Making Headlines

According to reports, the firm which produces the chips utilized in most smartphones plans to use a Linux system when it breaks into the netbook market.

ARM has announced a deal to use Ubuntu, one of the most popular versions of the open source operating system.

Last month, ARM announced that it would begin producing netbooks, a type of portable computer slimmed down (both physically and technologically) to allow basic operations such as internet surfing in a budget-priced machine.

The firm has teamed up with Canonical, which produces Ubuntu, to use it on netbooks. An edition of Ubuntu, targeted specifically for netbooks, has been in the works since earlier this summer.

The ARM netbooks are scheduled for release in April 2009.

Although not officially confirmed, there’s a good chance this open source maneuver will be coinciding with the launch of the next edition of Ubuntu.

One of the primary goals of the new edition is to cut down the time it takes for a computer to get up and running, so it would be a good fit for portable computers.

Ubuntu makes sense for netbooks in the sense that the machines are not as likely to be running many of the most intensive applications (Photoshop, to use one popular example) which have proven to cause problems for Linux users on occasions.

Of course, there will always be problems with new users finding Linux systems unfamiliar and offputting. Ubuntu is arguably the most friendly system for people used to Windows, however, becoming mainstream enough to land on Best Buy shelves.

Perhaps most significantly, a Linux netbook has a price advantage. While Apple appears to have ruled itself out of the netbook market, Microsoft has been stressing the availability of Windows 7 as a practical option for netbooks.