Asus To Ship Ubuntu 10.10 On Three Eee PC Netbooks

An anonymous reader writes "Asus has announced that three Eee PCs will ship with Ubuntu Linux. Three 2011 models — the 1001PXD, 1011PX, and 1015PX — are immediately available, though no retailers seem to stock them yet. A Canonical exec had this to say about the new netbooks: 'There are a number of factors that make Ubuntu an attractive proposition for ASUS and its customers. Ubuntu continues to set the standard for slick design, ease of use and security, it is the world's third most popular operating system, and [it] has the most number of users in Linux. We [Canonical] were looking at publicly available data on the operating systems accessing Wikipedia last week and found the web site serves more pages to Ubuntu PCs than to iPads — there are a lot of users out there.' It might not be the same as Asus launching three flagship netbooks all running Ubuntu instead of Windows, but it's definitely a start. Asus says there are more Ubuntu netbooks to come later this year, too — hopefully they'll run Ubuntu 11.04."

Comments

10.10

[Nerdfest]

10.10 is the right version to distribute ... 11.04 is (Unity aside) way too flaky to inflict of someone you wish to impress with the reliability of Linux. this is cool though ... I've been thinking for a while that Canonical should distribute their own line of hardware, perhaps 3 models of laptop at various levels of power and price, similar to the Apple model, but cheaper, and open. This would get around some of the problems people run into with unusual, unsupported wireless and video cards. If done right, it could probably pull off marketing it as a bit of an upscale laptop.

Re:10.10

[Culture20]

I'd suggest 10.04 LTS. 10.10 is going to EOL too soon.

Re:10.10

[wile_e8]

I've been thinking for a while that Canonical should distribute their own line of hardware, perhaps 3 models of laptop at various levels of power and price, similar to the Apple model, but cheaper, and open. This would get around some of the problems people run into with unusual, unsupported wireless and video cards. If done right, it could probably pull off marketing it as a bit of an upscale laptop.

You mean like System76? I guess it's not run by Canonical, but they are Ubuntu partners.

Asus shipping Linux again? I know what that means!

[Zerth]

Microsoft must have been late with its kickback check this quarter. I hope the check isn't already in the mail, otherwise these won't be available for long.

Sounds nice

[mmcuh]

If I got one I would most likely install Debian on it, but if they make it work smoothly with Ubuntu it will probably be easy to make it work smoothly with Debian as well. And it would be nice to not have to pay the Microsoft tax, even if it's not much cheaper. Hell, it would be nice even if they are more expensive as long as Microsoft isn't getting any of it.

Re:Sounds nice

[Xtifr]

most OEMs pay MS per unit shipped, no per unit with windows installed.

That practice was, as I understand it, supposed to have ended in 1994. There have been allegations that it continues, but no whistleblowers have come forward with a smoking gun, which is pretty impressive, given the number of people that would have had to be privy to such agreements over the years.

These days, I believe, they rely on financial incentives tied to adware and trial-versions of software to be bundled with OEM releases of Windows, to offset the cost of Windows itself and remove the incentive OEMs might have to offer cheaper (e.g. free) OSes as an alternative. The result is: Microsoft is happy because they're still getting paid, even if it's by ISVs instead of directly by the OEMs, and because they get to promote their other products; the OEMs are happy because they're paying less for the OS; and ISVs are happy because they're getting a very cost-effective form of advertising. The only losers are the customers who now get machines clogged with adware and free-trialware that they may have no interest in, and other OS vendors who can no longer compete on price, even if that price is zero.

This is where it gets interesting: if Ubuntu can start making enough money off of their partnership deals with companies like Amazon and Google, they may be able to start paying OEMs for including Ubuntu instead of Windows. Hence, I suspect, Ubuntu's recent controversial moves regarding Banshee.

Re:Retailers

[Gibbs-Duhem]

I dunno, they seem to manage fine with iOS and android. We're talking about netbooks, so the different form factor makes people intuitively not expect it to be *exactly* the same as what they've always used. And Unity is closer to looking like android/iOS than windows, which makes even more sense if the device is looking more like a phone than a desktop... although I definitely agree that not including Unity is an obvious choice. That stuff is just a disaster at present.

Re:The Year of Linux on the Desktop

[dslbrian]

I've got a feeling that 2011 is the year of Linux on the desktop.

Yes, on Oct 21st the worthy Mac and Windows users will be raptured to a place where their old machines will be discarded and instead they will use Eee Books running Ubuntu. This will be a time of Unity.

The unworthy will be stuck using their Mac and Windows machines, or for the truly unworthy BSD.

Re:No Ubuntu 11.04?

[quantumplacet]

Thanks but no thanks for the FUD. In the off chance you are a retard and not a troll, please let me explain. It takes considerable time and effort to validate an OS for a piece of hardware. More than two months in fact. Asus has to offer support for these netbooks, so they cannot put an OS on it that has not been thoroughly tested on the hardware. When they started this task, 10.10 was the latest and greatest. Strangely enough, they decided not to start all over in the middle of the process simply because a new release came out. Also, it's pretty ridiculous to call 10.10 "obsolete". Non LTS Ubuntu releases go EoL after 18 months, so 10.10 will not be obsolete for another year.

Re:Why worry?

[Vectormatic]

good god i hope they dont ship 11.04. Your average gnome 2.4 desktop is mildly understandable for joe sipack (especially once you move to just one panel, at the bottom), but unity is a fricking usability disaster. Once they ship eee's with 11.04, they will have a repeat of the original eee 701 on their hands, massive returns by clueless commoners unable to connect to their wireless and start ther browser.

i've tried installing 11.04 on my oldish laptop, and the thing is horribly unstable, and basicaly unusable, while old versions of ubuntu run without a hitch

Honestly, the first system i buy with ubuntu 11.04 pre-installed will have its drive wiped as if it were running vista

Re:About Time...

[Animats]

The original Linux EEE PCs ran the most god-awful distro imaginable.

It had to fit in 2GB of file space, and still have something left for users. But I agree that it sucks. I have several EeePC 2G Surf machines, obtained cheaply from a failed startup company. I use them to run some embedded system demos, where all that runs is one Python application. The biggest problem is that the WiFi driver is flaky. The second biggest problem is that the "union" file system, which makes one read-only file system and one read-write file system appear to be a single pathname space, leaks inodes, and has to be flushed out occasionally.

The problem with Asus is that they can't be trusted as a Linux vendor. They've had on again, off again Linux support for years.

Re:The Year of Linux on the Desktop

[SteveFoerster]

DNF is shipping. Anything can happen.

Re:Retailers

[Locutus]

didn't BestBuy sign a deal with Microsoft (ExpertZone) putting Microsoft employees inside of BB for training and lots of the training was how to bash Linux and Macs? I wouldn't doubt there was also a contract section eliminating their ability to sell other operating systems, especially GNU/Linux based ones. Here is a good search to start with:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Microsoft+Best+buy+employee

Don't count on Best Buy carrying these or expect to keep getting it pulled from your hands by Best Buy employees shoving Microsoft at you.

LoB