Cooper (coop@example.com) on 9/17/09 wrote:
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>slacker (s@lack.er) on 9/17/09 wrote:
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>
>>Both parties want to run Windows. It's not as though Linux wasn't presented as
>>an option to the consumers. Netbooks debuted with Linux, and now everything is back to the Redmond hegemony.
>
>I think that's less to do with customer demand and a lot more to do with Microsoft
>demand: noticing the thin end of a possible wedge and getting very aggressive with
>both the carrot ("we'll drop the price to nearly nothing") and stick ("we'll screw
>you on licensing for your higher-margin machines") to drive Linux out of the mass market.

that's a bit too cynical.

people buy netbooks because they want a smaller and
easier-to-carry notebook. if the same apps are available on
both linux and windows, e.g. office suite, photo editing etc,
users wouldn't really care what's the OS.

the problem is that oss version of the commons apps are too
resource hungry, and looks/feels too different from those
avaliable on windows.

although there was a flurry of ISV activites to port to linux
a few years back, those all failed. the linux ecosystem did a
good job at undermining ISVs who wanted to port to linux.

what happened in netbooks market is merely the windows
*ecosystem* has displaced linux ecosystem.
not windows OS displayed linux OS.