ASUS Linux insult will be Intel and Dell's gain

By David M Williams
Wednesday, 27 May 2009 15:22

Opinion and Analysis

ASUS has effectively abandoned Linux and stated a power user would use Windows instead. This backflip stands against the history of their successful Eee netbook line. Nevertheless, ASUS’ loss will be the gain of more savvy players.

It’s no surprise to iTWire readers that ASUS has steadily been turning their back on Linux.

Earlier this year I sought to question the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education and Training (DET) as to whether Linux options were genuinely considered when awarding a multi-million dollar contract to Microsoft and Lenovo to supply laptops to secondary school children.

DET chose to hide behind rehearsed statements rather than exercise transparency concerning the decision-making processes used so I questioned the competing vendors themselves.

ASUS spokeswoman Linda Vo told me ASUS only sold 5% of their netbooks with Linux, the other 95% being Windows-based. To my surprise, she also said that ASUS only submitted a Windows option to DET.

While I had previously wanted to ensure DET had been fair and unbiased in their evaluation, I was left with the view that no serious Linux contender was actually submitted to consider.

In my opinion, this is to the netbook makers’ shame. A Linux-based netbook has compelling advantages in terms of high performance, a far lower risk of virus or malware infections, a rich suite of available software applications, and no licensing fee among other aspects.

By submitting yet another Windows option ASUS could not claim to have any of these distinctive features. Instead, the software platform became irrelevant and the tender simply came down to hardware.

There’s an old axiom that nobody got fired for choosing IBM and ASUS learned this lesson still holds in going up against Lenovo without an arsenal of features.

ASUS wasn’t the only losing submission, by any means. I don’t mean to unfairly single them out. Yet, at the same time, I expected more from ASUS than bland status quo compliance.

I’ve viewed ASUS in the past as an innovative tech firm, providing value-packed hardware. I’ve owned four high-end ASUS laptops over the last decade including their Lamborghini VX2 model. I also bought the original 7” ASUS Eee.

In fact, that Eee can be credited with starting the whole netbook craze. In a world of increasing minimum hardware specs it was an unexpected and radical move to bring out a tiny unit that ran on a Celeron processor with 512MB RAM !

Read on to hear the surprising rise and fall of Linux within ASUS.