Because it's only proper to give credit where it's due, Matt Kohut, Worldwide Competitive Analyst for Lenovo, could be spot on in his prediction that Linux will remain a niche market on netbooks.

"LINUX IN NETBOOKS and notebooks I don't think is ever going to happen," Lenovo's world-wide competitive analyst, Matt Kohut, has said in an interview, remarking that the open source software would never attain anything more than niche status as an OS.

I had to read this story Lenovo analyst: Linux on netbooks is doomed" several times because I couldn't quite believe what I was reading. Was this really Lenovo's Worldwide Competitive Analyst saying things like "You have to know how to decompile codes and upload data"? Really?

Lenovo Group Ltd. (0992.HK: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's No. 3 PC maker, said on Monday it would start selling laptop computers preloaded with Linux software from Novell Inc.

My recent call for a Linux laptop drew a lot of response and several kind e-mails. Several vendors were said to be shipping such laptops. Lenovo, with SUSE Linux on it. Everex. Dell. Asus. A desktop “shootout” is planned this week at LinuxWorld.

Last week my colleague Rikki Kite wrote a good blog entry on how to gracefully introduce a person to Linux. I would like to add a few more pointers to her excellent “moving” blog entry:

Lenovo seems to have a love/hate relationship with Linux. Last year, it began offering its high-end T60p ThinkPad laptop with SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop). This year, the company is releasing its newest high-end laptop, the T61p ThinkPad, and once more, while it runs desktop Linux, the company isn't overly eager to let the world know about it.

Lenovo today announced its IdeaPad U1, a consumer Windows laptop with a touchscreen that can be detached and used as a separate Linux tablet computer.

eWEEK’s Channel Labs takes a look at Lenovo’s latest offering in the notebook computer market, a portable with Novell’s SUSE Linux pre-installed.