The Great Open Source Netbook Interface Race
Linux may no longer have the largest share of the netbook market, the way it did a couple of years ago. But you could still say that if the community isn't dominating in sales, it's taking the lead in interface choices.
Recently, everybody seems focused on the netbook market. The communities that develop lightweight desktops like Xfce and LXDE or nimble distributions like Slax are promoting their work as ideal for netbooks. Debian has a project focused on tweaking the distribution for netbooks, while Mandriva offers Sugar and Moblin as netbook interfaces. The race is so competitive that some choices are already dropped out of the running, such as the HP Mi Edition, which a year ago was receiving rave reviews.
Who will win, place, or show in the netbook race is still anybody's guess. Currently, however, there are four main competitors: the Plasma Netbook Interface, Easy Peasy, Chrome OS, and Moblin.
The first two are KDE and GNOME with new interfaces, and the last two are still in development, but these four are the ones that receiving the most attention right now. Each draws on different sources of inspiration. But, taken together, they illustrate the assumptions that are being made about how netbooks are being used -- assumptions that I suspect may be misguided.
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