Lenovo has announced that they will begin offering the Linux operating system pre-loaded on ThinkPad notebooks by the end of this year. The company will be loading the SUSE flavor of Linux, specifically Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. The Linux OS will be loaded on the ThinkPad T Series targeting business customers, but individual customers will also be able to get the notebooks with the open source OS.

Through the agreement Lenovo and Novell made, Lenovo will provide the hardware and OS support while Novell will be responsible for any maintenance updates. The company also plans to have a broader selection of notebooks available with Linux in the future. Lenovo isn’t the first to make this leap to Linux over Windows as Dell has also started offering Linux a few months earlier, but Lenovo seems to be the first focused on business solutions.

Novell Release