TechSurfer and Mandriva for low cost desktop computing

Precedent Technologies aims to release a low-cost desktop computer which will have Intel Atom CPUs and Mandriva as a bundled operating system. This machine will hopefully be released this September. They plan to release other computers to run Linux.

Now there is another company who is seeing Linux as a potential source of income and they’re teaming up with Mandriva. I should keep an eye on news like this. I wonder if companies like Precedent Technologies and Dell have other contributions to open source aside from the means to let users have the option to adapt open source software in their daily lives. What I want to ask is if they also contribute to the development of the software that they run in their machines and in what ways.

I also wonder how consumers will be receptive to this newer release of computers from companies including them. I think that getting more ways of distributing Linux is good but I also hope that companies making a profit from bundling Linux with their machines would give back to the community somehow. By having some of their software engineers commit to the repos of the various open source projects, helping fund the projects and also by ensuring that their customers have a good user experience with their company’s products.