Microsoft News Tracker

Ingrid Marson at CNET:

Hewlett-Packard plans to distribute computers preinstalled with Mandriva Linux across Latin America, Mandriva announced Wednesday.

Mandriva, the company formed when the French Linux vendor Mandrakesoft merged with its Brazilian counterpart Conectiva last year, said it will work with HP on sales, support and marketing in “all Latin American territories” including Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.

At the time of writing, HP did not have any information on its partnership with Mandriva on its main Web site, HP.com. But in a statement issued by Mandriva, Sherry Elrod Manzano, the head of the Personal Solution Center Latin America for HP, said: “HP has worked successfully with Mandriva on several products in the past. This new agreement marks our continued confidence in Mandriva.”
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The companies have already started shipping two preloaded versions of machines in Brazil.
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Latin America is a big growth market for Linux, particularly as a number of governments are putting policies in place to encourage the adoption of open-source software.

The ZDNet UK version of this story also has a link to a study looking at open source in governments across the world.