It might not be on the same scale as Microsoft, but Novell has decided to borrow a tactic from the software giant.
A day after Microsoft announced that it would offer free or low-cost upgrades to Windows Vista to buyers of new computers, Novell announced that four white-box PC manufacturers will be pre-loading SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 with their no-name products. European manufacturers ETegro Technologies, Maxdata and Transtec will join U.S.-based R Cubed Technologies to sell notebooks or desktops with SUSE.
No, you haven’t heard of any of them, but that doesn’t make them small. Systems builders, the nicer name for white-box makers, manufacture many millions of PCs, but since they are mostly tailor-made systems that don’t get counted on the same lists as the giants, such as Gateway and Dell.
It’s interesting that three of the above companies are European, and Europe has been much more open to open-source systems than North America. Moreover, Novell’s great strength is its global presence.
The war with Microsoft, it appears, is still on.
