The inevitable, eventual, free Linux desk/laptop

Will Linux reach mainstream desktops and laptops without a major vendor making the push? Several vendors have recently stepped up to answer that question.

At CES in January, Google co-founder Larry Page made a public show of his company's support (sans details) for MIT's $100 laptop, designed to "revolutionize how we educate the world's children".

At the end of January, Red Hat announced support for the project as well. At this writing, the company is working on adapting Fedora, and plans to make the project an open and public one. The company also signed on as a platinum supporter of the Desktop Linux Summit, an event launched three years ago, and still run, by Linspire.

The New York Times also reported that Nicolas Negroponte, who is running the $100 laptop project, is close to lining up $700 million from seven countries -- China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria -- interested in buying 7 million of the units. A Taiwanese manufacture rwas also reportedly lined up.

Meanwhile, Nat Friedman showed off Novell's Linux Desktop 10 in Paris. He played videos and MP3 music files (with Banshee, Novell's own player, using licensed patents), downloaded pictures from a digital camera, and exchanged photos with an iPod. He also showed off XGL, an open source graphics subsystem. Right now it's on track to be available by the time you read this.

And, of course, the noncommercial open source projects -- Gnome, KDE, freedesktop.org, etc. -- contintinue to move forward.

- Doc Searls