Instead, speaking at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the company said Clover Trail will be "a Windows 8 chip," according to a Friday in The Inquirer.

Intel apparently offered no real explanation for its decision not to support Linux, but the news is already causing considerable among users of the .

Betting on Windows 8

Clover Trail, of course, is an upcoming version of the low-power Atom processor that's intended specifically for use in tablets, in particular.

Oak Trail is an earlier version that's currently used in tablets from companies including Hewlett-Packard and Dell.