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Microsoft will deliver more than 1,000 support subscription certificates for Suse Linux Enterprise Server to French automaker Renault, under an agreement announced by Microsoft and Novell on Wednesday.

Renault will receive priority support subscriptions to Novell's Suse Linux distribution. Renault plans to consolidate existing Linux distributions to Suse Linux Enterprise Server with the intent of improving interoperability and taking better advantage of virtualization, Microsoft and Novell said.

Through a 2006 agreement between Novell and Microsoft, Microsoft has purchased support certificates to Suse Linux, with Novell to provide the support.

“Increasing the presence of Suse Linux Enterprise in the data center, well-integrated with a Microsoft Windows environment, will enhance the deployment of applications and increase the competitive advantage of innovative companies," said Susan Heystee, vice president and general manager of global strategic alliances for Novell, in a statement.

“Customers have asked for solutions to make Microsoft products work better with other platforms and for IP assurance that enables vendors to build technical bridges,” said Susan Hauser, general manager of strategic partnerships and licensing at Microsoft, also in a statement. “We are pleased to provide this real-world, pragmatic solution to customers, such as Renault.”

The controversial 2006 agreement also included provisions that Novell and Microsoft not sue each other's customers over any IP issues.

The growing prominence of Linux in China is resulting in an industry event to take place there in February, co-sponsored by the Linux Foundation and Chinese OSS Promotion Union, the foundation announced Monday.

The Linux Developer Symposium will be held in Beijing February 19-20. The event will address desktop, server and embedded Linux opportunities, the foundation said. Speakers include Andrew Morton, Linux kernel maintainer; Coly Li, Novell file system maintainer and Matt Mackall, embedded expert and kernel developer. Also scheduled to appear is Jim Zemlin, foundation executive director.

The event is intended to educate and promote collaboration among Linux kernel developers and local developers in the region. Attendees will include local developers and engineers from companies such as Google, IBM, Intel, Motorola, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems.

The Chinese government is requiring use of China-produced software in government agencies, the foundation said. National government agencies using Linux include the National Ministry of Science, Ministry of Information Industry, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Statistics and the National Labor Unit, China Post, according to the foundation. The local government in Beijing also uses it on 2,000 Linux desktops, the foundation said.

Additionally, 140,000 Linux PCs are to be used in schools in the Jiangsu province, said the foundation.

The Linux Foundation announced this week that Ted Ts'o, maintainer of the Linux kernel file system, is joining the organization as a Fellow and chief platform strategist.

Ts'o will contribute to technical efforts including the Linux Standard Base. The foundation said Ts'o was the first North American kernel developer and has been a pioneer in Linux systems and an original organizer of the Linux Standard Base.

Ts'o has been a senior technical staff member at IBM since 2001, where he worked on an enterprise real-time Linux solution. After two years at the foundation, he will return to IBM.

Ts'o currently serves on the board of USENIX and is the founder and chair of the annual Linux Kernel Developers' Summit. He also has been a project leader for the Kerberos network authentication system used by Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Suse Linux and Windows.