Actually there are a slew of these 7" netbooks running linux by default. The first batch of these netbooks released in 2008/2009 all came with linux. Examples are the bestlink/belco alpha400, 3k razorbook, cnmbook, maplin minibook, inos surf one, fidelity vpc, letux400 etc etc etc. Actually there are still a bunch of rebrands being released with the arm cpu now
(instead of the mips cpu
) installed with linux. They just arent as flooded on ebay as the current wave of CE netbooks now. Those machines all worked fine. Everything worked
(sound, wifi, 3g usb sticks, usb mice, keyboards, cdroms etc etc
). While i'm quite impressed with my T706 and it's install of CE6, it still comes nowhere near the usability of my 2 mips linux netbooks. Sure they are slower
(335mhz
), but at least they run firefox well. Even though its firefox2, its still more up to date than IE6, and i can use any firefox plugin
(e.g. mediadownloadhelper to download and view youtube videos
).
Some things i can do in linux on a 7" netbook that i cant do in CE6:
Linux: Pidgin multiprotocol IM client. Aol/msn/icq/yahoo/googletalk/jabber/gadu gadu/irc/facebook chat and more all in 1 app.
CE5/6 has nothing close that actually runs. Best bet is an irc client with bitlbee, however other than my hack of roxirc there are no working irc clients
(except beta miniircv2 which would need to handle more than 1 channel to work with bitlbee, and some horrid java clients
).
Linux: Real web browsers
(firefox / skipstone
)
CE5/6: Outdated IE6 which is slow on heavy sites and gets locked out of some due to its age
(requires registry hack to change ident string to IE8 as workaround
). The webkit browsers are fun to mess with for CE, but they still need lots of work to compete with firefox or skipstone. Java browsers for CE also lack. Bolt, opera mini, ucweb etc are decent, but still not "real" web browsers.
Linux: Can build software freely on the device.
CE5/6: Have to build on desktop and not garaunteed to work on device. Also not much "free" available for sources.
Linux: Free software.
(the few nonfree apps that do exists wont run on mips cpu's anyway
)
CE5/6: 50/50 free/nonfree and not much specifically designed for CE5/6. Trial and error to see what works and what doesnt.
Linux: No illegal or time based demoware included.
CE5/6: Some CE netbooks are loaded with illegal or timebased demoware
(this includes some android machines as well
)
The only thing CE beats linux on so far IMO is softmaker office vs abiword and boot time. Xine media player plays everything tcpmp does so thats a draw. App startup time is quicker on CE also as it should be. It's an embedded OS where linux is usually "full" desktop software running on low spec devices.
Now "ports" of linux to machines not running it by default, then yes, thats a different story. Lack of data sheets makes it tough to get everything working.
(e.g jlime w/no sound yet on j7xx/mp9xx
)
Just my 2 cents.
Cheers.
P.S. Nice review Rich.