Are you saying that this is not going to be The Year Of Linux after all? *sniff*
The good part is that we get to listen to the Linux Fanboys making idiots of themselves all over again next year. I have never seen one group of people being so wrong so many times in a row, and for some reason they just keep doing it.
What an endless source of entertainment you guys provide to the rest of us - thanks!
HP ditches Linux netbooks in Europe
Summary
HP confirmed that it will not offer the Linux version of the new HP Mini 1000 in "quite a few of the European markets", including the UK.
Topics
HP has dropped Linux as an operating-system option for its latest netbooks in the UK market.
An HP spokesperson told ZDNet UK on Thursday that it will not offer the Linux version of the new HP Mini 1000 in "quite a few of the European markets", including the UK. The netbook, which was launched in October, was planned to go on sale in all versions this month. In fact, British customers cannot buy any version of the Mini 1000 other than the designer, premium-priced Vivienne Tam edition. That version, which comes only with Windows XP, is already on sale for about $649.
HP is selling the Mini 1000 Mobile Internet Experience (MIE) edition, which uses a customized version of Ubuntu Linux and is aimed at home-entertainment use, in the US.
The Compaq Mini 700, which is HP's cheaper but similarly specified alternative to the Mini 1000, will be available in the UK. However, it too will come in an XP flavour. British customers can also buy HP's business-oriented Mini 2140, which comes with a choice between XP and Vista.
The manufacturer does offer UK buyers a cheap subnotebook that uses Linux — the Mini 2133 — but that model has been out for almost a year. The 2133 belongs to the previous generation of netbooks and has been superseded by the Mini 1000, which uses Intel's Atom processor rather than the less powerful Via C7-M processor found in the 2133.
HP's spokesperson said the decision to drop Linux from netbooks aimed at the UK market had been taken "a month ago", but declined to comment on the reason. After ZDNet UK asked for clarification, HP sent a statement in which it said it had "assessed the current EMEA market and believes that the Compaq 700 and HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition better address the market and consumer needs".
The statement concluded: "As a result, the HP Mini 1000 with Mobile Internet Experience will not be introduced in EMEA."
The fast-growing netbook market, which only got going in 2007, kicked off with the launch of Asus's Linux-only Eee PC 701. In early 2008, Microsoft announced a partnership with Asus to put Windows XP onto the next generation of the Eee, and since then XP has become a standard option on netbooks.
Microsoft has been offering XP to netbook manufacturers at a reduced price, as long as they agreed to certain specification limitations.
There have been reports that retailers have had more Linux-based netbooks returned to them by customers than their XP-based counterparts, because buyers struggled to use the unfamiliar operating system. However, the top-selling netbook in Europe has been Acer's Aspire One netbook, which usually uses the Linpus Linux distribution.
This article was originally published on ZDNet.co.uk.
Talkback Most Recent of 30 Talkback(s)
-
Qbt5th Feb 2009 -
Who said this was The Year Of Linux?
And who said last year was?
Michael Kelly5th Feb 2009 -
Like it or not, Linux is here to stay
Not even Windows or OSX can ever hope to outlast it. It's the only OS platform that's immune to financial crisis; it's the only OS that's capable of becoming more relevant in the face of a global depression.
eMJayy5th Feb 2009 -
"Not even Windows or OSX can ever hope to outlast it"
Sort of like cockroaches?
IT_Guy_z5th Feb 2009 -
Sure, why not...
Don't knock the cockroaches. They're far older than humanity, we can't make them extinct, and the only thing that can stop them is the Sun's destruction of planet Earth in about 3 billion years from now.
To complete your Animal Planet analogy, Windows and OSX can be represented by the dinosaurs. They rule the world for a little while, make lots of noise, eat lots of little dinosaurs, but in the end they all just keel over and leave a big stink.eMJayy5th Feb 2009 -
Millions of years is hardly a "little while"
Also technically dino's never left since we have birds. Now Roaches are
impressive in their own right but unless they evolve over the next 3
billion years they are doomed. Who knows maybe man or even the birds
(dinos) will leave the planet before the sun explodes. After all Dino's
have evolved and they might re-inherit the planet and evolve into a super
intelligent raptor race and build space ships or the birds might hitch a
ride with us. Then again the roaches might as well.
Pagan jim
James Quinn5th Feb 2009 -
None of that helps your argument
Ok, it's true that a few dinosaur species managed to evolve into today's birds to survive - birds that are slowly going extinct today thanks to climate change. But cockroaches didn't need to evolve a whole lot to survive for the last 400 million years. In fact, some of them evolved into...guess what....termites! Yeah, more hard-to-kill critters (sort of like Debian giving rise to Ubuntu, huh?). Dinosaurs were replaced by the smaller birds. But cockroaches live side-by-side with their termite descendants.eMJayy5th Feb 2009 -
I'm not making an argument in favor on any OS...
