Hardware maker Nvidia is endorsing Windows CE as its platform of choice for Tegra-based netbooks. The company has rejected Google's open source Android platform and is also unimpressed with conventional Linux-based options, such as Ubuntu.

Nvidia is making a play for the mobile market with its Tegra platform, an ARM11 SoC with an Nvidia GPU. Tegra's main selling point is that can deliver high-definition video playback with minimal energy consumption, characteristics that could make it a strong contender in the portable media player market. In addition to targeting handheld devices, Nvidia is also tentatively pushing Tegra for small form-factor laptops.

Although ARM-based netbooks could deliver significantly better battery life than their x86 brethren, there are some issues that could limit their potential for gaining broad market acceptance. One of the biggest is that the standard flavor of Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system—and a majority of the software that is designed to run on it—is not compatible with the ARM architecture. Hardware makers will have to choose between the multitude of competing Linux variants and Windows CE (recently rebranded as Windows Embedded Compact), the mobile version of Microsoft's platform.

Describing Windows CE as a "rock-solid operating system" with a "low memory footprint and a good collection of apps," Nvidia mobile business unit manager Mike Rayfield recently told ComputerWorld that Microsoft's mobile platform is the right choice for Tegra-based netbooks.

Nvidia said that Google's Android platform isn't ready, as it has a number of weaknesses and limitations that make it unsuitable for netbook devices. Specifically, Rayfield criticized Android's inadequate video playback performance and the unsuitability of its user interface for netbook-sized screens.

Rayfield's assessment of Android's potential on netbooks reflects our own findings when we examined the matter earlier this year. He says, however, that Nvidia is working with Google to help implement hardware-accelerated video support for Android so that the platform will eventually be more viable in the future.

Nvidia has also rejected more conventional Linux solutions. Rayfield contends that mainstream Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, have failed to gain real traction on netbooks because users favor Windows. This seems like a premature assessment. Microsoft's oft-cited statistics on the subject are somewhat dubious and there are a growing number of OEMs that are successfully shipping Linux-based products.

That said, Nvidia's skepticism about Linux is not entirely unwarranted. We have seen examples of Linux netbooks shipping with technical glitches due to misconfiguration and other related issues, so there are clearly hurdles that still have to be overcome.

There are also some technical challenges that would make Linux difficult to adopt on Tegra. The two most promising Linux solutions for netbook devices are Intel's Moblin platform and the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. Moblin is obviously out of the question for Tegra because it's designed specifically for Atom processors, but it's not really clear yet if Ubuntu is well-suited for Tegra-based devices.

Canonical offers a fully-supported ARMv7 port of Ubuntu, but does not provide an out-of-the-box solution that will work with Tegra's ARM11 chip. In a report published by Canonical that described a Beijing ARM seminar, Ubuntu kernel developer Bryan Wu notes that "For Ubuntu, it's difficult to support such [an] ARM11 4 core SoC Tegra, because it is ARMv6 ISA." It's not an insurmountable task, however, and it's worth noting that there are some ARM11 devices on the market that are running Ubuntu—most notably the SmartQ.

Is Windows CE really a practical option? It's not a particularly good platform, but it does offer many of the same strengths as Linux, and Microsoft has done a lot to boost the competitiveness of Windows CE relative to open source alternatives. Although Windows CE is obviously not distributed under an open source license, the source code itself is fully available to hardware makers and provides a high level of flexibility. Microsoft has also brought down the licensing costs and is working on a new project that will enable development of richer user interfaces for Windows CE via the use of Silverlight.

Some of the traditional strengths of Windows on the desktop, particularly software availability, are lost on the ARM architecture. Browser options, for example, are limited—an unfortunate predicament for a netbook product. The most recent release of Internet Explorer that is supported on the platform is IE 6. Nvidia has partnered with Opera because there aren't any other compelling production-ready options yet. (Update: a reader wrote in to point out that Nvidia has demoed a Firefox 3.5 ARM port on Tegra)

It looks increasingly like Nvidia's highest priority is delivering hardware-accelerated video, and they chose their platform accordingly. Microsoft has stated unequivocally that Windows 7 is not coming to ARM, so Nividia will have to make Windows CE work if it wants to stick with Microsoft's platform.