Novell is by orders of magnitude larger than Xandros and Linspire, so there tends to be a lot more news coming from Novell. This does not, however, stop those smaller companies from introducing themselves in the press, stirring up controversies, and making product announcements. It does not mean that they do not deserve equally harsh criticism; for what they did is as bad as what Novell did.

Linspire Lindows

From the company where an "executive exodus" is suspected to have taken place comes this announcement:

Linspire, the company behind the Linspire commercial and Freespire community desktop Linux operating systems and CNR.com, a free Linux software delivery service, has announced the immediate availability of its first commercial paid support offerings for Freespire 2.0 users.

If someone bets or even relies on Linspire for commercial support, then it's worth exploring and finding the chances of the company surviving the next few years. Linspire already forbidden access to a lot of code. Since GPLv3 is adopted more quickly and widely than anyone predicted, Linspire is left behind. If it chooses to touch that code, it then faces the wrath of Microsoft.

Xandros(oft) 'Windows'

Another distributor that is a threat (and thus no longer a friend) is Xandros. Xandros sold out and apparently received a lot of money in the process, just like Linspire. It later snatched and 'infected' another company, called Scalix, by association.

Asus is about to unleash a nice and affordable device onto the market. It is known as the "Eee" and many people anticipate it because it's inexpensive, it Linux-based and it's similar to OLPC (one laptop per child), which is also Linux-based but serves an entirely different audience (primarily -- but not only -- young children in developing nations).

"Boycotting the Asus Eee seems like a necessary evil."Sadly, Asus chose to use a derivative/variant of Xandros for that spectacular Eee. The poor device has been therefore been tainted by the 'Xandros tax'. You would be wiser to spend your money on an OLPC (Fedora), which will be available in the United States (at the least), not a Linux that pays Microsoft money for unsubstantiated claims, FUD, and "patent terrorism". Xandros received their millions of dollars to spit in the well we all drink from. They sold out for selfish reason. Don't give them even more money. What's more, don't give Microsoft any money when you buy Linux. Boycotting the Asus Eee seems like a necessary evil.