"Reports that the Linux netbook is dead or dying are incorrect, at least globally, according to an analyst firm. Nearly one-third of the 35 million netbooks on track to ship this year will come with some variant of the free, open-source operating system, ABI Research said.
The exact split is 32% Linux versus 68% Windows, said Jeff Orr, an analyst at ABI, which works out to about 11 million Linux netbooks this year.
That number contradicts third-party market figures, trumpeted by Microsoft, that showed Linux shipping on as few as 4% of U.S. netbooks. "Just because you live in the United States, don't assume that everything is on Windows," Orr said. "
