Netbooks and Linux: A Complicated Story

PC World - Over the past few days there's been a raft of stories about how the Linux netbook market share is not as healthy as it used to be.

Up until now it's been believed that the emerging netbook market (arguably the first new PC hardware platform for decades) has been sewn up almost entirely by various varieties of Linux. However, it seems the truth is that Linux netbooks see far more returns than their Windows equivalents, and -- according to research firm NPD -- about 96% of netbooks sold recently ran Windows. Needless to say, a Microsoft employee has been gloating about this.

As always, the truth of the situation is more complicated. This isn't a software issue, as Microsoft-loving commentators would like you to believe, although that's certainly an element.

To understand why, let's take the point of view of an average computer user. He/she doesn't entirely understand how computers work, but they know how to do the things they like. They want to play music, and movies. They want to grab their e-mail (probably from a webmail provider), and check Facebook or MySpace. They want to watch funny movies on YouTube, and visit other Flash-oriented sites. To them, a computer is a tool to get a job done. It isn't an end in itself. Any time spend hacking things into shape, or messing around, is time wasted.

When such a person purchases a Linux netbook, they face two hurdles. The first is provided by the software. The second is provided by the hardware, which is often awkward to use. The key point is that it's a combination of the two that causes them to reject the netbook.

Their first impression of Linux may be positive. Most Linuxes that run on netbooks include toolbar-based launchers, and most are pretty neat. But when the user starts the browser, things change. Nothing looks right. The fonts will probably look wrong, maybe causing the page layout to be skewed a little. Our hypothetical user might not be aware of such specific differences. They might not know what a font is. But they know that things don't look right.

Never mind, says our user. I can get used to that, so he/she plows onto Facebook and/or MySpace. Ah. There are lots of empty squares where Flash ads, animations, or movies usually appear. No music starts playing when they visit their friends's MySpace pages. There might even be scary error messages.

Never mind this. They can fix that later, and most of the text/image content is visible. Instead, they load up a movie onto a USB pen drive, leap into the car for a long journey, and try to play the movie on their netbook. Oh. It won't work. More scary error messages.