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Canonical Talks Netbook Remix Details
geekinchief points to a just-posted interview at Laptop Magazine "with Canonical's market manager, Gerry Carr, where he
talks about Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Some interesting details: Canonical does not plan to make the Netbook remix available for download or sale. It will only come pre-installed on new systems. It will boot in 5-10 seconds."
Ubuntu built its base on the ability to easily, cleanly displace the dominant OS. Now that they've got some traction they reverse directions in a market that provides next to no freedom for users? Color me unimpressed- if they really want software to be free, the first step is giving people the ability to choose between the codebases that already exist.
Whilst an iso would be useful, it isn't too hard to install a normal Ubuntu/whatever distro onto a laptop - or even an EeePC (my Eee runs Kubuntu).
Once installed, it is relatively easy to customise to your own tastes/needs. For example, I removed all the Bluetooth gubbins, as much printer related stuff as possible and a whole host of odds and ends (various fonts for languages I don't use saved me 70+ mb)
I haven't looked at the Notebook Remix specs, but I imagine the various tweaks are all going to be easy enough to replicate on your own machine.
Bearing in mind that the pre-installed Windows OEM versions are virtually free to manufacturers (costs are low plus recouping any cash via all the pre-installed bloatware trial versions etc), I suspect that Linux pre-installed machines will be no cheaper than Windows ones - and maybe even more expensive. Hopefully any machines which come onto the market will be decent spec - not the usual "hey, Linux is free, therefore lets give the purchaser the bottom end processor/amount of ram/graphics/hard drive....." . That really pisses me off.
I don't use Windows and would buy a Linux laptop if they were easily available at the same (or slightly less) cost as the Windows equivalent machines (I already have two EeePCs) - I hate paying the Windows Tax on laptops which I format the second I get them out of the packaging!
Awful UID - but I have been here ages...
That is the one part of the MSI Wind that bothers me, actually: the Windows model is the one with more RAM and Bluetooth, and since integrated Bluetooth is important to me, I'm going to buy that one. OTOH, I will probably leave WinXP on there, for Diablo II related purposes, so it isn't that bad. If my hand's were a bit smaller, and it were more available and less expensive, I would be getting a EEE 901 Linux. We'll just have to see what the launch price is.