HP Indonesia ready to support new Linux-based PCs

Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Indonesia says that it is prepared to support the recent plan of its parent company to globally expand its line of desktop personal computers (PC) based on the GNU/Linux operating system (OS).

However, HP Indonesia will, for the time being, only offer the Linux-based PCs to corporate customers, and not yet to the public, who are mostly still unfamiliar with the OS.

"We have actually been offering Linux-based PCs since 2002," company president Elisa Lumbantoruan told The Jakarta Post recently, adding that monthly sales of such PCs had reached a maximum of 2,000 units.

The managing director of HP Indonesia, Andreas R. Diantoro, meanwhile, said that the company currently has about 50 corporate customers of mainly banks, governmental agencies and small and medium enterprises (SME), which are already using HP's GNU/Linux- based lines of computers.

"Providing Linux-based systems is part of HP's efforts to satisfy our customers' various needs and anticipate the market trend," he said.

Popularly known by its kernel created by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds, GNU/Linux also comprises essential GNU Not Unix (GNU) programs from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), among other things, all of which are worldwide collaborative works by volunteer hackers, as well as paid programmers. The GNU/Linux was created to compete with various closed OS available on the market, including Microsoft.

Due to its free and open nature, the OS is available in various distributions, such as Debian, RedHat, Mandrake, Turbolinux and SUSE Linux.

Many computer experts are predicting that Linux's recent 2.6 version, which has addressed many of the current home-computing needs that its previous version had not, will boost GNU/Linux' position in the desktop PC segment, aside from its already increasing status in the server computer niche.

HP recently struck a deal with software company Novell to make SUSE Linux the official GNU/Linux distribution for HP's latest line of business PCs for corporate customers -- the dx2000 and the dc5000 series -- by the second half of 2004.

The Palo Alto, California-based computer vendor had also previously used SUSE Linux for its line of server computers, as well as RedHat Linux, Mandrake Linux and Turbolinux for its current d220, d330 and d530 series of business PCs.

Andreas, who is in charge of HP Indonesia's GNU/Linux division, said that the d220 series was indeed the most popular among the company's current corporate customers already using GNU/Linux-based desktop PCs.

Prices for the d220 series, pre-installed with Mandrake Linux or Turbolinux, both of which already include the OpenOffice.org software suite, start at US$349. Prices for the same series with Microsoft Windows XP, start at $429. Prices for the new, GNU/Linux-based dx2000 series, meanwhile, start at $389.

"Most of our customers are those who have already been using Linux-based HP server computers, and then want an integrated computer networking environment from the server level to the desktop level," Andreas said.

Andreas also explained that the Tokyo-based Turbolinux distribution was particularly popular in the Asia-Pacific region, including among HP's customers in Indonesia, as it was developed so that it would be capable of displaying Chinese characters and others used in Korea and Japan.

"SUSE Linux should also be developed to be able to display such characters, if HP wants it to be the worldwide, official distribution for its Linux-based systems," Andreas said, adding that HP Indonesia would continue to support its current customers regardless of the GNU/Linux distribution that they used.