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Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net)Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net)Posted Jun 6, 2008 11:01 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333)In reply to: Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) by pr1268 Parent article: Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net)
It's a chance to get Linux's foothold in the door. The problem is that it's going to be somewhat temporary. Right now we have all these discount PCs that are to slow to run Vista. Also when your selling a 200-300 dollar laptop paying 50 bucks to Microsoft is a huge burden. The potential profits are very slim and these companies are tired on spending millions on Windows compatibility and then having their profits being sucked up by Microsoft. Not to mention stuff like the EEE PC is not capable of running Vista with acceptable performance. However this is temporary. Microsoft _will_ lower the licensing costs to suit new markets. They don't want to and will resist, but if the choice is between making 10 bucks for a computer sale vs 0, then they'll pick 10 bucks every time. If you look at the specs for the next generation of 'netbook' machines your looking at 1.6+ghz Atom processors running with 20-30 gig drives and 1-2 gigs of RAM. These things are specifically designed to meet the requirements to run Vista well. Companies like Acer, Asus, and Dell are playing it very carefully, releasing these low-end systems to run Linux, but they are not going to risk alienating their customers if their customers end up demanding Windows. Companies like Canonical, who are focusing on Desktop Linux, should be scrambling right now. THEY SHOULD BE FREAKING OUT. They should be throwing everything they can at improving the quality and lowering the support costs to companies like Acer in every way possible. Because, like I said, this window of opportunity is closing fast. VERY FAST. (no pun intended) By this time next year every single PC sold on the market anywhere will be able to run Vista very well. From very low-end 'netbooks' to bottom-end PCs.. everything. Even handhelds will start to be able to run Vista well. You can thank Atom for that. Do not believe for a second that Microsoft was stupid in the level of hardware requirements they set for Vista. This has all been coordinated between Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and probably all major OEM brands. The hardware costs of Linux vs Vista at that point will be identical. The differences for OEM will be in support costs (one support call will wipe out any profit that Asus will see from a sale of a EEE, for example) vs _very_minor_ licensing costs and customer acceptance.
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This is temporary, but not THAT temporary Posted Jun 6, 2008 11:33 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] If you look at the specs for the next generation of 'netbook' machines your looking at 1.6+ghz Atom processors running with 20-30 gig drives and 1-2 gigs of RAM. Yup. But you again confusing gigahertz and speed. 1.6GHz Atom has speed like Sempron @800MHz, not like Core Duo @1.6GHz. These things are specifically designed to meet the requirements to run Vista well. Nope. There are no way to create 10-15W package which can run Vista well. They CAN start Vista and probably even with advanced features, but "run well" is not in the cards. That's why even new generation will use dated Windows XP, not Windows Vista. Companies like Acer, Asus, and Dell are playing it very carefully, releasing these low-end systems to run Linux, but they are not going to risk alienating their customers if their customers end up demanding Windows. Yes - and this is REAL opportunity. Windows XP was never designed for this type of computers and Windows Vista is out of the question. Today's Linuxes looks truly great in comparison. Yes, sooner or later this opportunity will expire (when processors 2-3 times faster will use the same power as Atom today), but I think this window will be open for 2-3 years. We'll see if Linux will be able to take hold at this time... By this time next year every single PC sold on the market anywhere will be able to run Vista very well. Not tiny things like eeePC and clones. Big ones - yes, Atom-based ones - no. You can thank Atom for that. Sorry, but no. Current generation of Atom is more then fast enough for XP, but not enough to run Vista comfortably. Enough to run but not pretty and slow.
This is temporary, but not THAT temporary Posted Jun 6, 2008 12:30 UTC (Fri) by dmaxwell (guest, #14010) [Link] It remains to be seen if MS can pull it off but the upcoming Windows 7 is supposed to be more modular and potentially efficient than Vista. If so, MS can do a lightweight spin for these smaller devices which would get them a modern OS that can fit these devices well and not run treacle slow.
