Paris, France-based Mandrake has so far been the chosen supplier for Palo Alto, California-based HP’s business-focused Linux PC products, but that relationship is set to end as HP focuses its relationship with Mandrake in France.
About two years ago the corporate organization took the decision to work with two main Linux distributors going forward, Eva Peck, HP EMEA Linux business manager, told ComputerWire. The key strategy is really to go with two partners.
Peck said HP would continue to work with other Linux vendors in key geographies, however, such as Red Flag Software Company Ltd in China. The relationship with Mandrake, which last week saw HP agreeing to preinstall Mandrake Corporate Server and Corporate Desktop on its hardware, is a similarly limited one.
In France, especially with public customers, they want to work with French companies, so they want to work with Mandrake, Peck explained. Asked if it was therefore ‘pretty unlikely’ that Mandrake’s operating systems will be available preinstalled on HP equipment across the rest of the world, Peck replied: It’s not pretty unlikely, it’s definitely unlikely.
HP’s decision to focus on two main Linux vendors, combined with Red Hat and Novell’s renewed focus on the enterprise desktop potential for Linux, also sees Mandrake’s role in HP’s Linux desktop plans reduced.
In 2003 the French company supplied the Linux operating system for HP’s first business-focused PCs available with Linux, the Compaq Business Desktop d-series models, which were available with Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home, or Mandrake Linux 9.1. In 2004 it was also made available on the HP Compaq 2000 and 5000 series PCs.
Although HP will continue to support Mandrake on those machines, that relationship looks set to be coming to an end. Moving forward we will not on a worldwide level push Mandrake on the desktop side, we will work with SUSE, said Peck. SUSE put investment on the desktop products and that’s why we started to work with them.
HP will in the future offer Novell SUSE and Red Hat Linuxes on its workstation products, and the Novell Linux Desktop on its desktop PCs, Peck added, although it is also working with Red Hat on potential desktop support.
Red Hat and Novell SUSE are our main partners, Mandrake is just an exception for the French market, Peck said, adding that the company was seeing increased demand for Linux on the desktop. We’ve shipped Linux on the desktop for quite a while now, in the past in went mainly to the east, to Asian counties. Now we are seeing more interest in Europe.
