NPD: Chromebooks outsell Windows laptops

Chrome OS, the operating systems on a Chromebook, is a Linux distribution designed by Google. It's designed to be web/cloud centric, but it's still Linux under the hood. So... Linux is outselling Windows on notebooks.

Well it's nice to see "Linux outselling Windows" as a headline, and I don't doubt that it is true. However the victory is bittersweet.

Control: In my view, Linux is about users having control of their computer, but both Microsoft and Google do what they can to wrest that control out of the user's hands.

Privacy: Microsoft collects keystrokes, and Google would have you put your entire file system on their servers. To me, neither of these situations is acceptable. At least with Google a user can make a conscious decision to not put their stuff on Google's cloud servers, but from what I'm reading Microsoft users have no choice in the matter.

Yes, Chrome OS can be described as a Linux distribution, but in my opinion it is a distribution that has stripped away its users' freedom.

I actually believe Chrome OS gives Linux a bad name, for the reasons you cited, P.

You can buy a Chromebook and load whatever OS you want on it, or use something like Crouton to use your choice of ChromeOS and a different distro (i.e.: Ubuntu). The attempt Microsoft is making to lock other operating systems out of Windows 10 hardware doesn't apply, so that's an advantage. I still believe that people are moving away from Microsoft and that they are losing (have lost) their monopoly is a good thing.

@caitlyn: I agree with your sentiment about people moving away from Microsoft.

In many ways, the expansion of form factor has allowed people to move away from the mindset that computing=microsoft which is a big barrier on the desktop. To all those people that would only consider using WIndows on a PC, the ease with which they slid into running an entirely different OS on their phone and tablet shows that the only thing stopping them was entirely in their own perception.

I agree, Skelband. Bottom line for me: if I buy a new notebook I won't have to pay the Windows tax. I will still reload it with a distro of my choosing rather than ChromeOS. Does Google benefit from that? Not much.

>> I will still reload it with a distro of my choosing rather than ChromeOS. Does Google benefit from that? Not much.

The question now is does GOOGLE now have some perverse incentive to fully lockdown as many laptops that have ChromeOS as possible so that Linux distro installs become much much harder to do?? Goes back to penguinist's points on top. If Google is actually doing this (disregarding lipservice technospeak to the contrary), then their actions would exactly mimic ye old Extinguish of Micro$uck's infamous EEE!

2c

Well, for someone who is rebuilding Chromebooks as Linux machines, them being locked down removes the incentive to buy them. One of the nicest Chromebooks, the Toshiba Chromebook 2, would be very appealing if you could replace Chrome OS with Linux as easily as you can on most Intel based Chromebooks. As it is, you can basically only run Linux through Crouton on that machine, which is not terrible, but is one less option. I may have gotten one of these if I could switch it entirely to Linux as I have my HP Chromebook 14, but as it is, I will probably never buy one.