Linux has gained a firm position in the embedded market. This raises the question of whether it is worth developing new products with Linux and replacing an existing operating system with Linux. There is effort and risk in any migration of an operating system, and the technical difficulties and analysis and planning for migration to embedded Linux require consideration and time.
Early in June, Acer dove into the mini-laptop market with the Aspire One netbook, which is designed to use Intel's Atom N270 chip. Acer's netbook runs either the Linpus Linux Lite operating system or Windows XP Home.
Carsten "Rasterman" Haitzler has adapted his Enlightenment window manager to low-powered, small-screen devices like mobile phones. The Linux desktop graphics pioneer has released a pared-down widget set, along with ports and video demonstrations of E17 on OpenMoko's NeoFreerunner phone and Palm's Treo650 (booted into Linux, naturally).
The good news is, the LiquidIQ 2.0 machines run more than a modified version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, as the original machines that shipped in November 2006 did.
Spain has launched a National Open Source Software Observatory. Its first report, just out, is on Open Source use in public administrations.
