Summary: A quick update on Linspire and Xandros, which signed patent deals with Microsoft

Linspire is already gone (devoured by Xandros [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]), Turbolinux is virtually unheard of, so Novell/SUSE remains almost the only Ballnux^* to be concerned about. The GPLv3 stopped more such patent deals from being signed.

Reports are now suggesting that ASUS turns to Google at the expense of its old affair with Xandros. The simplified graphical interface mastered by ASUS can conveniently be substituted with Google's.

Last month, Asus revealed that it’s already working on adapting Android for the Eee PC. The project is only ‘proof of concept’ at this stage said Samson Hu, head of Asus’ Eee PC line in an interview with news service Bloomberg.

[...]

Market research firm Ovum tips that Android will become the Linux distro of choice for netbooks in 2009, displacing fully featured desktop-class builds such as Ubuntu and Xandros (although Ubuntu is promoting its own tweak known as Ubuntu Netbook Remix to manufacturers).

Does this mark the end of a honeymoon with Xandros?

Xandros seems to have shifted focus to a new project which it calls Presto [1, 2, 3, 4] and this continues to receive some positive coverage this week. The press in Ottawa also mentioned Xandros a few days ago when it wrote about the Spring ’09 Technology Job Fair. "Organized by ITO 2.0, the event drew 55 exhibitors — from Abbott Point of Care, a medical devices firm, and Curtiss-Wright Controls, a military technology company, to Alcatel-Lucent, RIM and Xandros Corp., a computer software development firm," said the article.

One cannot help wondering: where is CNR?

What has Xandros really made out of Linspire, if anything substantial at all?

Some days ago we discovered that Michael Robertson and Kevin Carmony, former colleagues and managers at Linspire, are still having their vicious cat fight.

This week, Michael Robertson took his next step in trying to suppress my blog and stifle my freedom of speech. Today I received his request for documents in his frivolous Freespire trademark lawsuit against me.

Is this how Linspire wishes to be remembered? Two people ridiculing and suing each other?

It seems safe to deduce that no single company which signed a patent deal with Microsoft truly ended up better off. Not even Novell. ⬆ ____ ^* Meaning a GNU/Linux distribution that Microsoft makes money from (via software patent deals).