Late last month, hardware vendor HP announced plans to offer desktop computers in Australia with Red Hat Linux, OpenOffice.org, and Firefox installed. Now the company has confirmed that it is expanding this program to other parts of the world. Moreover, sources close to the company tell Ars Technica that expanded Linux offerings will also be coming to the US. Our source says that it is a “real possibility” that HP will counter Dell’s limited embrace of Linux “sooner rather than later,” so long as pilot programs proceed as planned.

Like many other mainstream hardware vendors, HP already provides relatively broad Linux server support for a number of distributions, including community-driven distributions like Debian. The company also certifies Red Hat and SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 for its desktop computers, but has only recently started to evaluate the advantages of offering Linux preinstallation options on a large scale. The current pilot program in Australia is only the first of several pilots planned, but HP has not yet said what counties it plans to expand to. The question has been, when would HP take its Linux efforts and apply them to the US?

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