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Technology in 2008 (Economist)
The Economist makes
some predictions for 2008 which reveal an interesting view of causality
in the Linux world. "The [SCO/Novell] verdict removed,
once and for all, the burden that had been inhibiting Linux's broader
acceptance. Linux is now accepted as being Unix-like, but not a
Unix-derivative. Bulletproof distributions of Linux from Red Hat and
Novell have long been used on back-office servers. Since the verdict
against SCO, Linux has swiftly become popular in small businesses and the
home."
(Log in to post comments)
doubtful Posted Dec 23, 2007 17:54 UTC (Sun) by ArbitraryConstant (guest, #42725) [Link] meh I am skeptical small businesses and home users cared about any legal risks from SCO, given the piracy rates of Windows in those areas. If Linux adoption has picked up in those areas, it's because Ubuntu is finally getting it right, and because stuff like Asus Eee finally starts chipping away at the usually invisible OEM premium for Windows.
doubtful Posted Dec 24, 2007 13:28 UTC (Mon) by jbh (subscriber, #494) [Link] This seems to be the article's viewpoint as well. In context, it looks like "since" refers to period of time rather than causality: "Since the verdict against SCO, Linux has swiftly become popular in small businesses and the home. That's largely the doing of Gutsy Gibbon, [...]"
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 23, 2007 19:19 UTC (Sun) by Thue (subscriber, #14277) [Link] From the start of the article:the information superhighway sometimes crawls with bumper-to-bumper traffic. The biggest road-hog remains spam (unsolicited e-mail), which accounts for 90% of traffic on the internet. This is simply not true. Spam is 90% of email, not of internet traffic. Email traffic is dwarfed by P2P traffic, see for example Wikipedia which says bittorrent alone was 35% of internet traffic in 2004. To me that is a red flag. Take anything anything you read in that article with a big grain of salt.
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 23, 2007 20:19 UTC (Sun) by danielpf (subscriber, #4723) [Link] Such an experience is made day after day by net users: the former most reknowned sources of information are checked by far more many brains than before, and found often lacking and superficial by those somewhat better informed. Unless they quickly adapt these old dinosaures like the Economist, Reuters, the BBC will become simply irrelevant. I would recommend LWN to no longer quote automatically news from such sources when obviously the information quality is not there.
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 23, 2007 21:11 UTC (Sun) by davi (guest, #18853) [Link] I think so too, daniel.
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 23, 2007 21:20 UTC (Sun) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link] In this case, I think the value of the article is not so much that it will present any new information about free software to LWN readers, but rather it reflects on the evolving perception of free software by mainstream non-tech media outlets.
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 23, 2007 23:49 UTC (Sun) by lacostej (guest, #2760) [Link] I disagree. The Economist might not be a relevant source for many of us, it's still a relevant source to many and having this point reflected here, is important. Even if their point of view is different from ours, it is interesting. That means there is a gap in perceptions, and that gap can be interpreted differently (they are becoming irrelevant, we (the community) are not capable of communicating well enough, etc...). And no one prevents anyone from writing to "the Editor at The Economist". One of the section I like the most (when I read the magazine).
