Are Linux netbooks becoming extinct?

David M Williams
Tuesday, 28 April 2009 17:38

Business IT - Technology

The netbook ought to have been the domain of Linux. It certainly started that way, with the inaugural 7" ASUS Eee Linux PC sporting Xandros. Then Windows XP came back into vogue and the vendors backed away. Both ASUS and Dell confirmed today that Linux features little in their future plans.

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.

It came as little surprise that other hardware vendors wanted in on this. By June the Intel Atom processor had come into being which was ideal for netbooks; it was a modern CPU but designed specifically for low-powered devices. Elonix, Everix and other manufacturers were churning out Linux-based netbooks. I claimed that netbooks were doing more to make Linux a household commodity than Ubuntu.

By October the story was different. MSI claimed Linux netbooks were being returned four times as often as Windows netbooks. Their internal research showed this could be attributed to consumers being turned off by an operating system which was different to what they were used to.

This was shocking and surprising news. On the one hand, it stood to reason Microsoft was sensitive to growing trends and took steps to intervene. Reports have surfaced that Microsoft drastically cut the licensing cost of Windows XP – but only for netbooks, upsetting some equipment manufacturers and resellers.

On the other hand, it was disappointing that consumers took this approach. They were attracted to a netbook running Linux because it was versatile, portable and, importantly, relatively low cost. They then took it home, found they couldn’t use it exactly like their home desktop – itself an unrealistic expectation – and returned it, either giving up or opting to spend more money to buy a Windows XP edition instead.

By year end I thought Linux-based netbooks would have a second wind.