For his part, Robertson fairly enthused, "Xandros has emerged as a leader in the OEM, mobility, desktop and PC management and application business, so I'm excited to see the Linspire technology, including CNR, go to a worthy competitor that shares our vision. The Linux business is going through some healthy and necessary consolidation," he said, "which will give resulting companies greater assets and size to deliver on larger initiatives so Linux can touch more people. "

That Xandros is preloaded on Asus Eee PC netbooks is perhaps its only real support, and that might be the only reason this acquisition happened, instead of both of these unevenly integrated and struggling, third-tier wanna-be consumer Linux distributions simply failing.

Both Xandros and Linspire signed toxic patent protection pacts with Microsoft, but so far niether of them seems to have gained any discernable benefits from them. Merely the fact that they so eagerly jumped into bed with Microsoft has queered their pitches with Linux users and called the propriety of their handling of free, open source code into question.

More Here, Here, and Here.