This is temporary, but not THAT temporary Posted Jun 6, 2008 13:53 UTC (Fri) by ipes (guest, #43384) [Link] Another thing to consider is that the current trend of slimming down of laptops, both in size and in price, may and likely will continue. In that case the importance of the difference in OS performance will continue to not just exist but increase. If new processors can increase performance without increasing power consumption, others may lower power consumption even further without loosing performance, further lowering the costs. As for Windows 7, if history is of any indication, the final product probably won't be nearly as great as the initial hype we are hearing these days.
This is temporary, but not THAT temporary Posted Jun 6, 2008 14:58 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] > Yup. But you again confusing gigahertz and speed. 1.6GHz Atom has speed like Sempron @800MHz, not like Core Duo @1.6GHz. I didn't get confused at all about it. I know exactly what a Atom processor is. With Vista Home Basic I think it's more of a issue with disk speed and memory requirements, not CPU requirements so much. Atom just takes the level of performance that exists with ULV and LV cpus currently and takes down closer to ARM-land. I could be wrong. I haven't used Vista much myself, beyond installing it in a VM (which worked fine, except that is used all my memory) I know it's a pig, but people (believe it or not) are running it on the EEE. That's a Celeron-M ULV running at 630mhz. The Atoms are more capable then that by a good amount. You can see a preview of Vista running on a Atom system here: http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/19/video-willcoms-d4-vist... It's a bit of a dog, but it's nothing that can't be overcome. Engineering pre-release and all that. And that's _now_ on a MID device, even low-end 'netbook's are going to be a bit faster. My prediction is with new units being manufactured 12 months from now.
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 6, 2008 12:48 UTC (Fri) by danielpf (subscriber, #4723) [Link] "You can thank Atom for that. Do not believe for a second that Microsoft was stupid in the level of hardware requirements they set for Vista. This has all been coordinated between Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and probably all major OEM brands." This is the least credible statement in your post. Yes there are some coordination talks going on between hardware and software manufacturers, but despite that Microsoft made a big mistake with its bloated Vista. All the major hardware manufacturers have been strongly disappointed, which means that Vista performances were well below expectations. So Microsoft has been either stupid with hardware requirement, or incapable to produce an OS respecting the promised specs. The other partners are at least as smart (or not necessarily as stupid) as Microsoft, they also try to optimize their profit. Shifting to Linux is a decision with long term (> 3 years) consequences, this is why this shift is significant: it means Acer, Asus, .. see a long term future in this direction.
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 6, 2008 15:05 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I hope your right. Unfortunately if they get burned and have to go back to Vista then it's going to be another 5 years before we see another Linux desktop push, if ever. My main point is that this is a critical time for Linux desktop. It's make it or break it time and can go either way. I don't see it as a sea change in OEM views on Linux, but I think they (Linux Desktop-oriented companies) can pull it off if they work very hard right now... Microsoft's major weakness in all of this is their inability to change rapidly.
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 6, 2008 17:19 UTC (Fri) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link] I think the main issue is security. If the manufacturers don't push their changes aggressively to upstream and use some very well maintained distro (one of the larger ones) with automated security updates and server (mirror) infra than can take tens of millions new users, this could well fail. Minor distros might not have the resources necessary to deal with things like this, distribution fragmentation can mean that there's no common understanding of how the security is maintained (e.g. news casters in TV gravely announcing a new quickly spreading security threat and telling what to do / not to do like happens for Windows :-)). Laptop manufacturer specific distros won't work at all. They would just blame "Linux" for day-one security issues and it would be mainly Linux which "brand" would be tarnished, not the incompetent manufacturer.
