http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl.../05/28/0321251

http://www.itsbetterwithwindows.com/

Hehehe, that site makes me lol ! Seriously, I thought it was joke at first, but I had to look it up and see if it was true.

...and once again bullying or bribing an OEM. What a scam.

Guess I won't be buying anything from Asus after all!

After reading this, I just wanted to say that I decided not to order that laptop from Asus. I also will not be using a Asus motherboard on my nect desktop build.

Good! Excellent decision.

Perhaps Jeremy should consider putting a big flashy "Boycott Asus" banner on the home page with a link to this article.

Yeah, I'm !

Well, I don't blame them all that much ... I mean who can resist a large lump sum to screw over Linux and promote Window$ ? Guess not Asus ... A$U$.

Question now is, are they going to continue shipping the EEE with Linux? It would seem a bit absurd to bother, if you ask me. It's pretty lame that they would be bribed into becoming a traitor to their very own handiwork and success. Who wants to follow a leader that can't decide on which way to go?

That's my

Don't blame Asus! If you read the comments after the article, you'll see the site is owned by a private individual who just happens to have the same name as a Microsoft employee…

I think it is run by M$, but so far not much proof.

And ASUS does link to it from their UK site:
http://www.asus.co.uk/eeepc/1008HA/features.html

Well, on my Asus F5RL laptop, Slackware (and a few other distros I've tried) seems to run better than XP Pro.
P.S.
For example, Firefox takes about three times as long to open on XP than it does on any Linux distro.

I've found that to be the case with every PC on which I've installed Linux (mainly Ubuntu & Kubuntu), which includes Gateway, Dell, Compaq, HP, & Microsys.

Personally, I'll most likely stick with those in the future. At least they don't have a BS "Works better with Windows" website.

Cheers

Don't worry, everything will be fine after Microsoft releases the Windows 7 version for netbooks that ONLY runs three applications at a time. If you want to run more applications then you have to buy a more expensive version of Windows 7.

Didn't they recently get rid of that:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/05...tion?art_pos=4

Microsoft hasn't released Windows 7 yet, so what they will actually do is purely speculation. I trust Microsoft about as much as I trust used car salesmen. I'm one of the poor fools who bought Windows Vista and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay M$ more money for Windows (Vista Service Pack) 7.

Yeah, who can trust M$, they might change it back at the last minute. Well for sure I won't be using it or any of their other products ... in fact I haven't used M$ $oftware for about 4 years on any of my computers.

I didn't check out the site before just now. I imagined the site would just contain some "facts that have a difference of opinion with the truth" and a "install windows howto".

It has very little content. It is a background image and a flash video. (maybe the content works better with windows)
They only hammer on the dogma that almost every electronics device, cell phone,... comes with windows drivers. Then they implicitly mention better compatibility for word documents and msn, but I have to read between the lines to see that message. There also is a slight mention of third party computer programs only working with windows.

In my opinion, they putted most stress on smallest problem. Most devices use standards that linux distributions support. There are exceptions, and if you own one of them, you aren't happy with a linux-only laptop (but I had the same problem with an old printer and windows XP).

The word document compatibility is a white lie: the ASUS site says it comes with a 60 day trial version of MS Works.
MSN for windows always had and always will have some features that pidgin, amsn,... won't support. I have no idea how much these features are used by the non-tech user.

About running third-party apps: well, it is true. Stupid-little-shareware-program-from-the-net probably doesn't run on linux.

We cannot blame Microsoft for building a one-sided "propaganda" site about their product. We can blame ASUS for stopping to ship linux preloaded on their netbooks. I don't know if they did that, but on the site mentioned by H_TeXMeX_H, only XP is mentioned as the OS.

Linux has some advantages: big collection of freely available quality software, better on underpowered hardware, less malware targeted at the platform (for now). Not every netbook distro shared these advantages because they were simplified. Therefor I would only recommend linux on a netbook to someone who'd be comfortable using another distro on it.

ASUS thinks the same, and it has chosen to accept a bribe from MS in the process. I'm angry for that too. But we have to be bigger than that. Now we know linux on a netbook is possible, and in some cases the best choice. But some people use a netbook as their only computer. In that case only linux isn't the best choice. As dual boot config is.

I see it this way: ASUS chose to make linux installation on their netbooks a community effort. They also decided to take a bribe from MS. I think the second discission was made because of the first, not the other way around. I suggest the community keeps linux running on the netbooks. And for the damages done by ASUS I ask a website run by ASUS where the community can post its info about their effort.

If they start selling hardware that's incompatible with linux, that would make me _really_ mad. For now, they are a few steps down on my list of vendors to buy hardware from, but they're still on it.