Asus To Ship Ubuntu 10.10 On Three Eee PC Netbooks

An anonymous reader writes "Asus has announced that three Eee PCs will ship with Ubuntu Linux. Three 2011 models — the 1001PXD, 1011PX, and 1015PX — are immediately available, though no retailers seem to stock them yet. A Canonical exec had this to say about the new netbooks: 'There are a number of factors that make Ubuntu an attractive proposition for ASUS and its customers. Ubuntu continues to set the standard for slick design, ease of use and security, it is the world's third most popular operating system, and [it] has the most number of users in Linux. We [Canonical] were looking at publicly available data on the operating systems accessing Wikipedia last week and found the web site serves more pages to Ubuntu PCs than to iPads — there are a lot of users out there.' It might not be the same as Asus launching three flagship netbooks all running Ubuntu instead of Windows, but it's definitely a start. Asus says there are more Ubuntu netbooks to come later this year, too — hopefully they'll run Ubuntu 11.04."

Re:About Time...

[Animats]

The original Linux EEE PCs ran the most god-awful distro imaginable.

It had to fit in 2GB of file space, and still have something left for users. But I agree that it sucks. I have several EeePC 2G Surf machines, obtained cheaply from a failed startup company. I use them to run some embedded system demos, where all that runs is one Python application. The biggest problem is that the WiFi driver is flaky. The second biggest problem is that the "union" file system, which makes one read-only file system and one read-write file system appear to be a single pathname space, leaks inodes, and has to be flushed out occasionally.

The problem with Asus is that they can't be trusted as a Linux vendor. They've had on again, off again Linux support for years.

Re:Retailers

[Locutus]

didn't BestBuy sign a deal with Microsoft (ExpertZone) putting Microsoft employees inside of BB for training and lots of the training was how to bash Linux and Macs? I wouldn't doubt there was also a contract section eliminating their ability to sell other operating systems, especially GNU/Linux based ones. Here is a good search to start with:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Microsoft+Best+buy+employee

Don't count on Best Buy carrying these or expect to keep getting it pulled from your hands by Best Buy employees shoving Microsoft at you.

LoB

Re:Sounds nice

[Xtifr]

most OEMs pay MS per unit shipped, no per unit with windows installed.

That practice was, as I understand it, supposed to have ended in 1994. There have been allegations that it continues, but no whistleblowers have come forward with a smoking gun, which is pretty impressive, given the number of people that would have had to be privy to such agreements over the years.

These days, I believe, they rely on financial incentives tied to adware and trial-versions of software to be bundled with OEM releases of Windows, to offset the cost of Windows itself and remove the incentive OEMs might have to offer cheaper (e.g. free) OSes as an alternative. The result is: Microsoft is happy because they're still getting paid, even if it's by ISVs instead of directly by the OEMs, and because they get to promote their other products; the OEMs are happy because they're paying less for the OS; and ISVs are happy because they're getting a very cost-effective form of advertising. The only losers are the customers who now get machines clogged with adware and free-trialware that they may have no interest in, and other OS vendors who can no longer compete on price, even if that price is zero.

This is where it gets interesting: if Ubuntu can start making enough money off of their partnership deals with companies like Amazon and Google, they may be able to start paying OEMs for including Ubuntu instead of Windows. Hence, I suspect, Ubuntu's recent controversial moves regarding Banshee.