Are Linux netbooks becoming extinct?
Dear reader, this isn’t the news I’d like to be bringing. If you read my Linux Distillery blog you’ll see I speak with passion about the strength and power of Linux at home, in education and in business.
I’ve been looking into why Linux was not chosen for a major Government education tender and what the real figures are in relation to Linux vs Windows netbook sales. The news today from ASUS and Dell confirmed neither company have a strategy to promote Linux.
Let’s rewind: at the end of 2007 the ASUS Eee was hot. It was a cheap subnotebook. It had a Celeron processor and 512Mb RAM – archaic by most computing standards. The hard drive was solid state which was nice, but only 4Gb in capacity.
Yet, it flew off the shelves. I missed out the day of release because they had all sold out. Eventually I was able to pick one up where a store had a solitary unit remaining that had been put on hold for someone but not picked up.
Key to the Eee’s success was that it was low priced. You couldn’t get a laptop at that price until it materialised. It made sense for ASUS to use Linux; they eradicated any software licensing fees and consequently the end consumer was not slugged with any such tax for the operating system.
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