"Acer Inc. did not install the Ubuntu Linux distribution on a batch of Aspire notebooks for sale in Singapore, but the company is installing a different version of the open-source operating system on some notebooks, local dealers said."

Dell today flipped the switched and is now officially offering consumer desktop and notebook PCs with Ubuntu 8.04 pre-installed. Two notebooks and one desktop join two desktop systems in Dell’s open-source product portfolio.

Toshiba is now offering Sun's OpenSolaris 2008.11 pre-installed on some of their notebooks, following a deal completed in December.

Computer manufacturer ASUS has published the Linux source code for its Seashell line of netbooks. Previous to the companies Seashell line up, ASUS netbooks were often available with Linux as an option for the pre-installed operating system (OS), usually at a lower price.

What is commercial Linux distributor Novell going to do about server and desktop virtualization? It's a good question, and one that the company's top brass has not really addressed. In July 2006, with the launch of SUSE Linux 10, Novell was the first commercial Linux vendor to ship a Xen hypervisor tuned for Linux.

IBM has teamed up with partners in Austria and Poland to offer Microsoft-free personal computers for the eastern European market, IBM said in a statement on Tuesday. [They] said it was offering the PCs based on the open-source Linux operating system together with Red Hat software distributor VDEL of Austria and Polish distributor and services firm LX Polska in response to demand from Russian IT chiefs.

Dell has previewed a new instant on technology that allows users to carry out basic tasks on their notebooks without having to boot up into Windows. Is this the future for notebooks?

The story thus far for Canonical: Young successful South African entrepreneur wants to give back to the technology that helped make him successful in the first place.

Following recent reports of a South African bank eyeing out Linux, Novell South Africa today issued a statement in which it said it had reached an agreement with First National Bank of South Africa to standardise the bank's 12 000 desktops in its 680 retail branches on Novell's Linux product.