The CEO of Canonical Mark Shuttleworth made some comments regarding Windows 7 that everyone is going crazy over.  Basically he says that he thinks Windows 7 is a good release from Microsoft and that he welcomes it to the marketplace.  Everyone is focusing on him saying that he thinks Windows 7 is a great operating system and they completely missed the point of what he is saying.

Speaking with The Reg, the founder of popular Linux distro Ubuntu and chief executive of Canonical called Windows 7 a great operating system.

Great? Doesn’t Shuttleworth work for the competition? Shouldn’t he be building up Windows 7′s hidden weaknesses?

Apparently not. “I’m not going to ‘diss it”, he said categorically. So there.

Mr. Shuttleworth does go into the details further of why he is happy about Windows 7 but to really understand it you need a little information regarding the current Netbook market.  Approximately 70% of the Netbook’s sold are running Windows XP.  In order to accomplish this task Microsoft must sell XP to the OEM’s at an extremely discounted price.  The current rumor is that the OEM’s only pay $5 per license for Netbook installations.

With this absurd price (donation) it is very understandable how they have been able to capture 70% of the market.  Now however with Windows 7 being acclaimed as an excellent OS for Netbook’s, Microsoft will be pressured into selling it instead of XP.

What will happen is the cost of a Netbook with Windows 7 will be quite a bit more expensive than the Netbooks running Linux.  That is unless Microsoft decides to do the same pricing scheme as with Windows XP.

I have to agree with Mark Shuttleworth that this is a very good thing for Linux as a whole.  Especially with the inclusion of products like HyperSpace that will be installed in parallel with Windows 7.

Check It Out> The Register, HyperSpace Review