Back in February I wrote about how Linux had gone mainstream as netbooks became ubiquitous. Nobody doubts that Windows has captured the overwhelming majority of the netbook market. Even so, Dell claimed around that time that one third of their Inspiron netbooks were selling with Ubuntu preloaded rather than Windows XP.

Our friends over at Ostatic have posed a good question, one I’ve thought about in the past. They are looking at the feasibility of Android-based netbooks, something we’ve covered here, and give a good case for open source netbooks. The problem they point out is that such netbooks, often running some flavor of Linux, usually have lesser hardware components than Windows-based netbooks.

Linux was a resounding failure on netbooks, so what makes this French start-up firm think it can succeed with an Ubuntu Linux derivative?

Dell is taking the netbook market by the horns, it would seem. First it refuses to accept that the Psion netbook trademark is a valid one, and now it bucks the market trend for not being able to sell Linux powered netbooks.

For a long time, Ubuntu was the only big-name Linux distribution with a specially tailored netbook version.  That changed recently with the announcement of Fedora Mini, which stands poised to compete with Ubuntu Netbook Remix on Linux-based netbooks and similar devices.  Here are some thoughts on what this development means for Ubuntu and Canonical's netbook strategy, and Linux netbooks in gener

Since people saw the big impact of Netbooks in the market, different Linux distributions came out that were customized for Netbooks. They were designed a little differently to optimize viewable area on small 10-inch screen sizes

Recently, fellow Computerworld blogger, Preston Gralla wrote about a Lenovo analyst who felt that Windows 7 will dominate netbooks, and Linux will fade away. Of course, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols responded that Linux does have a future on netbooks

Android-based netbooks provide much-needed competition for Windows, but the obstacles to success are massive.

Last week I began a discussion of whether Linux will survive as an OS for netbooks. I received a number of comments, some highlighting which netbook OEMs favored which Linux distros, other despairing at the paucity of verifiable market numbers (a distress that I share).