Windows XP vs Linux for a Netbook?

Which is better? Windows XP or Linux for a netbook?

Well, according to reports, around 90% of netbooks are shipped with Windows XP. The market share currently attained by Linux netbooks seems almost insignificant.

The average user may well be put off by the idea of Linux. This could be especially true if  they are already familiar with Windows XP – either at work, or from another machine at home.

Performance wise, Windows XP is not great. It will celebrate it’s 8th birthday this year. If someone had offered you a ZX Spectrum OS based device in 1990, you would have turned them down flat, no matter how good the device looked, or how much better the hardware was than the original ‘Speccy’.

That said, XP is still a workhorse and in a netbook, performs far better than Vista on like-for-like hardware. Windows XP has a strong place at the heart of a lot of netbooks until Windows 7 comes along.

The Linux installation offered with the majority of non-XP netbooks is a highly customised, largely cut-down OS. Many vendors have done a good job at making it perform well for the most common netbook tasks – web browsing, e-mail, word-processing and playing video and music. Performance is therefore quite good. Users wanting only this core functionality should definitely not overlook the Linux option.

One area where Linux can be problematic is when people try to install it on a machine that was made-for and sold-with Windows. Because of the vast range of hardware, drivers for some hardware can be hard to find,

One area where Linux absolutely cannot compete is if protected video or music is needed. This includes the download services of both Napster and BBC iPlayer.

If you plan to download programmes via iPlayer to watch on the move then absolutely stick to Windows XP. If you don’t, then you should seriously consider Linux, as it can still do just about everything else you might want it to.