[luau] News: Why Linux-loaded laptops have sold poorly

[W. Wayne Liauh]

I posted a related news a fews ago ("IBM cutting back on Linux") a few 
days ago.  B/c the omission of several critical elements, that article 
is indeed quite misleading.

(1)  IBM is getting out of the PC business altogether.  As such, of 
course they are cutting Linux support on the ThinkPad, b/c they are 
cutting back on everything.

(2)  Let's face it, the Linux kenel was not very "stable" (in terms of 
changes that are needed or anticipated) until 2.4.18.  Furthermore, it 
was not until very recently that we finally have stable versions of 
Mozilla and OpenOffice.  Timing is very different now.

(3)  With the first move by the largest company on earth, WalMart, to 
sell Linux-preinstalled PCs, the manufacturers are going to pay close 
attention to the WinModem/LinModem issue.  This will have one of the 
biggest impacts on the adoption of Linux by the general public.

It is easy to say that IBM is making a mistake, but the truth is that 
IBM is getting out of the PC business.

But more importantly, I would think Linux-loaded laptops should deserve 
a much better attention from our isle business travellers.

A few weeks ago, I finally removed the Win2000 portion of my dual boot 
and installed a Mandrake (8.2) only Linux on my laptop. (Well, I 
cheated--I run some Windows programs under Win4Lin.)  I travel a lot, 
and as we know, everywhere we go, it is at least six or seven hours 
away.  Booting into runlevel3 with a reduced screen size can 
substantially increase the mileage of the battery.

Furthermore, with Linux, I can boot up from a customized Linux CD and do 
my application programs from there.  As we all know, with Windows, if 
for some reason you get stuck, you are dead.