“Mandriva today announced a new partnership with HP to distribute HP computers pre-loaded with Mandriva Linux 2006 to 37 countries in Latin America. As part of the agreement, Mandriva has been named the ‘Preferred Linux Partner for Latin America’ and Mandriva Linux 2006 has been optimized and certified for HP machines. The companies will work together on sales, support and marketing in all Latin American territories, including Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.”
This is a good show for Latin America being able to get PC’s with Linux. Now, as alwasy, I am still wondering when these options will be available in the US? If it can be done in other countries, it can be done here as well.
Edit: Corrected spelling
Edited 2006-01-18 19:51
HP already sells some PCs (mainly notebooks) with Linux on them. I know there is an model that comes with Ubuntu (can’t find the link in their store) but I found a laptop that comes with SuSE 9.1 (they really need to update it to at least 9.3)
It’s the ‘business’ model, but the difference is minimal from the consumer model.
Check here: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-64295-89315-32…
Thanks for the link. I did not know they had any, so I guess that is a start. I was talking more along the lines of being able to order a standard consumer PC with Linux pre-installed. In the US they already have a partnership with Suse, so I would think it would not be that hard.
I’m not an expert in Latin America (I just live there ;-), but certainly, there are about 20 countries in Latam, not 37.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_America
I hope that this initiative is applied in the 87 states of US too.
Of all the desktop oriented distros, Mandriva seems to be the one most likely to succeed in the long run. For one, they are already profitable. Two, they are growing. Three, they are expanding their markets (Connectiva purchase, the enterprise server market, distribution with hardware OEMs, and services). Four, they have a business savvy CEO in François Bancilhon. Five they have a tech savvy CTO in Gael Duval who’s enthusiastic about Linux, open source, and making the best distro possible. Six, they have a talented development staff. Seven, they have a large, loyal, and enthusiastic community.
Mandriva remains one of the my favorite distros (along with Ubuntu, Mepis, and pure Debian). I’m glad for their continued success.
Thanks for the nice words, but on a point of accuracy, Gael isn’t our CEO. He’s currently in charge of the new Community project.
Alejandro is right. They probably mean every single country in South and Central America + The Caribbean. But still, 37?
Aside from that, this is great for us down here!
In countries where you can get pirated Windows copies for $5 it is really hard to compete.
You can get Windows from the Internet in any country.
Anyway, even in places where most consumer desktops have unlicensed copies of Windows installed there’s a good market for Free software companies. Microsoft is good at getting governments to go after companies using unlicensed copies of Windows, and the bigger the company the smaller the chances of running unlicensed software are.
Also, in these countries the push for Free software is greater as there are more people pushing for it. I’m not going to type here about this but you can google for free software and social movement. One example is a recent program from the Brazilian government where low end computers will get tax benefits (as well as better loans for consumers) if they come with Free software installed.
did they include texas, porto rico, and canada by accident?
did they include texas, porto rico, and canada by accident?
Texas(Lots of mexicans in the south and a lot of spanish)
Porto Rico?(You must mean Puerto Rico mostly spanish speaking)
Canada(French Canadians perhaps?)
Now seriously, I hope they at least included Puerto Rico in the list. If that’s the case then it would be the reason to be glad it’s a Teritorry instead of a State(Well that and the beauty pageants)
BTW: I’m not an expert in that Island, I just live there and prefer.
Edited 2006-01-19 05:27
CTO, I meant, not CEO. Gael isn’t either of those things.
How the hell do you edit posts here? Everyone else seems to know the trick, but I don’t.
You click edit, it appears where “Reply” is on everyone elses posts.
I’m not sure, but I think it may dissappear after you restart your browser. Nope, it’s still there.
Edited 2006-01-19 04:51
The Edit link disappears after some time, like 10 minutes or so. Enough for fixing typos and formatting, but OTOH users shouldn’t be able to change their comments after the discussion moved on.
Good work by the OSNews devs, IMHO.
Either I’m really dumb and blind, or it’s broken for me. I don’t remember ever seeing it say edit, even one second after I post. Let’s see what happens with this one…
OK, it says “Reply” on the main page, but if I _click_ on the reply and get to the reply page, it says “Edit” there. Huh. Hardly intuitive…is it meant to say Edit on the main page? Is it somehow broken for me?
Also, in these countries the push for Free software is greater as there are more people pushing for it. I’m not going to type here about this but you can google for free software and social movement. One example is a recent program from the Brazilian government where low end computers will get tax benefits (as well as better loans for consumers) if they come with Free software installed.
Yes, this project is “Computador para Todos” (Computer for All)
http://www.computadorparatodos.gov.br/
(in portuguese)