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 25, 2007 19:42 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] "" And no one prevents anyone from writing to "the Editor at The Economist". One of the section I like the most (when I read the magazine). "" Perhaps it would be nice to convince them to use 'squid' proxys "with CACHES". It reduces regular page traffic by more 30%. If even small institutions build intranets with pertinent sites cached "on local", including some bloc downloads from those sites cached, access latency would be orders of magnitude faster and general traffic would be also reduced because a 'big' application or document bloc would only have to be downloaded once for the whole organization. But no! the *mantra* of the season is to put evething online, accesssible by a web server, and use 'wireless' access instead of pushing the existing and the potencial cable and A/DSL bandwidth to the top... and then complaint!? ... go figure!? Wait a minute... would that because its much more easier to build intranets with Linux/Unix than with M$ ?... i wonder why the power of intranets and VPNs didn't catch up in maintstream!?... why the power of X in NX and LTSP didn't catch up in smaller organizations ?... [What a power and peace of mind to use this in a separeted network connected to an intranet !!!!! http://www.2x.com/applicationserver/asfeatures.html http://thinstation.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/ThIndex For bigger organizations: http://www.2x.com/loadbalancer/lbfeatures.html ] wireless traffic is much slower... and easier to intercept 'elsewhere' even encripted !... ...is that because FOSS/BSD has lost a substancial part of the 'verbose' wise voice to the marketing power of the ma$ters, because of 'internal' push for anti-propaganda politness ?... is it because FOSS/Linux still has substancial problems with wireless drivers ?... would they hope that FOSS/BSD will fade away ?... or else?... .. or is it because it makes much more 'economist' sense pay for wider ISP accesses, even for several ISP accesses for 1 organization !?... than to listen to the 'old' way of Managed and Centralized IT infrastructures!?... Damn experienced administrators are the ones that most easely turn away from the stupid M$ way... common 'joe' can very well be more unsafe and slower and pay more for it. I agree that that makes a lot of economic sense for a lot of interests but the comon 'Joe'...and who is complaining anyway!, when even administrators are affraid, because of some complexitys involved, and the mainstream propaganda. 'BECAUSE THEY FORGOT TO TELL ´COSTUMERS/BOSSES' THAT SOFTWARE HAS NO GUARANTIES WHAT SO EVER', and in doing so administrators are expected to take the fall for everything BAD that happens, even if what they posssibly can sugest is technically superior, and even if they make a damn good job at it(guarantied that i'm not complaining for myself... facts dont need arguments) ? So 'economically' is better(for whom?) to pay less for administration and real secured IT infrastrutures programmed from the ground up with FOSS(example), and pay more for ISPs that its not neeeded and for boxed software, because there are 'patsys' all over... and is good for the general economy also !!!... hmmm... [as a side note and an example, Canonical, RH, Mandriva, all other smaller specially... should follow, was when a good adminitrator i now told his costumer boss in good 'wise guy style': *fuck you, pay me*, i'm not responsable for Vista woes and i want to be payed for all the extra time in full; He is a hero and a teacher, he forced his boss to read the license in face of of losing a costumer and a job, and that is a good thing because the common 'Joe' has is mind full of propaganda anyway, and can only learn by choc... if ever.]
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 26, 2007 23:11 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link] There is a very handy Firefox add-on that I think you should add to your pool. It's called the US English dictionary (feel free to grab an Aussie, England or Canadian version if you reside in one of those countries) and it provides in line spell checking on any web-form you enter information in. Miss-spelled words are underlined in red just like your favorite word processor. Your post was absolutely painful to read with all the misspellings.
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 26, 2007 15:19 UTC (Wed) by renox (subscriber, #23785) [Link] [[ Even if their point of view is different from ours, it is interesting. ]] While difference on point of view can be interesting, here the GP wasn't talking about 'point of view', he was talking about *facts*, that this article had completely wrong..
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 23, 2007 21:09 UTC (Sun) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] There are some bogus facts and arguments in this article around SCO, spam volumes, etc, but its general thesis is very pro-Linux, pointing to the OLPC, Asus eee PC and other low-end laptops/desktops that Microsoft can't compete with on price (without losing vast amounts of revenue), and pointing out linkage with server market (Sharepoint costs etc vs open source software such as Wikis and blogs). If these predictions come true it will be a good year for Linux - of course, Microsoft may well have some tricks up its sleeve.
Competing on price? Posted Dec 24, 2007 4:22 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] Why can't Microsoft compete with Linux on price, at the low end? They're already able to offer a "platinum sandwich" of product levels, for different markets, and they're already willing to accept a $0 price for their best network effect builder, the "piracy" marketing program.
