On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 2:25 AM, Conrad Knauer wrote:

Asus has had very good sales of their EeePC; they're cute little
devices, but while they run Linux, their distro is a Xandros derivative
and I won't support that (here's why:
http://limulus.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/xandros-sells-out-to-microsoft-
over-patents/)

I don't know, I think that it's a Xandros derivative rather than Xandros itself matters. A large component of open source is that the code, time, and effort is never invested all in one single leader. I know that Eric Raymond has said genuinely despicable things over the course of his career, but I imagine I probably use quite a bit of his code through regular daily use of my computer. So, I don't think we should assume that Xandros's unfortunate failure to stand up to Microsoft's bogus patent racket means that downstream code is somehow tainted.

I agree with what you say, though, totally... we must ensure Ubuntu gets on desktops so that people can see what it's made of, and Asus' half-heartedness is a little dissappointing. (It's funny that the Windows laptop has less HD space; I wonder how much of that space is even left after Windows is installed!)