Netbook pioneer Asus will introduce a new version of its Eee PC (left) next year for just $200, says company president Jerry Shen. The company has also teamed up with Intel to launch a new website, intended to bring about the "world's first community-designed PCs."

For the past year my netbook of choice has been the Samsung NC10 as while it shipped with stock Intel Atom hardware like other netbooks such as the Dell Mini 9 and earlier ASUS Eee PCs, the Samsung was built very well and possessed a rather large and well laid out keyboard for only being a 10.6" mobile computer. Catching my attention recently though has been the ASUS Eee PC 1201N netbook.

I don't get it. Why in the world are people reporting that seven out of ten Asus PCs is news. Hello. Wake up call. Nine in ten PCs, counting Macs as PCs, are already running Windows. The news, the real news, is that three out of ten Asus PCs are being sold with Linux.

If ultraportables were last year's big surprise success for GNU/Linux, one of the potentially exciting technologies for this year is the instant-on pre-operating system that loads in seconds when you power up a desktop or portable.

I can barely keep track of all the Linux netbook-related announcements from this week's Computex trade show, and I follow this stuff for a living. So, I sat down and put together a list so I could a grip on what's coming up with the Linux netbook for the rest of the year. This is what I came up with.

Businesses are not philanthropists. They are not, intentionally, educators or evangelists for ideologies. However, from time to time their business models just happen to coincide with their more idealistic customers own interests. Asus is one such company.

A YEAR ago, ASUS told the press that it was "closely tied up with Microsoft.” This happened just months after ASUS had expressed its future commitment to the GNU/Linux platform and recently we learned that Microsoft probably offered kickbacks to ASUS. It is almost confirmed now. The effect on ASUS appears to be devastating as liaising with Microsoft did not really pay off.

It wasn't even three-years ago that Asus took the concept of a cheap, small notebook and turned it into a revolution: the Linux-powered netbook. But, now, without any fanfare, Asus seems to have closed down its Linux lines at least in the United States.

Every year since 2004 has been touted as the year of the Linux desktop. That year where Linux of some flavor makes huge inroads into the home and work desktop scene. Every year these predictions have fallen short. Now 2008 being the year of the Linux desktop stories are already making the rounds.