The rogue's gallery of Novell, Xandros and Linspire have signed well publicized agreements with Microsoft. Rumors on the Web have hinted that Mandriva might be next. Mandriva believes in interoperability based on open standards, like ODF, but they also believe that software patent threats are just FUD. So no deal with Microsoft from Mandriva.

It doesn't seem so long ago that I've removed Windows, but it actually is. It's been about 7-9 months now and I've almost forgotten about Windows. If it wasn't for school, I probably would've.
It angers, and annoys me a great deal when my Microsoft-obsessed friends say that Linux is crap, and it can't do anything properly and it's so complicated for no reason. I mean, even when I was a Windows-user, I didn't think of it like that. They even admit that Windows is only powered by money which gave me satisfaction to shove that back in their faces. It makes me laugh when they call my PuTTY console MS-DOS and it makes me jump for joy when they complain about errors.

Microsoft Windows is still unfortunately the most widespread platform which is why most major hardware manufacturers still first and foremost make sure their hardware works well with Windows. Even if Windows Vista is a flop in general compared to previous Windows versions, it is reasonable to assume that hardware manufacturers will prepare their hardware for various novelties that Vista may be offering.