When I was at UDS one of the hottest things being talked about was Netbooks. Cheap and cheerful internet ready devices that serve the average consumer in the simplest and direct ways.
We had demonstrations from Intel with Moblin and Google had their Android both running on top of Ubuntu.
So, will Ubuntu be a Netbook OS? Well yes and no, I think it’s in a fantastic place to capitalise on the Netbook market and get a nice slice of the pie. But I also think that communities focus should still be on the desktop and laptops people are using for production and business use. I think that Android will be pushed quite heavily for sub-netbooks and moblin will have it’s place too.
There are still plenty of holes in the Ubuntu desktop that would make it truly a competitor to Apple’s MacOSX, even though they don’t compete on the netbook they do set the user experience bar rather high. My main concerns remain with personal user data, address books, calendars, file indexing, searching and a few other problems that have been addressed too many times to count but never in a satisfying way.
It’s probably just my own gripes, most people seem happy enough with google pim. Maybe that’s all they’ll need. But if that’s the case, then what value will Ubuntu bring to a netbook?