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View Full Version : HP to certify SUSE for notebooks



kripkenstein
July 8th, 2006, 05:49 AM
Story here (http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=190301147&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All).

This sounds like good news for SUSE, and Linux in general I hope (assuming that if it runs SUSE, it'll run the other major desktop distros). Now all we need is for the big PC vendors to certify their hardware for Ubuntu, and the world will be that much nicer.

I read a comment a while back on Slashdot, where it was suggested that distros recommend hardware known to work with them. It the long term this would motivate hardware makers to support Linux. Does anyone have an idea why this isn't happening? (or is it and I am blind?)

tsb
July 8th, 2006, 07:02 AM
It's not worth the development costs to most manufacturers. If their hardware works with Linux that's great, but working with Windows is essential and where the money is. It's basically chicken and egg. If Linux doesn't get a substantial market share there won't be much support from hardware vendors, but without better hardware support it's unlikely Linux can gain substantial market share. The same goes for software. The alternative would be taking the Mac route. Build your own distro and matching hardware and sell them as a group. I doubt the market would support more than one Mac model though.

kripkenstein
July 8th, 2006, 07:43 AM
Yes, true. Still, being 'endorsed' by a Linux distro has to be worth something, if only good publicity (and good publicity among geeks is always useful). The cost wouldn't be very high - Linux works fine on (say) 90% of hardware out there; just make sure the Linux-certified systems use that hardware. There aren't any serious 'development costs', I don't think.

Support costs would exist, though. That might be a problem, even if most of the support was from the distro and not the hardware manufacturer.