The VAR Guy was a strong advocate of Windows NT Server when it launched way back when. And there’s still a lot to like about the company (Small Business Server, SQL Server come to mind).

But alas, our resident blogger isn’t a fan of Microsoft’s desktop offerings. That may change with Windows 7’s launch.

Yes, I expect that most if not all Linux netbooks being overwritten with Windows XP are pirated installs.

14.6 million netbooks sold in 2008 … 90% running Windows XP … ok so 1.5 million sold running Linux. Maybe some of that covers the increase in Linux usage reported by Net Apps and W3C counters over the past year, or maybe some of that is also from Android usage:)

Nevertheless, once M$ begins pushing Windows 7 hard, I expect the percentage of Linux netbook sales to fall to 1%, not too far away from where Linux is sitting percentage-wise on desktop usage today.

Expectations of up to 35 million to be sold in 2009! If Linux manages to hold onto 1% of that – it will be an achievement.

Linux on phones and MID devices stands a better chance – the netbook is too much like a laptop for a paradigm shift in what people expect to see on such machines.

Me … I am writing this on an old Dell D500 running Ubuntu 8.04. I run Linux at home and at work – just try to drag me back to Windows. Nothing would make me happier than to be proven to be a crotchety pessimist.

-Ron

“Windows 7 Starter: Something that our OEM partners asked for is to have an offering for folks that will do very limited things with their PCs and for PCs with limited hardware capabilities. Windows 7 Starter only allows up to 3 applications to run at once. This is something that will be offered only through OEM partners.”

In stark contrast, in the same Microsoft blog entry they say Windows 7 Home Basic is for value PCs in emerging markets.

Feel free to comment more. But please, no need to shout.

Completely false. You shouldn’t publish this until you know the facts.

Sometimes, a standard user interface for all isn’t such a bad thing…

The notebook on which I write this has a LAMP stack with various PHP scripts giving me access by GUI to a dozen very useful databases. I even have a local snapshot of Wikipedia from a few years back, thousands of books indexed by SWISH-e, image databases, and then I get to regular desktop apps and finally BASH stuff. There are layers of utility in GNU/Linux while that other OS has layers of futility.

The use of your PC with GNU/Linux is only limited by your imagination. Go wild.

“There are many little things about Linux on the desktop that just gets in the way of me getting things done. Besides the shell, the rest has some lacking.”

I could not disagree with you more. My Debian desktop neither gets in my way, ever, nor does it lack in any way.

I’m just sayin’…

machiner

However, the ‘install’, ‘ease of use’ type of stuff annoys me.

I know few people who use computers who can install an OS – admit it, unless you work in the industry, most people you know are like this.

A friend of my s/father screwed his XP machine (who knows how) and his other ‘computer savvy’ friend reinstalled it for him. This was a laptop using the install discs (so I believe). They got stuck on the wireless card – couldn’t locate the drivers! Then he realised he couldn’t open his old text documents…Office was installed when he bought…bit by bit he realised he was missing various drivers and applications. The conclusion was that he and his friend didn’t know what to do and so rang my s/father.

Windows installed from scratch doesn’t compare to many Linux distros installed from scratch. It’s too obvious to deny.

While this example wasn’t a desktop, given a Windows install CD and a ‘Nix install CD, most people would be up and running and PRODUCING immediately the hand-holding ‘nix install was finished. They’d spend ages FINDING things for their XP install before they could do anything useful with it.

I only wish MS could perfect it’s anti-piracy projects – it would be the end of the Windows desktop dominance as we know it.

Out of interest, where would they be getting their copies of XP from? Because the OEM licence prohibits transferring it to another machine.

If people are putting pirated copies of Windows on their netbooks, that’s not going to be good for Microsoft’s already suffering bottom line, is it?

Nice one BobCFC