China-based Linux distributor Red Flag and HP announced the alliance on Tuesday, according a statement from the U.S.-based IT firm.
The two companies will establish an HP-Red Flag Linux laboratory in the HP's existing facilities in Beijing as part of the agreement.
A Linux demonstration center will also be set up by both firms to provide services for local Linux users and independent distributors.
HP will support the Red Flag Server 4 series operating system and its subsequent products on the HP Integrity and ProLiant server lines.
Red Flag will work with HP on product quality control, market sales, applications research, management training and applications support services.
"The HP-Intel Solutions Center in Shanghai already has about 50 Linux experts that will help develop the Linux market in China." Martin Fink, vice president of Linux, HP Enterprise Storage and Servers, said in the statement.
The cooperative effort will be targeted at the China market at first and will be later expanded to Asia-Pacific, then worldwide.
"This strategic alliance with HP will drive the adoption of enterprise Linux in China," Liu Bo, Red Flag Software's President and CEO, said in the statement.
HP and Red Flag will partner with global chip giant Intel, database software maker Oracle and software maker BEA to provide a common platform for China's government, telecommunications and commercial sectors.
The U.S. company already has an existing Linux support center in Shanghai.
Recently, Red Flag teamed up with Oracle to certify and support database management systems in the People's Republic.
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I think Red Flag sucks. They copied Redhat, never contributed back and never updated like Redhat. A lot of thier software sucks (from what I have heard). HP would be better with a free distro like Gentoo or Debian. I use Gentoo and tried to install Debian. I've never seen or used Red Flag. Maybe I'm wrong. I'd love to see companies start to use Gentoo, because the ebuild system is great. It's really easy for beginners to write and submit ebuilds. I'm working on a few right now. Because the system is so easy, there is a lot of software availible for Gentoo.
Posted by Ding on Thursday, September 04 2003 12:34 AM