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In December, HP announced that it would release a new desktop offering along with Novell targeted at education customers. Part of the announcement is a repository of education applications “including math, art and word games, to improve student learning,” which were based on work by the openSUSE Education project.

Novell and HP would like to formally acknowledge the community’s contribution to HP’s education repository and thank the openSUSE Education community for the work they have done to package and make available additional programs for open source education efforts.

The openSUSE Education project provides an add-on CD for openSUSE so that schools will have the benefit of educational packages not shipped by default with openSUSE. The fact that HP has sought to include work from the Education project is testament to the outstanding quality of their work and the demand for open source education solutions.

The additional repository was created for HP to provide a subset of the packages of those offered by the openSUSE Education project. HP and Novell chose to do this to limit any maintenance issues for the subset of packages offered commercially.

We’d like to thank the Education project for its patience with Novell and HP while we establish a way to work on community repositories with commercial partners. As a first-time effort, there have been a few bumps and we’ve found a few areas where we can improve communication with openSUSE projects like the Education Project.

This cooperation is particularly important as we all continue to push Linux and open source on the desktop and into “consumer” solutions. We need to work together as effectively as possible to offer well-polished open source applications that will appeal to end users who are new to Linux.

Going forward, HP and Novell will work to collaborate more closely with the openSUSE Education project and support their efforts to deliver solutions for schools and provide the best experience for educational use.

We’d also like to thank HP for offering open source to its educational customers. This is another small step towards world domination for Linux.

Thanks again to the openSUSE Education Project for their hard work and patience!