Linux To Take Over The Low-End PC Market?

An anonymous reader writes "Desktop Linux has a recent commentary on the inevitable growth of Linux on the cheaper end of the desktop market. According to the article, the availability of under-$500 usable hardware, combined with a free operating system, free desktop office products, and free or cheap 'software as a service' online applications, opens a new market in which Microsoft cannot compete. 'Microsoft will fight this trend tooth and nail. It will cut prices to the point where it'll be bleeding ink on some of its product lines. And Windows XP is going to stick around much longer than Microsoft ever wanted it to. Still, it won't be enough.'"

Re:Perceived delay

[BadAnalogyGuy]

In my coutry we have had GNU/Linux in low end PC's

Are users really interested in Debian, though? Wouldn't they be better off with something a little less religious, like Ubuntu?

Re:Great, we need a vista killer

[iBod]

You've got one - it's called Vista!

Re:So Programmers Should Just Work For Free?

[Fred_A]

Yes, Microsoft makes money on its software. I still fail to see why this is a bad thing. Does anyone believe Microsoft should gather several thousand software engineers together and then ask them to work for free?

I find your bold business ideas to be very interesting.
Please get in touch for implementation details.

[e-mail]

Re:Nicest device at present

[the_humeister]

Nice, but does it play Ogg???

Big surprise.

[DaveV1.0]

"Desktop Linux has a recent commentary on the inevitable growth of Linux on the cheaper end of the desktop market

So, a web site dedicated to Linux says that Linux is going to take over a market segment. Big surprise. Expecting anything different would be like expecting Microsoft to say Linux is the best option for a market segment.

This is not news. It is not even opinion. It is propaganda.

Re:Linux is shit

[calebt3]

You should have included the "Netcraft confirms it:"

Re:Microsoft will not bleed ink

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Two clicks seems to have gone over well enough on Windows.

Re:Nitpicking over analogies

[CmdrGravy]

The Swiss army knife has many blades, true.

However a better analogy is to imagine the swiss army knife as a giant multi dimensional universal army knife which exists simultaneously at every size imaginable and is always both clasped and unclasped in every dimension and contains every physical tool known to man. In this scenario every distro ( in an unbroken continuum from the very first to the very last their will ever be ) would form a different polyphasic bladeset comprising a separate macro dimension representing each individual developer there ever will be. Crucially each developer is allowed both retrograde and anterograde movement but the blade will still remain both open and closed and ascend forward in the time dimension in phase with the complete amount of work encapsulated by the sum of developer dimensions. In this scenario a computer can be represented as a geometric qualiphat suspended at the binary root position of the blade space. Clearly a user need not necessarily be a user but it can be easily seen that in order for the pardigm to ring true they are for all intents and purposes encapsulated them very selves in the developer fumblrinian work cube. From there it's simple to prove that any particular blade/distro can be installed on any compatible hardware as many times as you like.

Re:So Programmers Should Just Work For Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Per se, Latin, "by itself".

Perse, Finnish, "ass".

Somehow always amuses me.

Re:Microsoft will not bleed ink

[Darinbob]

It's actually both of those things.

What, you mean I don't have the buy the "Linux Server Professional" edition to run high end applications? Then what's to prevent all those corporations from just buying the cheaper "Linux Home" or "Linux Media Center" editions?

Won't someone think of teh profits?

Re:carrot vs no carrot

[pammon]

With free software, there is no incentive to add unnecessary features.

Uhh - you've used Firefox, right?