Apricot drops 'too complicated' Linux from netbook line

Sounds like buisness backroom BS to me

Do I sense some persuasion from MS along the old "naked pc" lines?

"Everybody uses Windows and if you're selling Linux machines they're just going to get reinstalled with our OS so you're helping these people steal from us. Stop it now or we'll not be so kind when it comes to negotiationg your rates for future products."

or was it the simple old, take the CEO out to very expensive, champagne-fuelled lunches and tell him loads of Linux horror stories, how you're worried he's damaging his brand by selling machines customers are going to have trouble with and so on?

Meanwhile, somewhere in the Midlands

[cut to interior shot of Apricot HQ]

Suit 1: Oh noes! What are we going to do? After announcing that we're not going to support Linux there are people - on the Register, no less - saying they won't buy one.

Suit 2: Shit, you're right. That must be - ooh, at least three sales lost and we've only halved our support matrix. Best I cancel that yacht order, and let the foreman know that there's gonna be layoffs...

Both: Ha ha ha...

(man from Mars 'cos we don't have an "I'd like some of what they're smoking" icon)

@ aldude

"If you gave a Linux one to my parents, for example, they would not have a clue how to use it. It's a simple fact that people find Win XP much, much easier to use"

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Beg to differ... for the beginner, the difference between firing up the web browser/mail reader/Office on Ubuntu and XP is that Ubuntu (which uses GNOME windows manager) keeps the taskbar with icons on the upper edge of your screen. And Firefox uses "Bookmarks" instead of "Favorites". That's about it.

Unless your parents like to do something more with their computers than surfing/emailing/using Office. In which case comparison of XP and Ubuntu goes from comparing Granny Smiths to Jonagolds to apples and oranges. :-)

Even the default themes on both of those systems are nothing to write home about. I had to install TuneUp utilities to get a decent looking XP, and... well, nothing to install on Ubuntu, it can be easily modified without additional software. :-)

GNOME can still learn a thing or two about ergonomics, though, either from Microsoft or from Apple.

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Errr... El Reg, can we have our old penguin icon back?

humm

lol at how many people are posting "they have just lost a customer". No they didn't - you had never heard of this product before this article. And if you cannot afford £50 for aOS license, what makes you think you could afford this thing anyway ?

I agree with the view that linux makes an excellent server OS, but is not worth the hassle for a home user / non IT pro. People on here are blaming everything except for linux itself !

It's like firefox - it was great when it wasn't even v1.0 and no one had heard of it, but now it's become this fucking social movement among people with a IQ lower than a peanut, I can't be bothered with it. It's just disappointing, and nowhere near as fast as the early builds were either !

@ humm

"Linux (...) is not worth the hassle for a home user / non IT pro"

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Ah, but what hassle? As a home user/non IT pro (an accountant, actually), I find Ubuntu easier to install/maintain than XP.

The biggest hassle I had was when I had to manually configure bootloader to put XP as default at startup (quite a trivial task, once you know how :-))... a task that Ubuntu GUIed a year ago. OK, I also had to find out that Ubuntu doesn't save my docs in C:\Documents and Settings\Svantevid\My Documents but in /home/Svantevid.

Now, if you want to point out Ubuntu shortcomings (can't say about the rest of Linuxes, I'm an IT amateur), it should automatically put a "My Documents" shortcut on desktop and GNOME should fix the hard-to-catch window border, as resizing windows can be irritating from time to time.

Apricot who?

Apricot has made this decision to ensure customers have a smooth installation of their operating system"

That sentence hurts my brain. Surely they aren't forcing customers to buy a laptop with a blank hard drive and a Windows CD, and the instructions tell them how to install it. For one thing, Windows is much harder to install than most Linux installer programs are which almost always have a nearly automatic installation choice.

I take it that they meant smoother *use* of the OS? That too I would have to disagree on though, as most Linux bundles come with all the basic software that you need, while with Windows you have to go and download and install it all to get your system to actually be useful, unless they are expecting to use some Windows program on it that won't work through Wine and doesn't have a good replacement.

Sorry but that's just a retarded thing to say. I've never heard of this brand and I think this helps ensure I never will.