in China

Recently, Ron Hovsepian has spoken with SiliconRepublic.com regarding the Microsoft deal and it's effects on the woebegone Novell. Honestly, there are very few 'new' pieces of information to be gleaned from the interview, but there were perhaps a couple of notable assertions by the CEO.

Up to 17 New Collaboration Project Areas

Hovsepian said that as part of the pact both Microsoft and Novell would meet on a quarterly basis to review the current status of the project and that this has resulted in up to 17 new potential project areas emerging.

“These really came from the customers who are driving this. We’ll be meeting later this month to discuss these new projects and some of these we’ll make public in the not-to-distant future.”

Preloaded SUSE Desktops

“The desktop element is particularly critical”, he added. “PSA Peugeot has selected us to replace over 20,000 desktops with SUSE Linux. In India, Tamil Nadu Electronics have chosen us to replace over 30,000 desktops with SUSE Linux. Dell in China and Lenovo have both committed to pre-load SUSE Linux so our desktop strategy is getting stronger and stronger.

I would be remiss to not remind readers of Lenovo's recent deal with Microsoft, as Roy so presciently deduced at the time, it seems to have finally enabled them to deliver on their repeated promises of SUSE preinstalls. Kinda sounds like when Dell got permission from our friends in Redmond to sell, er I mean meet (but not create) customer demand, for GNU/Linux.