I just joined in the evolution talk because it interests me. Now since you
admit that the roach has not evolved much except for perhaps termites
while Dino's have shown amazing abilities too adapt to change... radical
change it is likely that over the next 3 billion years they the Dino's could
very well adapt and or evolve to something capable of leaving the planet.
Man already has left the planet and may soon colonize. The Roach very
well may survive another 3 billion years but will it have the capability too
leave a doomed planet with the sun goes poof? Still no one can call a
multi billion year existence a failure.
Pagan jimJames Quinn5th Feb 2009 -
@pagan
Let's get some facts straight. The dinosaurs died out because they failed to adapt to a drastic environmental change in the late Cretaceous Period. The evolutionary events that lead to the formation of the first proper birds actually occurred millions of years before the dinosaurs were ever close to becoming extinct. The birds then managed to survive what their dino ancestors could not, and, even then, not all of them made it. The roach survived what the dinosaurs could not. So did the termites. Many birds are dying out right now, thanks to the actions of mankind. The roaches? Not so much. Roaches were able to adapt to environmental changes without the need to go through the time-consuming process of changing into something else. That's true resilience, because it's the organism which needs to change the least to survive that survives the longest.
Will man find a way off this rock? I'm personally hoping that the UFO phenomenon is actually proof of human time-travel, which would suggest that we will make it. We have indeed 'left' the planet but we haven't yet severed our umbilical cord to Earth, which is ultimately the goal of space travel. On the flip side, if the Earth's destiny is to be struck by a giant meteor and to be fragmented into chunks of space rock, my money's on the cockroach living inside that chunk of earth rock. What other creature's better suited to surviving both a nuclear winter and space radiation? Certainly, not the birds. They can barely survive when we cut trees down and feed pesticides to the bugs the birds eat.
eMJayy5th Feb 2009 -
"birds that are slowly going extinct today thanks to climate change"
You write as if climate change is something new.
News flash, moron, back in the 70's the same mob of usual suspects was trying doing the chicken little act about "the new ice age"... strangely enough...global cooling or global warming, it doesn't matter, their prescription is always the same: Marxist micromanagement of society RIGHT NOW! (TM)
Go soak your head, and write "I will not play useful idiot for a bunch of closet dictators led by a huckster with his own get-rich-quick 'carbon credit' scheme"
akulkis9th Feb 2009 -
Clue for the cluless
Hey EmJay...
Man is rarely the reason for any species going extinct.
99.99% of species were extinct before mankind ever showed up. Some species don't have what it takes to survive.
Some species don't have what it takes to survive EVEN WITH MAN INTERVENING ON THEIR BEHALF.
Get over yourself. We are not gods, and neither are YOU.akulkis9th Feb 2009 -
And the correct tweak or two to Windows or OSX
could force the abandonment of Linux.
Who knows what the future holds.
GuidingLight5th Feb 2009 -
Only as a business venture maybe
But Linux doesn't need to be pre-installed on machines to survive. Both windows and OSX do. Windows has lost its former appeal - people are no longer driven to make PC purchases simply because there's a new windows version out. You can blame the web for that one. Right now the only thing Windows has going for it is its monopoly over pre-installation. OSX is being sold only with high priced hardware, which is, itself, a niche market. So OSX isn't going anywhere as far a global market share is concerned.eMJayy5th Feb 2009 -
Huh?
There are plenty of Businesses who installed Windows products all the time. Who in the home user community cares to install their own OS? Only power users. In the home user community pre-installation is the norm. I don't think people ever go buy new computer to get the latest OS. It's usually because their computer is outdated. Desktop Linux remains a hobbyist OS in most cases.
bmonster5th Feb 2009 -
I don't dispute your points
What I'm saying is that Linux doesn't NEED to be pre-installed to SURVIVE. That's not the case for the other two. You mentioned the fact that people purchase new PCs because their old ones became outdated. That's true, but you're forgetting something. In the past, one of the ways PCs became outdated was when the OS couldn't support new hardware technology - USB? new hard-drive capacity? remember those days? They got the latest OS so that they can get use the latest hardware, and that new hardware made a big difference in the usability of the PC. These days hardware improvements don't affect PC usability to any great extent, making upgrading a PC something that not as urgent as it used to be.
Yes, most Linux distros are still designed for hobbyists, but that's it's greatest strength because its survival is assured regardless of what happens to the distros that try to go mainstream. Linux can be anything it needs to be at any time, and time is on its side. Meanwhile, Windows and OSX will always need to be profitable to survive - my point all along. Without profitablity they go the way of Circuit City.eMJayy5th Feb 2009
Talkback - Tell Us What You Think
The best of ZDNet, delivered
ZDNet Newsletters
Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox
Facebook Activity
