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Re:ARM based processors coming to Linux netbooks by dchest on Thursday January 08, 2009 @07:12AM (#424798)
All we know at this point is that these computers will almost definitely be running Linux - these chips just can't provide enough CPU power to run any Windows operating system, including netbook standard XP.

I thought the reason was that Windows doesn't run on ARM.

Re:ARM based processors coming to Linux netbooks by davidw on Thursday January 08, 2009 @11:34AM (#425121)
Windows Mobile certainly does:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile

but, yeah that's not really windows for most people.

Also, even if MS ported Windows to ARM (it shouldn't be that difficult), the problem would really be the applications, which would either need emulating (on an already slowish computer) or recompiling.

Re:ARM based processors coming to Linux netbooks by dchest on Thursday January 08, 2009 @02:47PM (#425504)
Sure, not counting Windows CE variants here.
Re:ARM based processors coming to Linux netbooks by notauser on Thursday January 08, 2009 @01:58PM (#425417)
Linux doesn't run on Arm either.

...well, it does. The kernel does, and so do the desktop environments. And indeed so do most of the applications. But there is no Flash, no Skype, upgrading is a nightmare, support will probably end early and you will be very lucky if Java works well.

Every sub notebook and portable device I owned before my current (Atom based) Eee 1000 was a disaster because the system images for them were universally junk and/or crippled.

The default Linux image for the Eee is _also_ junk, but it doesn't matter because it takes five minutes to throw Ubuntu onto one. This should remain the case for at least the next two to four years as, being standard hardware, new software will keep on being made available for it.

By comparison mainstream support for running Linux on my G4 PowerBook never really began.