Because it's only proper to give credit where it's due, Matt Kohut, Worldwide Competitive Analyst for Lenovo, could be spot on in his prediction that Linux will remain a niche market on netbooks.

Back in February I wrote about how Linux had gone mainstream as netbooks became ubiquitous. Nobody doubts that Windows has captured the overwhelming majority of the netbook market. Even so, Dell claimed around that time that one third of their Inspiron netbooks were selling with Ubuntu preloaded rather than Windows XP.

Our friends over at Ostatic have posed a good question, one I’ve thought about in the past. They are looking at the feasibility of Android-based netbooks, something we’ve covered here, and give a good case for open source netbooks. The problem they point out is that such netbooks, often running some flavor of Linux, usually have lesser hardware components than Windows-based netbooks.

I had to read this story Lenovo analyst: Linux on netbooks is doomed" several times because I couldn't quite believe what I was reading. Was this really Lenovo's Worldwide Competitive Analyst saying things like "You have to know how to decompile codes and upload data"? Really?

Bless Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for his optimism. Writing for Computerworld, Vaughan-Nichols suggests that we don't need to wait for the Year of the Linux Desktop, because we've already had it. Somehow, I missed that. Vaughan-Nichols points to HP shipping Linux, Dell shipping Linux, etc., but come on: a trickle of retail activity does not a "Year of the Linux Desktop" make.

Microsoft says that Windows dominates -- and will continue to dominate -- netbooks because customers are looking for a familiar, PC-like experience, as well as compatibility with their peripherals and software such as Microsoft Office.

"LINUX IN NETBOOKS and notebooks I don't think is ever going to happen," Lenovo's world-wide competitive analyst, Matt Kohut, has said in an interview, remarking that the open source software would never attain anything more than niche status as an OS.

In this weeks Computerworld opinion column “Desktop Linux: Why you Shouln’t Care” Preston Gralla (who?) bashes Linux for no apparent reason other than to bash something he obviously knows nothing about.

Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9 Netbooks running Windows XP and Ubuntu are on sale. But US newspaper advertisements from Dell and Best Buy show Dell’s Windows XP netbooks to be a far better bargain than Dell netbooks with Ubuntu Linux. Here are the details.