Linux hits the mainstream?
There are two flavours of Linux that have recently hit the news for a number of reasons. The first is Ubuntu Linux (founded by SA’s own Mark Shuttleworth). The reason for this news had to do with Dell selling their machines pre installed with Ubuntu instead of Windows.
According to this article they’ve only sold about 40000 of the machines. Now that’s basically nothing but it’s impressive to see Linux even being offered as an option. Now let me get something straight, I’m not some rabid Linux fanboy even though I find the idea of a free operating system great. I am however a Mac fanboy and frankly seeing less copies of Windows sold makes me happy. The reason this makes me happy? Microsoft has become fat and bloated, Vista is really nothing compared to say for example OS X Leopard and it took around 7 years to be released. Old Bill on the hill needs to wake up and see people want functionality not pretty graphics as the primary selling point of an operating system.
Dell has the potential to sell a whole whack of Linux boxes, that’s great in my mind but it doesn’t excite me like this does:
It’s the Asus “eee” laptop. What we have here is a laptop with a seven-inch screen and equally diminutive specs. The current top of the range model (soon to be replaced by a higher spec system) has a 900 Mhz Celeren processor, 512MB ram and a 4 gig flash hard drive. Now that sounds really shocking in my mind until you realize the immense potential of this machine. The machine runs a Linux distribution provided by Xandros and due to the use of Linux and flash media it boots in around 10-15 seconds. When I had a Windows desktop if it made it to the Windows boot screen in 10-15 seconds I was pretty impressed. Asus initially came up with the idea as a competitor for the OLPC (see here) but have managed to tap into every single demographic possible. I’m currently typing this on a Macbook, I love my Macbook but a 7” uber portable laptop sounds highly appealing. The beauty of the machine: it can technically run Linux, Windows and (illegally) OS X. It really has everything a mobile user requires: office software, Skype, Wifi and Ethernet networking abilities, webcam and video out for hooking up a projector for presentations. If I traveled a lot, this would be my laptop of choice.
The beauty of a machine this size is its portability. Just stick it in your handbag (or your man-bag for that matter) and off you go. Battery life is around 3.5 hours and the charger is tiny.
The amazing thing about the eee laptop is how rapidly it’s flowing off the shelves. In about four months Asus wants to have sold over 350000 units, a number I find highly feasible if not a low estimate. According to Amazon and Cnet it’s the most desired Christmas present in America. According to Asus themselves, they sell one every 6 seconds! In the time it took you to read this long-winded post there have been a few hundred sold already (thank you for reading and having patience for my rambling!).
I must resist the urge to buy one of these bad boys but hell, a christmuskah present to myself doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.
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