Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

The way companies shipped their Linux netbooks contributed a lot with the failure on this market. They were released with an old kernel, using some proprietary drivers, and without a proper support.

So, if you try to connect an unsupported hardware ther (like a new webcam or some audio device), you're alone in the dark: you can't upgrade your kernel to a vanilla one (due to the proprietary drivers) and the netbook manufacturer won't support you to connect a third party hardware.

I tried to remotely help a developer with such hardware, needing to compile an an alsa driver he wrote on an eeepc. The alsa headers at the kernel source package weren't the ones used by eeepc. Even after seeking a lot at the vendor's site, we couldn't find the proper alsa headers used to compile the alsa modules for that kernel.

The developer had to give up.