In what could be seen characterised as a battle between Microsoft partners, there's this comparison between the ASUS Eee (with Xandros) and SLED on the HP Mini-Note.

The biggest complaints I hear about the Eee PC are that the keyboard is too small and there's not enough screen real estate. Even the new 8.9 inch only offers 1024x600 screen res. Some people also complain that the Eee PC runs a knobbled version of Xandros Linux. A Mini-Note running SuSE Linux Enterprise should address these issues.

SUSE (SLED)

MSI laptops were mentioned in a couple press releases last week. They use SLED. SJVN, who favours SUSE a lot of the time, wrote about it.

MSI has certified their PCs for SLED since 2006, but this is the first time MSI has preloaded SLED on one of its computers. Unlike SLED’s most noteworthy pre-load, on the Lenovo ThinkPad, which is a business laptop, this is also SLED’s first important consumer Linux desktop pre-load.

Based on the press, it appears as though they do business with Intel (just like Canonical), despite Novell's healthy relationship with AMD and Intel's sheer abuses. Some of it is here:

The initial pre-loaded model, the Wind Notebook...

A Novell-boosting (PR) blog reposts that press released also. Var Guy is blinded by the PR.

The Novell-MSI deal calls for MSI to ship so-called “Wind netbooks” with SuSE Linux and OpenOffice.org later this summer. It’s a solid win for Novell, and a potential setback for Ubuntu Linux — which had hoped to dominate the emerging “netbook” industry.

The post is very optimistic. He is still easily fooled by Novell's 'massaging' of its financial figures. Maybe it's because they suck up to him.

Open-Xchange, with roots in SuSE and an apparent present focus on Ubuntu, is still paying attention to SLED 10 based on the following report.

Sterne&Co. LLC is proud to announce the release of an installer for Open-Xchange Server 5 for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. This 64-bit installer was developed and funded by Sterne&Co. LLC in response to customer demand. This third party installer is NOT a supported product of Open-Xchange Inc. nor Novell Inc.

Xandros

It's still all about the derivative from ASUS. While there are rumours suggesting a possible defection, Xandros continues to earn some presence only due to ASUS products. Here is one example

Don’t get me wrong, Asus has created a wonderful internet appliance with the Xandros Eee PC, but I think an internet appliance-like Linux operating system can also be created that allows people to easily tweak it without worrying about breaking things. Ubuntu gives me that freedom, and that’s why I’m using eeeXubuntu on my Eee PC… even if it does take me 56 seconds to boot.

Here is another reviewand also an analysis.

Both of these small notebooks use the same Linux Xandros operating system as well as the 20GB solid-state hard drive, just remember that the XP model will have 12GB SSD, which seems strange as we all know that Windows takes up more storage space. The Intel Atom processor used in the new 901 is superior to the one used in the older 900, but you will not notice much of a difference.

It will be particularly interesting to see if ASUS picks Debian at the expense of Xandros. It would be a big boost for the Debian project, at least on 'the desktop' metaphor. ⬆