Ubuntu is not free.

[Derek Broughton]

email.listen at googlemail.com wrote:

> Hardware companies often say they don't see a need for offering hardware
> supporting Linux because of the few customers they see in this field.
> 
> For me this looks like a lame excuse.

It's not only a lame excuse (I remember almost the same argument from a
Microsoft exec when Mozilla introduced tabbed browsing - he said they had
no plans to do it in IE as their customers hadn't asked for such a feature. 
I _still_ haven't managed to find a way to ask for an IE feature!).  It's
also shortsighted.  If hardware companies provided clear and open APIs for
their hardware (with open or closed firmware), _any_ provider could create
drivers for the hardware.  This could only improve upon the drivers the
hardware maker created for it's OS of choice.  In reality, they'd _never_
need to provide drivers for Linux, because Linux users would create them.
-- 
derek