Will Linux and net based apps take over the low end computer market?

With the cost of Microsoft OS’s now consuming over 1/3 of the cost of low end desktop PC’s I believe that the light at the end of the MS-OS tunnel may be the headlight of an oncoming train driven by a penguin. As reported here earlier by our Dr Dog on its sell out release and its return, the single most enabling component in making WalMart’s highly successful $199 PC cost only $199 is a free linux based operating system that is hot wired to access web based apps. Combined with what is increasingly available low cost broadband, it’s an MS killer.

Opinion — Sometimes, several unrelated changes come to a head at the same time, with a result no one could have predicted. The PC market is at such a tipping point right now and the result will be millions of Linux-powered PCs in users’ hands.

The first change was the continued maturation of desktop Linux. Today, no one can argue with a straight face that people can’t get their work done on Linux-powered PCs. Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, MEPIS, OpenSUSE, Xandros, Linspire Mint, the list goes on and on of desktop Linuxes that PC owner can use without knowing a thing about Linux’s technical side. People can argue that Vista or Mac OS X is better, but when Michael Dell runs Ubuntu Linux on one of his own home systems, it can’t be said that Linux isn’t a real choice for anyone’s desktop.

Another change occurred when Nicholas Negroponte proposed the so-called $100-laptop, the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) machine. He couldn’t get them built for quite that price — they cost about $200 — but that’s still remarkably cheap and they’re available today.

Not long after OLPC was announced, Intel and other companies came up with their own take on an inexpensive PC: the Classmate PC. By 2007, it had become clear that you could build a laptop that was good enough to run desktop Linux for about $200.

That gave other hardware vendors an idea. If you could build a no-frills PCs that ran Linux, why not make sub-$500 computers with a bit more power and sell them to consumers? That’s exactly what Asus did with its Xandros Linux-powered ASUS Eee UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC), which lists for about $400. At about the same time, Everex introduced its gOS TC2502 gPC. Available first only from Wal-Mart, these $199 desktop systems are also now also available from ZaReason, an open-source VAR. (from Desktop Linux)