On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:29, Roy <linuxcanuck@
> I don't know what it is with netbook manufacturers installing little known
> and poor quality Linux distros. You have to think that it would drive
> anybody away from Linux. and get them crying out for Windows. Many would
> have had a better experience if the put Ubuntu, Mint, PCLinuxOS or openSuSE
> on in the first place.
I think that most likely it is that the netbook became a victim of
Marketing and PHBs. I imagine it went kinda like this:
Boss: We're going to make this thing called a netbook. It's going to
be tiny, portable, and use cheap, low-power hardware.
Boss: This way, we can bring something new to the market and sell it
at a higher markup to people who don't want or can't afford one of our
full sized laptops.
Marketing Weenie: That's a GREAT IDEA! And let's put this linux thing
on it. IT's free, so we'll make that much more on each unit in
licensing fees.
Engineer: Linux would be a great idea. It's stable, robust, and will
probably run a lot faster on low-end hardware than Windows will.
Marketing Weenie: See, even the Engineer agrees!
Boss: well, ok then. Lets put Linux on these things and see how it goes.
Marketing Weenie: I read in a blog that since Linux is free, we can
make our own. We don't need to use that redhat or sus or whatever.
We can just take one and make it ours and it won't cost us a dime, AND
we can market that we have our own operating system.
Boss: That sounds great! Way to think out of the box there
Engineer: It would be easier to just put Ubuntu or something else on there.
Boss: no, I want this to be ours. We'll coordinate through Marketing
and create our own engineering team.
Announcement: Do you know what Linux is? Come work for us!
months later:
Marketing Weenie: These linux netbooks aren't selling very well.
Boss: well, I guess this Linux thing must just be a fad that's past
it's time. Lets pull them and shift to XP.
Engineer: Ummm, I told you we should have just used an existing
distribution without changing it.
New Engineer: Hey, you don't know what you're talking about. It was
MY OS, and I can lock it down however I see fit. People who buy
netbooks don't need a full OS or things like command lines anyway.
...
And the rest is History...
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