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 7, 2008 4:46 UTC (Sat) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] I agree - I hear from an eee user that the security updates were quite slow to appear though they are now speeding up. Something like Debian or Ubuntu's "unattended-upgrades" package is required - runs regularly and installs all security updates that don't need user intervention - combined with a GUI based notifier to restart the system for kernel updates, restart Firefox for its updates, etc. Restart notification is a weak area in Linux distros that I've seen - the user has to really know which apps to restart, rather than the system looking at running processes and advising them which ones to restart to pick up patches. I can't work out why the manufacturers are being so short-sighted about security updates and the other benefits of being with a mainstream distro. Using Ubuntu, Fedora or even PCLinuxOS would not cost them any more and would get them access to a much larger community and support infrastructure. Perhaps the forthcoming Ubuntu Netbook Remix will help matters, but it will be tough for Canonical to replace an existing working distro on such products.
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 8, 2008 14:09 UTC (Sun) by felixrabe (guest, #50514) [Link] "would not cost them any more" I have to say that I find that statement, if implemented as stated, rather short-sighted as well. Rather, laptop manufacturers should cooperate financially in some appropriate way so that the infrastructure maintenance won't take the distributor down because of some third-party "mass deployment".
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 8, 2008 15:23 UTC (Sun) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link]
At least I wouldn't trust some foobar HW manufacturer to excel in security
(or packaging quality needed for dist-upgrades or...) more than a Linux
vendor which has done that successfully already for several years. The
manufacturer could then also market their product with something
like "security updates provided by well-known <name>^{tm} Linux
distribution".
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 12, 2008 16:44 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] I was assuming that the laptop vendor would at least provide some mirror capacity to help overall, or even dedicated mirrors. That doesn't really change based on the distro, but it may be they haven't factored in the cost of mirror servers to their business model. Also, I heard somewhere that Xandros updates are very slow, maybe once a year for security updates - if this is true, it's another reason to go with a mainstream distro. Sorting out mirror capacity is much easier than sorting out security updates that are lagging massively behind mainstream distros (and Microsoft).
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 6, 2008 19:28 UTC (Fri) by jhoger (guest, #33302) [Link] >Microsoft _will_ lower the licensing costs to suit new markets. They >don't want to and will resist, but if the choice is between making 10 >bucks for a computer sale vs 0, then they'll pick 10 bucks every time Yeah but you're unrealistically ignoring the fact that R&D costs money that has to be paid back. Sure MS can sell for $1 or $10 per copy, or they can pay you to take the OS. That kind of dumping is a short-term marketing gimmick. In the long run they have to make money. They tried that with Netscape. But it worked, right? No, it didn't. Firefox is the best browser out today and growing in market share. They won't pick $10 price over the long term. If margins get so slim that they can't pay back their investment and make money over that, they'll drop the product, period. The deal is the competition (Linux writ large) doesn't have to make any budget numbers and can still continue. Slow and steady wins the race here. If Canonical or anybody else brings to market software that is not ready it will be much more damaging than if they Do It Right.
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 6, 2008 21:54 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] > But it worked, right? No, it didn't. Firefox is the best browser out today and growing in market share. Well... Yes it did actually. Microsoft _won_. Netscape provided a threat because they sought to provide a web-based platform for replacing the OS as the main factor in running applications. Microsoft succeeded in holding back this evolution by about 15 years now, and counting. Because of their control over how the web operates they manage to subvert all sorts of network-based and cross-platform application technologies. Everything from effective Javascript/CSS, Java applets, and Xul to X Windows. The 'best' thing that people have going is f-ing flash.. because Microsoft allows plugins for their browsers. Nothing else is allowed to penetrate Microsoft's desktop. They hold the gates to the internet for 95%+ people out there and they are very careful about what they let in. They can't hold it back forever, but so far cross-platform, network-based applications haven't made much of a dent. > The deal is the competition (Linux writ large) doesn't have to make any budget numbers and can still continue. Slow and steady wins the race here. If Canonical or anybody else brings to market software that is not ready it will be much more damaging than if