Microsoft made Windows XP free for any OEM that wanted to use it for netbooks, no license at all, and also made some changes to improve its use on limited devices.
That coupled with the usual non-technical resistance to anything that is unfamiliar, meant that in about two years time, all those custom distros for netbooks were for all practical purposes gone from the market.
All netbooks on shopping malls were using Windows XP, netbook edition.
Nowadays it hardly matters, because the netboook market audience nowadays rather use Android and iPadOS.
With Surface devices, which ironically predate iPadOS and Android/iPad window modes, pluggable keyboards, but they messed up delivery, to the point higher ups responsible for Surface product line have left Microsoft for Amazon, unhappy with Microsoft's management decisions.
Microsoft was forced to keep selling XP (Cut down 'Starter' edition was introduced for this IIRC) because Windows Vista was so bloated it was completely unusable on netbooks which is why they started using linux in the first place.