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HP launches CommunityLinux.org for Linux support

By Sean Michael Kerner on September 23, 2009 4:30 PM

From the 'Commercial Debian Support' files:

Typically enterprise hardware support for Linux is somewhat limited by the fact that, the major hardware vendors only support two or three major enterprise Linux distributions (Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu LTS).

Bdale Garbee, open source and Linux chief technologist at HP (pic left) wants to change that. Speaking at the LinuxCon conference, Garbee said that HP has now launched a new effort called CommunityLinux.org to help provide support for non-commercial Linux distros.

"It's a focal point for collaboration on ways to use HP servers and related products with non-commercial Linux distributions," Garbee said. "We intentionally set this up for hosting outside of HP so it can be a focal point so whatever the community wants to do, in terms of capturing best practices for making non-commercial Linux working well on everyone's hardware."

HP is no stranger to supporting non-commercial versions of Linux.

In 2006, HP began providing commercial support options for Debian Linux. Garbee noted that three years later, HP's support of Debian is still unique in the industry.

It's a claim that to the best of my knowledge is accurate. Remember of course though that things have changed a bit in the Debian community since 2006. Back then Ubuntu didn't really exist (Ubuntu is based on Debian).

"One of the things we've learned is that all the things we have learned about participating and collaborating in upstream development projects has enabled us to have a broader set of distribution support options," Garbee said.

Moving beyond Debian is where CommunityLinux.org will be going. According to the site,
Asianux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu are among the community distro HP is looking to help.

Yes, I know that many of those distro's listed do have some input from commercial entities. Though all those distro's are also freely available without the need to buy any kind of subscription for support as well.

Perhaps the most telling piece of content that I could find on the CommunityLinux.org site is the following 'disclaimer' found at the bottom of the page:

Running Asianux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE or Ubuntu on new HP ProLiant servers will not affect the server hardware warranty.

There is still a whole lot of FUD out there when it comes to Linux and the fact that HP had to make that declaration means that someone actually thought about the issue. Someone asked the question - will running Linux invalidate my warranty?

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