Competing on price? Posted Dec 24, 2007 6:45 UTC (Mon) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] I've no doubt that Microsoft will continue to try to keep some market share by offering lower-end software targetted at low-end laptops, but this will cost them significant revenue - the Windows OEM license, and licenses for Microsoft Works and Office, are significant cash cows, and they will have to dramatically cut prices to stay in the low-end laptop game. There's also a technical issue - since Microsoft don't want to push Windows XP, they'll have to dramatically subset Vista to run on such systems with as little as 2 GB flash. Instead, Microsoft may well promote less low-end laptops costing $800 or so, which can run full Vista - in which case they are just going to lose out on the true low-end market. Whichever way this pans out, Microsoft will lose revenue as long as there is low-end Linux laptop competition - it's just a question of how much.
Competing on price? Posted Dec 26, 2007 16:29 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well Microsoft makes more money off of businesses then anything else. The home market, I've been told by Microsofties, is a bit of a loss leader.. the costs of supporting home users outstrips most of the profit they get from it. Back when Microsoft first released the new Vista ELUA they made the 'retail' licensing much less 'permissive' then previous versions, which lead people to think that they would rather have people purchase OEM licensing because that eliminates much of the support costs. I don't know how true that is and Microsoft since amended the retail licensing stuff because of the backlash. Were as for business accounts customers will spend massive amounts of money on support and extra compliance licenses they will never actually use. Microsoft makes most of it's money from business accounts. The home market is, like I said, a bit of a loss leader. Microsoft will fight tooth and nail for the home market simply because they don't want to give any other OS a chance. 'Everybody knows Windows', 'Everybody uses Windows' is a term that Microsoft wants to keep very very true. The _perception_ of low training costs for businesses sticking with Windows is one of their big bullet points when it comes to selling new licensing contracts. My point is, mostly, that these very low-end mobile devices are for home users and thus isn't going to make Microsoft any money one way or the other. I can't expect anybody to seriously use a EEE or a Everex 'Cloudbook' for any sort of business productivity. Doubly so because the 'big' OEMs like Dell or HP do not seem to be aiming for the sub-400 dollar market, and most businesses are not going ot purchase from anything else. They seem to be content keeping their laptops at about a 500-600 dollar range with larger screens and larger capacities. So since Microsoft doesn't care about licensing profits for home users yet does not want those home users using anything else they will happily give them (the laptop folks) all the free (or nearly-free) OEM XP licenses they want. XP has paid for itself many times over and the per-unit cost on Microsoft's side is only the cost of media. The people heralding the Linux low-end laptop scene are missing the point a bit, I think. It has almost nothing to do with licensing costs. What it has to do is the freedom that Linux has when it comes to UI customizations, flexibility of hardware support and so on and so forth. The _Freedom_ that companies like Asus or Everex have to customize the sytsem to make their products suitable for a paticular market _while_at_the_same_time_ not losing anything to software compatability with the larger Linux application market. With Windows XP and Vista there is a hell of a lot you can do to customize it.. With things like nLite or BartsPE. Windows is suprisingly flexible and customizable and the NT core is very powerfull. In terms of sophistication and compatability the psuedo-microkernel design of the NT kernel makes the hybrid-microkernel design of OS X's kernel look like a sad joke. But Microsoft is not going to allow you to do that. Microsoft needs all XP versions to be the same XP. Because as soon as you start to change things around with Windows you can throw binary compatability out the window. Beleive me. At work here I am the 'Linux guy' and other people have tend to be more familar with Windows, but come from a more electronics background. We've tried to get XP to work on the same level as I can easily get Debian to work on these EEE. We tried staight XP pro. Wepos (Windows XP embedded Point-of-sale) and then produced hacked-up customized XP installers using nLite and other work arounds. All of this with the goal of getting XP to work well with EEE. XP is fast. Damn fast on these machines. Much faster then Linux. (And office XP starts up with a snap of your finger) But as soon as you start adding applications then things start falling appart. Trying to get Nero cd burning application is a excersize in failure. Outlook won't install on Wepos. The anti-virus software makes the flash drive weep. Newer versions of Office won't fit onto the device. Older versions are just old and still use up all the space. And even if we were to get XP to work well with all the productivity software that people expect then we would never ever be able to redistribute it or anything like that. Microsoft would never allow the sort of alterations that we are trying to do and even if they did it would trash a lot of the application compatability to the point were support costs would drive any company out of business. Still though with Debian I used squashfs to squish the root down so it easily fits on these machines with a FULL gnome desktop, openoffice.org, openarena, bunches of games, etc etc etc. No sweat. So the principal advantage of Linux on these highly mobile, yet very cheap, devices is the flexibility, robustness of software compatability, and customization that they offer to the system builder... _not_ licensing costs. Wheither your dealing with a 200mhz ARM11 proccessor with 64megs of ram, or a Geode system with 128, or a 670mhz Celeron-M with 512 megs of RAM Linux can be fit well into those catagories at a low cost and get the most value out of them. It will run fine and it will offer the ability for system builders to differentiate their products at a low cost while still retaining compatability. XP and Vista can not do that because Microsoft will not allow it.
