Lenovo, which acquired the ThinkPad line as part of its purchase of IBM's personal computing division last year, will offer the US$3,000 ThinkPad T60p with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10, which Novell released last month.

The two companies emphasized that the laptops are not targeted at consumers or even Linux diehards, who can buy the T60p but would still have to install SUSE or another Linux variant by themselves.

The move has been in the works for more than a year, the companies said, and was prompted by a request from a third partner, Intel Corp., which wanted to supply high-end Linux laptops to its own engineers.

Linux is widely used in electronic design automation (EDA) and computer-aided design (CAD), especially in chip and circuit design. Software from Synopsys Inc., Mentor Graphics Corp. and market leader Cadence Design Systems Inc. mostly run on the open-source operating system.

Intel served as the primary beta tester for the SUSE-equipped notebooks and is expected to eventually buy "thousands" of the laptops, according to Bill Iori, worldwide manager for ThinkPads at Lenovo.