Can Linux forget desktops and servers?

While Linux might be able to gain share at the expense of the still-unpopular Vista, it's possible that tired old PCs aren't that important anyway.

There's a whole lot of other platforms out there, commentator Glyn Moody reminded me last week, mostly smaller than the laptop.

There's the Asus Eee PC, and an expected rush of other devices, joining the few that have seeded that segment, like the Nokia N800 tablet.

There are phones, too, with Android expected to make an impact.

There are two important drivers going on here

One is that as hardware gets cheaper, the operating system makes up a greater proportion of the cost. Buy a £1000 laptop and a £100 operating system seems a reasonable thing. On a £300 laptop it's a major part of the cost, and on a £200 Eee-style system, it's out of the question.

This gets even more pointed when you realise that any laptop also needs apps software. At the current entry price point of laptops, the £100 or so that Microsoft asks for a cut-down copy of Office looks out of proportion - especially when openoffice does more or less the same thing for free.

The other factor is that handheld devices really do need something different from keyboard driven PCs. With a small screen and limited input options, users are much less tolerant of woolly UI thinking, and there are fewer benefits to the "familiarity" of Windows than you might thing.

Windows Mobile hasn't done that well outside the US, which has always been a smaller and freakier mobile phone market than you might expect.

Outside the US, Symbian has had the lion's share of smartphones, and in the US, it looks like Apple's iPhone will draw off a lot of the non-corporate people who can choose phones, who might otherwise have gone with Windows Mobile.

So, while desktops and servers remain the most important space for now, the oft-predicted shift to other formats could still happen, and Linux might gain a lot from it.