According to Stephen Vaughan-Nichols there will be 2.4 million more Linux desktop users by the end of the year. And that's only counting Eee PC users.
"The company shipped 2.5 million notebooks in the first half of this
year, 1.7 million units in the third quarter and is expecting to ship
1.9 million units in the fourth quarter, bringing the company's annual
notebook shipments in 2008 to at least six million units." Breaking
that down by operating system, "The ratio of Eee PCs preloaded Windows
XP and Linux stands at 7:3."
That's a lot of people. We need to invite both those people and Asustek to engage with our communities. The default install that comes with my Eee PC 700 still does not have wireless or camera working correctly. That's fixed in other Linux distributions but installing a new distribution requires more technical expertice than your average user has. (As anyone who saw me running around at GUADEC with a half installed distro on my Eee PC can attest to.)
As more and more open source software comes out on devices and netbooks, we need to make sure the vendors and the users are aware of the network of passionate people that are here willing to lend their expertice via mailing lists, forums and blog posts.
A mini-GNOME for the mini-notebook would rock. Right now the software that comes pre-installed on the Eee is not really what I would want to use…
I found out that eeebuntu.org is the best fit for my EeePC at this moment. I am expecting even better version to be released based on new Ubuntu 8.10 that will include new Network Manager 0.7 and have 3G support by default.
Mandriva have also very good EeePC support with a system optimized for netbooks, and out of the box support.
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Tour#Netbook_friendly
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Notes#Post-install_streamlining_in_One_installer
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/mandriva_2008.1_final_on_eee_pc
Asus really dropped the ball on linux on the EEE PC.
They should have contacted Redhat or Mandriva or Novell from the beginning.
The problem is that ASUS considered Linux as a cheap replacement of Windows. Was it just to have a cheaper product or to push Microsoft to discount the EOLed Windows XP even more, who knows. But from what I have seen they contact a company that does not really play the Linux game to do a custom system, all it end up being is one lousy piece of EDITED that is not even consistent with itself: an outdated version of KDE, with Firefox, OpenOffice.org (that does not fit) and bits of GNOME for where things were missing.
And it is not even Free Software.