Providing a graphical boot process going back to the old Red Hat Linux days has been rhgb, or Red Hat Graphical Boot. The Red Hat Graphical Boot process uses an X server to display information about services starting, etc. However, this Red Hat project is in the process of being discontinued. The successor to RHGB is called Plymouth, which is being engineered by Red Hat's Ray Strode.
Major OEM makes notebooks and preloads them with Windows, but does NOT activate them. The notebook has one price and a sealed envelope with the OEM Windows Key Sticker, backup CDs, etc. has a different price.
If the user wants to buy Windows for the notebook, they just pay the extra $ for the envelope too and when they first bootup the machine they enter the code and affix the sticker as per the EULA.
Oh wait, what’s that other stack of disks next to the Windows envelopes? Ubuntu Linux disks? What’s that you say; they’re FREE? And Ubuntu can do pretty much everything Windows can and a few things it can’t? And if I don’t like it I can come back next week and still buy the OEM Windows disks? Hmm…
PC Multiplier comes as a set of installable packages for Linux or as a LiveCD for non-Linux systems. It works with most graphics cards supported by X.Org/XFree86 and has been tested on most major distros running the 2.6 kernel, like Fedora Core, SLED, SuSE, Mandriva and Ubuntu (just to name a few).
Many small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) – hesitant to switch to Windows Vista from XP – are seriously considering Linux as an alternative operating system (OS).
Moreover, Google seems to have shot itself in the foot by requiring Lively users (Liveliers? Livelivers??) to be running Windows XP or Vista.