OEMs Looking to Ubuntu for Netbook Market

Anon writes "Mark Shuttleworth provides much more detail today about development of the Ubuntu netbook platform, and says OEMs are calling Canonical when they want to start building netbooks. Channelweb notes: 'It's actually a big deal. For example, Dell CEO Michael Dell has been carrying around an early version of a Dell mini-notebook, and referring to it as the device for the next billion Internet users [...] Asus has become an industry rock star by using GNU Linux to power its Eee PC. HP's niche Mini note runs SLED 10 Linux. The iPhone, of course, doesn't run Microsoft software. Is anyone paying attention in Redmond?'"

Comments

ASUS Eee PC

[murp]

Actually, if you read the latest Distrowatch Weekly, they say that Linux on the Eee PC is almost a thing of the past.

Re:ASUS Eee PC

[InlawBiker]

They're losing because they're complacent and huge.

They do a good job eventually but it's the story of low-hanging fruit. Microsoft is raking is barrels of cash because they can leverage their market position. Now suddenly, BOOM! UMPCs are all the rage. Agile companies like Asus can produce one within a year and Linux is infinitely flexible, especially with Ubuntu on board. They can produce a new distro in a quarter or two.

It would take at least two years with all hands on deck to produce "XP Light" for UMPC's. They know this so they probably subsidized the hardware on the higher-powered EEE to run XP. Problem solved! Besides, they've spent a gazillion dollars gambling on Vista and the trend towards more powerful computers. They don't want to admit they were wrong.

But the price is creeping up towards $600 now. The whole point was to make a $300 'Net surfer you can use from your kitchen.

MS will do their best to not miss this boat but they'll have to subsidize the hardware somehow to bring the price down, or hope people don't mind paying more.

Re:ASUS Eee PC

[gbjbaanb]

Not just yet, when Intel releases the Atom it is basically designed to run Linux and not Windows. I posted about this a while back from a link on TomsHardware. Basically Intel were screwed by MS last time round with their Origami platform, so this time Intel doing things their way and partnering-but-not-really-partnering with MS.

The only Atom chip that can run Vista, apparently, is the highest end one. The one Intel is releasing with a huge price tag. The others will run a version of Linux.

I think its a good thing, the beginning of the end for MS at the moment, just like IBM or DEC before them, they got too big, too interested in vendor lock-in, and the marketplace shifted away from them.

Linux critical mass

[poopie]

I'm sure that Microsoft and most hardware vendors are really not thrilled that customers aren't demanding exponentially faster machines with exponentially more RAM and disk space.

How do you drive customer upgrades to more bloaded OSes when customers are demanding devices with lower cpu/ram specs?

As the price of systems drops from thousands of dollars to hundreds of dollars, having to pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars for OS + Office licensing becomes a non-trivial fraction of total system cost.

Also, you can bet that the hardware manufacturer's profits on a $500 device are razor thin. If they can cut $20 to $100 or more off the cost by using Linux, it's worth it.

So, at this point, I have to wonder whether Microsoft is going to try to converge WinCE code with Vista code for Windows 7 to have a single OS that can run on phones / UMPCs / netbooks / laptops / desktops (or at least the same codebase even if CPUs aren't the same). That's probably going to be hard for Microsoft. I expect they'll try to reimplement apps in silverlight instead.

a case of gaining a different victory than sought?

[cptnapalm]

It seems to be the case that, while the Year of the Linux Desktop may never arive, 2008 may be the Year of the Linux n(ote|et)book.

In trying to compete for the desktop, the open source guys have managed to get a strong foothold on the newest, latest, cheapest portables. Perhaps not the particular victory which was sought, but perhaps victory here would gradually translate into victory on the desktop. If people like what they use most of the time (Linux on the portable), it would be reasonable that they would want the same thing on their own desktops.

Re:They are listening

[amirulbahr]

Which raises the question: What are the competition watchdogs around the world going to do about this?

Here in Australia, ASUS has somehow managed to price its Eee PC 900 with XP Home cheaper than the Linux version by about $50. They claim that it is justified by the difference in storage capacity (12 GB in the XP version versus 16 GB in the Linux one).

This reeks of anti-competitiveness, yet not a word to be heard from the ACCC (Australia's consumer and competition watchdog).

Re:2008 is the year

[Zombie Ryushu]

I've commented on this before in a Previous post. We are not trying to bring about the year of Linux, we are trying to prevent the LAST YEAR of Linux.

See: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=572739&cid=23648009