they Do It Right. If you look back on the history of computer software and hardware virtually every time quick and cheap has won out over slow and quality. The rabbit never sleeps on the race track when billion of dollars is on the line. They need to be quick and have quality. It's very very tough. I believe that once Linux gets a market share between 10-20%, similar to were Firefox is now, then that will be end of Microsoft's dominance. The monopoly will be broken and Microsoft will have to compete on a nearly level playing field. Quite possibly start open sourcing substantial parts of it's portfolio to stay competitive. Of course I know this is a non-issue for the vast majority of people involved in Free software and Open source. I am just talking in terms of OEM support and Linux on the desktop initiatives. ----------------------------- > Yeah but you're unrealistically ignoring the fact that R&D costs money that has to be paid back. Sure MS can sell for $1 or $10 per copy, or they can pay you to take the OS. That kind of dumping is a short-term marketing gimmick. In the long run they have to make money. As long as they protect their core profit makers from Linux (business contracts and mainstream PC sales involving the insanely profitable Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office) then they can afford to give away their software for very little money for other things. In fact it may even be a requirement to keep their current markets to sell windows for cheap for these 'netbooks'. It's a loss-leader. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader They can maintain their profitable markets by selling to other markets at below cost. Software, being software, it costs zero to make copies. It's like owning a money machine if you can protect your core profitable markets from competition. Right now you have all this infrastructure for Windows. Microsoft has schools at every level training people on Microsoft software. They have Mom and pop computer stores and things like Geek Squad that cover their support costs. People regularly pay hundreds of dollars to have other people reinstall Windows and their applications after a virus destroys their OS. Businesses see very little upfront costs in training users... As long as they specify that employees are required to have a college degree of some sort then those employees already paid the money to get themselves trained for Microsoft software. All this support, all this infrastructure at all levels of our society are geared at maintaining Microsoft software and absorbing the negative costs of it. Microsoft is effectively isolated from these costs. What is there for Linux? No school, no Circuit City will fix your Linux box. There is no support for it. Most of the software people are familiar with won't run on Linux without headaches. Businesses have to absorb all the costs of training for Linux. Right now users are forced to download, install, and maintain a complex OS in a way that they have never been required to do for Windows. If I go to the local computer shop and show them a Linux system and ask them to fix it they won't have a clue. Microsoft will do everything they can, anything they can, to prevent Linux from getting any sort of mainstream acceptance. If these linux-based 'netbooks', and other extreme low-end systems, continue take off then they will fail.. hardware fails, software has bugs. People will want to run the software on the netbooks on their PCs and almost all of it is open source. This creates a economic demand for supporting Linux. Stores will want to hire people with Linux skills. Small and medium businesses will start to see Linux and open source software for the first time. Schools will have Linux systems, and students of all ages will see and use open source software. That's it. Whatever Microsoft loses to Linux it will never get back. They know this. Like sand through their fingers. This is how Microsoft works: When I started learning Linux the only place to get it was from the bookstore. I couldn't download it, I didn't know anybody that used it for anything. The reason I started with it is because I was working on a network administration degree and I couldn't afford the Microsoft software to use at home. I got lots of junk PCs for free, but I couldn't afford the software. I knew that the school wasn't doing a good job, so I was forced to learn most of this stuff on my own. (and learning Linux worked fantastically) Towards the end of my degree Linux was starting to get mentioned. We were all poor, all students, and couldn't remotely afford the software that we were learning to use. Linux was fantastically powerful system, but few people had any understanding of it. You know what happened? Microsoft started a sweeping program to give students who were enrolled in 'IT'-related degrees no-cost software. I went into the computer lab, filled out my name on a piece of paper, and was handed cdroms and software keys by the handfuls. I got XP home, XP pro, Windows 2000 pro, Windows 2000 server, Windows 2000 advanced server, Windows 2000 datacenter. I could get any development software I wanted, I could get software for a entire LAN of computer and do a real-life active directory environment for zero cost in dollars. I walked away with legal copies of probably 15-20 grand worth of Microsoft software and it didn't cost Microsoft a dime.
