HP has been awarded a seven-year contract worth up to $5.6bn (£2.8bn) by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) to provide a wide range of technology.

HP will provide desktops, workstations and blade PCs with Linux and Unix capabilities, servers and printers, among other offerings.

All US federal agencies and their authoriaed prime contractors can purchase HP technology through the contract. In addition, the US Department of Veterans Affairs has made it its mandatory contract for the acquisition of technology.

HP has delivered more than $620m (£130m) worth of products and services to federal government agencies from 1992-2007 through the previous Nasa SEWP II and SEWP III contracts.

Dell has also announced this week that it is launching three computer systems this week, installedwith open source Linux. Earlier this month, Dell joined a collaboration between Microsoft and Novell to allow Linux software to work with Windows.