Competing on price? Posted Dec 28, 2007 7:55 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] XP is fast. Damn fast on these machines. Much faster then Linux.I read farther down that you are installing a full GNOME desktop onto the poor things. Have you tried lightweight desktops like XFCE4 or fluxbox? My 700 MHz, 128 MB laptop is quite responsive with the former. One of the good points of the flexibility and customizability is precisely that you can choose between different alternatives for the same functions, some of them lightweight versions. You can also shut down or even rip off whole parts of the system to save resources. I doubt XP is still faster after some major surgery.
Competing on price? Posted Dec 28, 2007 8:53 UTC (Fri) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] On the question of how much money MS makes from businesses... Microsoft made about 80% of its revenue from the combination of Windows, Office and Server Products (SQL Server, Sharepoint, etc), as of 2005: http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=6820 - and this share probably hasn't changed much, though the Xbox division is now more successful. In mid-2005, MS made about $3bn each from the three divisions covering Client (Windows), Office and Server Products. So it's true to say roughly two-thirds of MS revenue is from business products, particularly since a fair number of Windows client shipments are to businesses. However, the consumer PC market is critical to Microsoft's success, by providing a solid revenue stream without really strong competition, leveraging its monopoly and associated network effects. Just after launching XP, OEM sales of Windows accounted for 80% of Windows shipments, for example - http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,2102753... So... anything that hits Microsoft's revenues in the consumer sector will hurt - although XP has covered its costs many times, it's an essential cash cow to fuel other investments such as Xbox, Windows/Office Live, etc. While Microsoft CAN discount XP OEM licenses enormously, it really doesn't want to as that will hit the revenues required to look good to Wall Street and drive other investments. Given that eee PCs are selling out in many countries the eee is clearly a hit, and therefore a threat along with other low-end Linux boxes. The eee has even made the regular 'A list' in PC Pro magazine in the UK for 'value laptop', i.e. against all other low-end laptops it's the recommended buy until something topples it. On the "XP is fast" point - I generally agree for an unloaded system, but as you add software to any Windows PC it gets less stable, but I recently discovered that, at least on my work laptop running MS Office, Firefox, etc, far more RAM is needed than the advertised 512 MB. XP's Task Manager really lies about the real VM usage such that you may think you have enough memory (commit charge less than physical RAM, and high point of VM usage less than RAM), yet in reality you get "insufficient resources" errors that cause fonts to be mis-rendered, applications to fail to show dialog boxes, etc. When I doubled the RAM from 1 GB to 2GB everything magically started working much better. I shudder to think how much RAM Vista would really need for the same workload.... As you say, Linux can fit into a wide range of lower-end systems and still run a reasonable set of apps. Overall we are in agreement, but the loss of Windows OEM revenues at the low end would hit Microsoft's financial position more than you are accounting for here, I think. Compatibility for these low-end devices is a big issue though and may slow their adoption - it's very likely that any apps for one low-end Linux box will not work on another without change or at least recompilation, and of course they will use different environments such as Enlightenment, Fluxbox, XFCE4, GNOME or KDE. I would really like to see everyone settle on Ubuntu, or at least use that as the basis for their distro variant as the Everex gPC has done. Thankfully Ubuntu works well on the eee PC but most mass market buyers won't put a different Linux distro on an eee, so fragmentation is still an issue, but on the other hand the ability to precisely tweak and differentiate the Linux distro is more important to building the best possible low-end product. One of the most interesting points about the eee is that it blurs the line between an appliance and a PC - it's as easy to get going as an appliance, yet as flexible as a PC, and of course it doesn't need antivirus, anti-spyware, and all the other hassles of a Windows PC. Since I've found that about 3/4 of all my friends' Windows PCs are riddled with viruses and spyware, despite in most cases having an up to date antivirus, I think the "security hassle of Windows" issue will be a big driver for adoption of hassle-free Linux boxes. People are just too time-poor these days to spend time keeping their Windows boxes secure...
