Under the terms of agreement between Lenovo and Novell, the company behind SuSE Linux, the first ThinkPad’s with Linux preloaded will be available starting with the fourth quarter of 2007.

Novell will provide maintenance updates for the operating system directly to ThinkPad notebook customers.

“Known for hardware and software based innovations like our roll cage and ThinkVantage Technologies, we continue our tradition of building the industry’s best engineered PCs and delivering excellent customer solutions, such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 from Novell.” said Sam Dusi, vice president, product marketing, Notebook Business Unit, Lenovo.

Roger Levy, Novell vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions, pointed out that the offer includes fully certified and supported package of software, such as OpenOffice.

In fact the two companies have a history of joint research. After two years of research and development effort Lenovo and Novell announced in August 2006 the first Linux-based ThinkPad mobile workstations, ThinPad T60p, which are based on Intel Centrino Duo mobile technology.

Earlier this month Lenovo reported strong results for its first fiscal quarter of 2007/08, ended June 30, 2007. According to the company’s statement consolidated revenue for the quarter grew 13 percent, year over year, to US$3.9 billion, driven by robust shipment growth in all geographies. Lenovo’s worldwide PC shipments grew more than 22 percent in the quarter.

Lenovo’s announcement follows after in May this year Dell also decided to adopt Linux as a consequence of consumers’ demands on its DellIdeaStorm website. The Texas-based company has chosen Ubuntu 7.04 for Ubuntu its Linux systems: Inspiron E1505n, Dimension E520n and XPS 410n.