All I can tell you is that they didn't mention any OSes beyond Windows, HPUX, OSF1/Digital Unix/Tru64, and OpenVMS. They may have actually mentioned Linux, but not much -- they talked about VMS more, and they barely mentioned it at all.

Are you getting your info from the Compaq side or the HP side? We seem to have been coming at them (at least in that meeting) via HP, and that might be the reason we're getting slightly different stories.

OTOH, years ago, at a previous company, we were going to get discounted Compaq machines for some reason, but changed our mind when we asked, cursorily, if running Linux on them would be a problem and were told that it would void the hardware warranty. I try to avoid Compaq for many such reasons.