Comments on: HP to sell Linux PCs across Latin America

Machines pre-installed with Mandriva Linux will ship in "all Latin American territories" including Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.

Bold move for preloading!

+1

[Zymurgist]

Not really that bold.

Were it the USA, it would be bold. Brazil?
Hardl. Linux is quite popular and the federal
government has standardized on its use all over
the place. It's also the environment used at
schools, etc.

HP's preloading Linux there because it's
well-established there and there's substantial
demand, support, and customer knowledge about
the product. There's also a lot of people not
buying HP product because they weren't able to
get it without Windows, and when they replaced
Windows with Linux, HP would refuse to provide
customer service to them (like in the USA, call
a vendor or ISP and tell them you're using one
or another version of Linux and they'll refuse
you support for their products unless you're a
big corporate customer).

[regulator1956]

Bold ??

Dell still pre-loads Red Hat in high-end workstations. They use to pre-load Linux into other desktops, but there was no demand. You can still buy a range of Dell desktops without an OS (actually they include a copy of FreeDOS).