Asus has launched a new super slim nice looking laptop, mac air on a shoestring type.

They offer two operating systems: linux and windows, same price, but bigger hard disk for the happy that choose linux(well, actually, that's solid state drives). As a linux user for nearly a decade, having had to hear that linux is only for nerds (to be honest, quite true not so long ago), I'm amazed to see how asus differenciates the two on their press release:

"Catering to users across the full spectrum of experience levels, the Eee PC™ S101 is available with either Microsoft® Windows® or GNU Linux. The Microsoft Windows version offers users with moderate to substantial computing experience with more configuration avenues and a wider spread of applications. The incorporation of Windows Live™ Messenger and Windows Live Mail ensures that all of the user´s communication needs are fully met, and the inclusion of Microsoft Works equips the user with the ability to work efficiently while out of the office. Less experienced users, on the other hand, will appreciate the icon-driven, point-and-click simplicity offered by the Linux version. An additional boon of the Linux version is that it comes with over 50 preinstalled applications that span learning, productivity and entertainment uses."

That's something I've experienced as well with my son's godmother: she got an eee, and she is perfectly happy with the "5 big icons" interface it offers by default (everyone else I know went for the KDE usual menu/toolbar/taskbar interface).

I find it good and interesting as a position, as new users won't have to unlearn existing paradigms learnt from other OSes, no matter how unintuitive they are. That's on the same vein than what OLPC tried to do, and an opportunity to try new things. Now, that's a chance to try bold new interfaces, completely different than the ones created by xerox and made popular by mac (the windows interface). Not sure that either Gnome or KDE (the two major graphic user interfaces) will take that opportunity, but there are some interresting things on the KDE 4.1 interface. For once I would like for instance to see challenged the "File/print" menu: For a novice user, once you open the document to work on it, it isn't anymore a file, that's the current document. You don't print a file, you print the document that is on your screen, it being stored as a file is irrelevant. You can actually never save a document as a file and still be able to print (under the file menu) it.

Unfortunately, the developers that works on the user interface are probably ill equipped to challenge these learnt behaviours, as they have been using them daily for years... and the only new interface I saw (sugar on the OLPC), is franckly quite not that good. I for one realise that I try to learn keyboard shortcuts and use less often the mouse. Mostly because I use a laptop with a touchpad when I'm working while travelling (or on the terrasse, like right now).

Linux being the OS of choice for either the IT guys or the "less experienced users". For the rest, there's windows.