Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Netbooks and Linux

This article makes no sense to me. Rather, the opinions of the users of netbooks, makes no sense to me.
“Linux just isn’t a platform for the mass market,” he said. “All the early reports of lots of returns of Linux netbooks were because people bought them with that and didn’t know what to do with it.”
Say again? What's so difficult about Linux? I have an Asus EEE Pc (900 model) which has Linux on it. It's a sweet little machine. 20GB flash drive, with an additional 16 GB in the SDHC slot that comes standard on the side (the 16GB SDHC card cost me ~$16 dollars from Amazon ... not a bad price to effectively double the memory of the machine). Oh, and I haven't had a single problem with it, especially when all I'm doing is surfing the net, or taking down quick notes with the Open Office software which comes installed. Yes, it take a bit of brain power to get full functionality, but it really does come with time and use.

Are people just lazy, or do they rely on "Windows for Dummies" books more than I realize?

1 comment:

Ivan Privaci said...

The bit about people returning more Linux netbooks is also either completely untrue, or at least dependent on exactly what kind of environment is provided. I think it was from MSI that the "more Linux netbooks get returned" story came from, while Asus explicitly states that the return rates for the Linux and Windows versions are "about the same".

I think MSI just had a crappy setup for their Linux-based models, while Asus' implementation is evidently much more usable.

Can't say for certain myself until I can scrounge up the spare cash to buy a netbook - and maybe not even then since it's likely I'll wipe it and install a non-default Linux distribution instead...