speed comparisons Posted Dec 29, 2007 5:55 UTC (Sat) by pjm (subscriber, #2080) [Link] XP is fast. [...] Much faster [than] Linux. (And office XP starts up with a snap of your finger.) It would be more accurate (or less misleading) to say XP is much faster than Gnome or MS Office on Windows is much faster than OpenOffice on Linux or office applications on typical XP-based systems run much faster than office applications on typical Linux-based systems, than to say XP is faster than Linux. Linux itself is a very fast kernel, and I doubt that XP is overall much faster than Linux. Running Gnome on XP will be slower than on Linux, not faster; granted, that's an unfair comparison, but the point is that the speed difference that the commenter describes is not due to whether one runs Linux or BSD or XP as such, but in the applications and frameworks that one runs on them.
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 24, 2007 12:15 UTC (Mon) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link] "If these predictions come true it will be a good year for Linux - of course, Microsoft may well have some tricks up its sleeve." It might be getting more difficult as its main cash cow markets mature, for Microsoft to use illegal tricks to leverage its monopoly in one area to steal markets elsewhere, expecting to pay a fraction of the profits several years later in out of court settlements and fines. This is partly due to maturing markets, also partly due to the increasing constraints imposed by anti-monopoly court directives. To attempt to retain the desktop monopoly Microsoft are gambling everything on the idea that high-cost media producers will only supply content for DRM protected operating platforms, but this is inherently more relevant to the TV set top and games console markets than the general purpose desktop. It seems to me unlikely that the majority world that does not yet have computers and which is likely to have them in 10 years time will pay the kind of premiums for the hardware needed to watch Hollywood's and the game industry's latest titles in high resolution, let along operating systems and that make the bleeding edge hardware needed for these productions run at a crawl.
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 24, 2007 4:23 UTC (Mon) by robla (subscriber, #424) [Link] I'm disappointed in many of the whoppers pointed out by others. I expect a little better from The Economist, since they seem (seemed?) to be better at fact checking than most. On the plus side, this is about as gushing of a testimonial as can be expected from mainstream, non-tech press:
No question, Gutsy Gibbon is the sleekest, best integrated and most user-friendly Linux distribution yet. Its now simpler to set up and configure than Windows. A great deal of work has gone into making the graphics, and especially the fonts, as intuitive and attractive as the Macs. Perhaps the testimonial is a little too glowing. I'd dread running anything but maybe xfce on something with that low of a spec. As far as installing a new operating system on old hardware, Linux distros are probably the better than Windows and Mac, as practice makes perfect. Linux usability is much, much better than even two or three years ago, but still has plenty of quirks that will flabbergast new users. Having used a Mac at work for the past year or so, I can say the usability is WAY overrated, but there definitely is a sense of style that Linux doesn't quite match. General perception of Linux usability and style is so far in the other direction that erring the other way is probably brings perception closer to reality. Here's to hoping that 2008 contains more glowing reviews with better fact checking
Xubuntu in 128 MB, and low end PCs Posted Dec 24, 2007 6:52 UTC (Mon) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] I suspect the Economist author with only 128 MB is running the Xubuntu version of Ubuntu - this is based on XFCE4 and works well in 192 MB, and should work in 128 MB as long as you run smaller apps such as Opera, Abiword, etc. As you say, this is a great testimonial for the power of Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular to revive low-end desktops. A huge number of households now have one or two older PCs that run Windows 98, and people are loath to throw them out when they work perfectly well - so it's really important that modern, easy to maintain distros such as Ubuntu can easily be installed on these systems. I would like to see Xubuntu made a bit more robust (it has crashed and corrupted its config files - important to back up the ~/.config directory periodically!). It would also be great to see more work going into XFCE4 on low end systems - Damn Small Linux is amazingly compact but it's not very user friendly. Also, it would be smart for retailers to sell memory upgrades for older PCs together with an Ubuntu CD - with a little more memory many older PCs run Linux very nicely.
