Xandros Linux is probably best known in netbook circles as the operating system powering Asus Eee PC netbooks. But at Mobile World Congress in Spain this week, the company behind Xandros made a series of announcements related to netbooks and low powered computing devices. Probably the most significant is that there are now versions of Xandros optimized for ARM, Freescale, and Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets.
Xandros says the OS offers “fast boot, long battery life, and reliable 3G connectivity.” ARM, Freescale and Snapdragon processors consume less power than the now-ubiquitous Intel Atom chip. But from what I can tell, Xandros will look much the same on devices with these processors as it does on netbooks with Intel Celeron or Intel Atom CPUs.
Xandros will also offer an “Application Store” with games, multimedia, web, office, and productivity apps. Of course, there are plenty of free (as in speech and beer) apps that you can run on Xandros. But the app store concept is probably appealing to computer makers who are looking for revenue streams for these low cost, low margin computers. The App Store will likely be based on the Xandros CNR Marketplace, which was created by Linspire back when it was called Lindows, and before the company was acquired by Xandros.
Nice to see some competition between processor manufacturers. It’s fine as long as there is an operating system which support them.
But I’m skeptical about the App Store. It’s an unproven income stream for netbooks and there are plenty free Linux applications out there. Let’s see how this develops.
Bring it on, and bring on those Freescale-based netbooks! Pegatron, that means you…
Are these new versions also “for-fee support” distributions?
Well that certainly explains a lot. Instead of using their talent to maintain/upgrade the distro for the EeePC they have been busy designing this new product that has the potential to generate greater amounts of income. Makes perfect sense, it you are not a customer.