Last week, David Coursey reported that Microsoft entertainment and devices boss Robbie Bach made the prediction in an analyst briefing that Linux on mobile will lose. Why? It’s choice is a bad thing for customers and that there is too much Linux in the mobile marketplace. By Bach’s count there are 17 variants of Linux available on mobile phones. He sees this as a bad thing for customers.

When it launched the netbook phenomenon a couple of years ago, the most noticeable thing about the Asus EEE PC, apart from its size, was that it typically ran Linux. Suddenly everyone was predicting the demise of Windows and the rise of Linux.

Wow! After looking at all the comments on Thursday’s post titled “Linux’s Market Share: Is There Any Way To Know,” I decided that, although I already had something prepared for today (which is highly unusual - I usually write posts the night I post them), it was worth putting that off in order to comment on some of the comments.

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).

When Microsoft employee, Brandon LeBlanc announced that Microsoft ruled the netbook world, he was exaggerating, shall we say, just a wee bit. I was going to stomp on him but Chris Kenyon of Canonical, the business that stands behind Ubuntu, beat me to it.

We’ve been having a discussion on the meaning and impact of Microsoft’s TomTom suit, and there seems to be quite a bit of suspicion and angst over Microsoft’s patent and licensing tactics. However, I believe if one wants to see the Microsoft of old, the better place to find it is in the netbook market.

There's one major decision that hits potential netbook buyers right up front: if the netbook is the system of choice, do they want a system based on Microsoft Windows XP Home or would they rather go the open-source route with a netbook based on Linux?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently gave a presentation in which he said that GNU/Linux has more market share and poses a greater threat to Microsoft's profitability than does Apple.

Warnings ! no objectivity there. Instead of simply listing what it believes to be the advantages of Microsoft Office over the open source OpenOffice.org productivity suite, Microsoft has compiled comments from 15 customers who switched to Office after evaluating OpenOffice. The result: this video recently posted to the company's officevideos YouTube channel, which we've embedded below.