Xubuntu in 128 MB, and low end PCs Posted Dec 24, 2007 6:55 UTC (Mon) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] Correction: When I say Xubuntu has crashed, I really meant that a component of XFCE4 has crashed and corrupted an XFCE4 config file - however, the effect on a new Linux user is in some ways worse, as they suddenly lose their main applications menu and can't do anything without some Linux skills and hitting the Ubuntu forums etc. By contrast, a system crash without corruption is quite easy to recover from.
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 25, 2007 20:10 UTC (Tue) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link] That's plenty of RAM. I could run Netrek (client, server and 19 instances of the robot module) and 20 emacs editors on a 5 megabyte machine with a 386SX-16 processor, without significant slowdown. I was using XView and the OpenLook virtual window manager (with double the window size as screen size). Actually, that's one thing I dislike about pure pane window managers - you can't scroll between them.
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 26, 2007 8:04 UTC (Wed) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] You can still run many small Linux distros in 24 MB or so - Damn Small Linux is one of the best known and is very easy to use as it's a Live CD. The issue isn't memory use for Linux plus X, it's whether you can run Ubuntu in 128 MB, which is more of a challenge as it includes modern niceties such as WiFi network auto-configuration, recent hardware support, full desktop environment, etc.
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 26, 2007 22:31 UTC (Wed) by xav (guest, #18536) [Link] I have a 196Mb laptop with Xubuntu installed on it. It can't handle the load. I can start Evolution or Firefox, but they soon make everything go into the swap, and then the laptop is like dead. Modern desktops don't fit in this amount or RAM.
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 27, 2007 18:31 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] XFCE or at least Xubuntu is pretty overrated in terms of how much resources it will save you over KDE or Gnome. It does a decent enough job by itself, but as soon as you start running other applications then it won't do much good.. Maybe only saving you about 10-20 megs of RAM over running a pure KDE or Gnome desktop. Like when you start up Evolution your going to pull in all the Gnome libs anyways. You might as well run full gnome stuff. When your starting up Firefox.. well Firefox has gotten to be somewhat of a pig irregardless of what your running. GTK Webkit may help and I've been hearing very good things about Firefox 3 though. For older computers you realy need something like IceWM with DFM or at least do a better job at slimming down XFCE then what Xubuntu does.
Technology in 2008 (Economist) Posted Dec 28, 2007 14:12 UTC (Fri) by bockman (guest, #3650) [Link] I agree. I usually start installing Xubuntu, then trim it down some more, removing unneeded services (cups? I don't own any printer, thanks), replacing Thunderbird with sylpheed-claws, using Ion+Rox instead of the whole Xfce stuff, etc... I'm currenlty evaluating epiphany as alternative browser. I quite like it, although its performances are more or less the same of Firefox (I guess that the bulk of both is made by Gecko ). All this on a three-years old Vaio with Pentium M at 1.6GHz and 512 MB. Not yet the lowest end, but neither a power-house. Which I plan to use for the next 4+ years, thanks to light-weight free software developers.
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