This M$ Vista delay analysis got me thinking about the relationship between hardware manufacturers and well, us, the “Free software” geeks.
Vista will no doubt drive hardware sales due to its high hardware requirements. Hardware manufacturers just love that.
But does Ubuntu or Debian drive hardware sales? Erm, probably not.
“competing hardware manufacturers are violating each others patents so much that they cannot publish specifications of their hardware without showing which patents they are violating.” -Aki
I’m sure M$ has no qualms about signing NDAs with hardware companies. But for us, the future isn’t easy.
I don’t think consumer hardware companies are going to shoot for Ubuntu’s certification scheme. And Ubuntu is the consumer version of GNU Debian/Linux right now.