Lenovo: to linux or not to linux?

Lenovo (the company the recent purchased the laptop and desktop PC manufacturing arm of IBM) has denied earlier reports that it is dropping support for linux. Assuming a reasonably degree of competence within Lenovo (which certainly seems to be the case), this publicity can only mean one thing: Lenovo is currently renegotiating the deal it has to resell Microsoft Windows, and sure enough they've recently inked their annual deal.

"We will not have models available for Linux, and we do not have custom order, either," said Frank Kardonski, Lenovo's worldwide product manager for Lenovo 3000 offerings. "What you see is what you get. And at this point, it's Windows."

What Lenovo don't say is that they'll keep making hardware decisions in the specification, design and build phases that avoid locking them into a single vendor (be it Microsoft or Linux). They know, as any good business knows, that where they want to be is between to competing suppliers they can play off against each other. Linux and Microsoft are those suppliers, and if they can spend a few million dollars on linux to reduce the $1.2 billion USD Microsoft bill, you can bet they will.