HP Lets User Take Linux for a Virtual Spin

Jane Walker writes to tell us TechTarget has an interesting article on HP's new TestDrive program. For many small business owners this new site could allow for the benefits of testing many different platforms without having to make the investment up front. From the article: "The program, called TestDrive, is accessed online via the TestDrive Web site. It allows free-of-charge access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Novell SuSE Linux and other open source operating systems like Debian, FreeBSD and OpenVMS. After registering with the site, each user is allowed 1 GB of space in which to work and is granted access to HP hardware housed at the HP Linux Expertise Center in Marlboro, Mass. Access to the system includes the use of 64-bit processors like Integrity, Alpha, and PA-RISC; and SMP x86 and Opteron ProLiant servers."

Comments

Another good reason to like HP, dupe story or not.

[martinultima]

I have to say that I've been pretty happy with HP lately – really nice to have a company supporting open source development efforts, you know? Right now I've got an HP box to develop an AMD64 port of my Linux distro – AMD64 3200+ with 512MB RAM, PCI Express, 80GB SATA disk – love the thing. Runs my system nicely, and dead silent too. Plus it was only $300 at an auction. Lucky me.

(As far as printers are concerned, on the other hand, not exactly thrilled with some of the newer DeskJets – I tend to be an Epson guy myself, the DeskJets tend to break too easily. Although then again, I still have yet to have any problems whatsoever with one of the original DeskJets, which I still use even today, despite it being older than I am. Runs like a charm.)

Use and Adoption Statistics are New

[twitter]

From the fine article:

300,000 unique TestDrive users, almost 60% have chosen Linux as their operating system for evaluating their business on Itanium hardware.

That's news to me. You might have known that, but I did not. That's a lot of people driving.

IBM AIX Test Drive

[kolpackov]

I wish IBM will get a clue and follow with a similar thing for AIX along with XL C/C++ suite. Those things are way to expensive (XL C/C++ for AIX is over $3K) for open source developers to test their code.

Re:Another good reason to like HP, dupe story or n

[Decker-Mage]

It seems that the server division lost their way for a while but frankly I think they've found it with a vengeance lately. I'm quite impressed with the new machines they've come out with, especially their broad range of OS support across the line. Sun is also another company, albeit off-topic, that seems to have had a renaissance in their hardware line. Decisions, decisions. Maybe I'll buy both lines! Yeah, that's the ticket ;-).