
>
> Besides HP's custom Linux PC orders and overall rising interest in desktop
> Linux, Lenovo certifies some of its systems for SLED 10, and Dell said
> it's poised to do the same. Just days after launching an online suggestion
> Web site for customers, tens of thousands of people wrote to Dell saying
> that the company should provide Linux as a PC preload. "
>
>
> adam

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