Linux ended up being one of the winners at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The show was littered with new tablets, many of them with Google's Android 3.0, which is code-named Honeycomb, and optimized to tablets.

Motorola announced the Xoom, which is based on Honeycomb, and will be available around April. Honeycomb will be a hot OS, so keep your eyes peeled.

Honeycomb could render tablets with Android 2.2 -- Froyo -- irrelevant. So if you're looking to buy a tablet, wait till Honeycomb comes out, or get a guarantee that the tablet will be upgraded to Honeycomb in the future.

Honeycomb tablets with have a few requirements -- like a dual-core processor -- which indicate that the devices will be resource heavy.

Linux also made appearances in TVs, set-top boxes, and other embedded devices. In an obscure move, Microsoft announced it was porting its future Windows to the Arm architecture, which is most used in tablets today. Microsoft didn't want to be left behind in the craze for tablets, where Apple's iOS and Android rule.
 

Will Windows for Arm impact Linux? It might, but Linux has weathered and survived many onslaughts from Windows. But this time, Linux/Android have the upperhand, and Microsoft has to play catchup. Read an early freeos.com entry to Windows-on-Arm's possible impact.