Ubuntu Netbook Remix is dead. Long Live Ubuntu

[dopelungreen]

From the "Nefarious Netbook' files:

Canonical has decided to retire the Ubuntu Netbook Remix - as a named product.

The Netbook Remix was a personal favorite of mine, as it made it easy for me to point my netbook friends at it, as an easy replacement for whatever OS was installed by default on their device.

Netbooks after all have under-powered CPUs, low RAM and small screens. The needs of Netbook users are categorically different than regular desktop users right?

"The introduction of the new shell for Ubuntu means that we have a user interface that works equally well whatever the form factor of the PC,"Gerry Carr, director platform marketing at Canonical blogged. "And the underlying technology works on a range of architectures including those common in netbook, notebooks, desktops or whatever you choose to run it on. Hence the need for a separate version for netbooks is removed."

I'm not so sure I agree.

While I understand that Ubuntu (as a brand and as a product) can extend to all sorts of different form factors on the desktop, how can a desktop optimized for an Intel Core i5/i7 chip supported by 4 GB of RAM have reasonable performance on an Intel Atom chip with only 1 GB of RAM behind it? Kernel optimizations are different aren't they?

Linux distros have long had x86 and x86-64 versions and I have always appreciated the Netbook Remix in the same light. The Netbook Remix in my view was an interesting product brand that helped to differentiate both Ubuntu and the specific product.

On the hand, if there is just one default installer that lets users customize specifically for Atom and Netbook constraints that would be brilliant. By generalizing and flattening the brand, Canonical is attempting to reduce potential brand confusion (though you were never confused were you?).

Edited March 9, 2011 by dopelungreen