Tech-no-media: Linux Netbooks: 3 paths to a bright future

Description

Linux Netbooks: 3 paths to a bright future

Last week I made a summary of the current state of the Linux netbook market. Today I will show you that Linux netbooks are at a crossroad. They can reach a bright future and a significant market presence through 3 different paths: the smartbook path, the cheap path and the power path. I will explain how each path will lead the Linux netbook to market dominance in a specific niche.

The smartbook path

As I explained previously Qualcomm, Nvidia and other manufacturers of ARM based processors are releasing processors powerful enough to power a netbook. This is effectively starting a war with Intel and it's Atom processor. Netbooks based on ARM designs have many advantages over Atom based ones: they will be much lighter, have longer battery life and cost less. Even if these processors are less powerful than the Atom, they have acceleration circuits for video decoding, so with the right driver they should still be able to play HD video better than an Atom based machine.

This is entirely to the benefit of Linux, as the ARM based processors can only run Linux, Symbian or Windows CE. Since Windows CE is rather a bad product with poor third party application support Linux alternatives like Android or the ARM versions of Ubuntu and Xandros should be able to get a large part of the market. Linux may be coming late to this market however: The netbook version of Google Android will probably not be ready until next year, and the ARM versions of Ubuntu and Xandros are still new and unproven. It is probable ...

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http://www.tech-no-media.com/2009/06/linux-netbooks-3-paths-to-bright-future.html

http://www.tech-no-media.com/2009/06/linux-netbooks-3-paths-to-bright-future.html