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 7, 2008 8:25 UTC (Sat) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] > They hold the gates to the internet for 95%+ people out there > and they are very careful about what they let in. Actually, IE share is 73% and decreasing. While it's true that Microsoft can survive a steep decline in OS revenues, it will definitely hurt them. Wall Street will not be happy, the stock price will decline, shareholders and employees will become more unhappy, management will have to think more carefully about the bottom line and stop funding certain projects, etc. This process has already started; for example, Microsoft Research has stopped hiring in most areas.
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 10, 2008 17:29 UTC (Tue) by lotzmana (subscriber, #3052) [Link] > What is there for Linux? No school, no Circuit City will fix your Linux box. There is no support for it. Most of the software people are familiar with won't run on Linux without headaches. Businesses have to absorb all the costs of training for Linux. Right now users are forced to download, install, and maintain a complex OS in a way that they have never been required to do for Windows. If I go to the local computer shop and show them a Linux system and ask them to fix it they won't have a clue. It is very hard, almost impossible, for software vendors to distribute software to users of Linux OS. Even if software is open source/free, the channel goes only via the update of the entire distribution. This is not viable. People would wish to download and install programs about which they read reviews or recommended by friends, and they will fail. Even a Linux friendly software developer will face unsurmountable obstacles in distributing his software. Windows has great advantage in this regard. Downloading and installing programs which are outside the prepackaged depository of the distribution is virtually impossible for non-programmers. That is a hurdle which doesn't exist on Windows.
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 12, 2008 4:07 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] I know you're trolling, but what you're saying is ridiculous. Have you ever actually tried this? On my Ubuntu box, I use FireFox to browse and I find a link to a .deb package. I click on it. I get a dialog box that shows a description of the package, notifies me that it requires a few extra packages to be installed (with a "Details" button next to it if I want to learn more about them), and has a big "Install Package" button next to it. There are extra tabs if I want more details on who created the package, etc. or a list of the files contained in the package. In the case of my test, the program even recognized that there was a newer version of that same package already available in the default repositories and asked me if I wanted to use that instead. If I select install it will ask for my password, then download all the prerequisites and the package and install them all, no problem. That's it for a one-off install. For companies that want to provide ongoing support you just have to add their repository (fully doable through the GUI as well) and then you'll get automatic updates for those packages, just like any official repository package. The reality is that Windows installs can't come close to the ease and efficiency of Linux installs. The only problem with Linux installs is that companies aren't making the packages available in the first place.
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 12, 2008 19:12 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] No offense, but it is you who seems to be trolling. The GP's comment is pretty insightful. First of all, what you are describing is incorrect. You cannot install a package in this way if it happens to have dependencies which are not in the standard OS repository. Telling your user to edit /etc/apt/sources.list ... Yeah, good luck with that. Secondly, have you ever tried to install the same package on Ubuntu *and* Debian ? Or on two different versions of Ubuntu ? Or on Fedora ? And lastly, have you tried to create a binary package for more than one distribution and version ? Did you test those packages ? On all distributions ?? :-) There is another aspect to all this which you are also ignoring - users cannot simply go to a web site (Open Office, or Mozilla, or whatever) and download and install a newer version of the software. It will conflict with the one in the distributions repository, there will be problems with upgrades, etc. So, most users are conditioned to ignore newer versions of software, until their distro packages them. What is worse, their are forced to upgrade their entire OS, even if they only needed a newer version of one package. I could go on an on about this for ever. The reality is, for better or worse, it is immensely easier to distribute software for Windows, despite of "DLL hell".
Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) Posted Jun 12, 2008 10:33 UTC (Thu) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link] I'm not Canonical so I have no idea how to run their business, but I suspect that it may not be wise to freak out and "bet the company" on Linux desktops just because the Vista window is rapidly closing. The window of consumer backlash is mostly based on Microsoft's offering being too slow and too expensive. Both of these can be readily mitigated by Microsoft in a pinch without making a dent in their profits, it is easy for them to offer a cut down Vista very cheap. So I doubt this is a very good opportunity in a business sense. Linux on the desktop does make sense, but in the long run and on it's own merits not as a cheap replacement for Windows.
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