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The slow, toe-in-the-water approach by PC makers to the Linux desktop continued on Wednesday, with Dell (NSDQ:Dell) and Novell (NSDQ:NOVL) formalizing a deal to ship Dell OptiPlex 330 and 755 desktops preloaded with Novell's SLED 10, to commercial accounts in China.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) is perhaps best known as the distro whose owner Novell, in 2005, signed an extremely unpopular patent-protection deal with Microsoft. From that moment on, Novell was essentially dead to those that prize the free software aspects of Linux.
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Well, well, how about that Dell? In a landmark decision, Dell announced that it has penned a deal to use Novell's SUSE Linux in its data centers to power its new OptiPlex FX 160 thin client systems. Wow. Dell is doing this to save money and simplify its IT infrastructure and requirements.
When Hewlett-Packard first announced that it had made SLED 10 its choice for a low-cost laptops, we were not very surprised because of the solidarity there is between Microsoft and H-P (Dell raises some doubts too).
[Dell] could hardly do better than to buy Red Hat, or possibly Sun or Novell, for two reasons. The first is that buying Red Hat might be the least painful option for Dell getting into software in earnest, as it would offer Dell a close analog to what it has done to hardware: a commoditized software business that depends heavily on low-cost assembly and distribution.
Mary Jo Foley notes some of the highlights of Microsoft's patent/interoperability deal with Novell, following Microsoft's own press release celebrating the deal. She says something, however, that I'm not sure I agree with