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Free is too expensive (Economist)Free is too expensive (Economist)Posted Apr 8, 2012 11:26 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: Free is too expensive (Economist) by BlueLightning Parent article: Free is too expensive (Economist)
As someone who was involved in the handhelds.org community for a long time and the current maintainer of Opie (yes, it's still barely alive) I feel that Opie and GPE are being bandied about here as if they have significant relevance to the discussion at hand. Well, yes, is is. It was a few years ago now but after working for some time on handheld Linux I came to the unpleasant realisation that Opie, GPE and the Linux-based operating systems that they ran on where never, ever going to reach the masses. It was never going to happen. Hmm, that's my point exactly. Because they never came pre-installed mass-market devices (among many reasons why not, at the time, GPL was a problem for many companies) and getting them onto existing devices was an exceedingly difficult and risky procedure even for the moderately competent - much more difficult than installing Linux on a PC. Sure. But here is the problem: as time goes on it becomes harder to install Linux on PC, not easier. Not just things intended to close the ability to install Linux totally (like Secure Boot) - there are other efforts, too. These changes are slow because when they interfere with lives of general public general public pushes back, but the process is quite steady. Should we want till Linux desktop will reach the same stage as OPIE today? Or, perhaps, we need to do something to make sure it'll never happen. Note that even the reason which kept Linux niche open for years (you need some Linux-compatible hardware to develop server solutions) is no longer valid: Virtual PC works fine for that. Unlike PCs, the hardware was almost completely closed and differed for almost every new device, and we couldn't keep up. Well, the history repeats itself with GPU, at least. As Cyberax said: there's that sense of fin-de-siècle in the air - the current situation is unsustainable and Something Has To Happen. Either Linux desktop will finally reach general consumer or it'll die off. And the more I look on the situation the more likely it looks like we'll have both (like it happened on handhelds/mobiles): we'll get some kind of mainstream “Linux desktop”, but it'll be some kind of deep fork which will ignore most of the efforts which happened before it. Current distributions then follow the OPIE/GPE lead on the road to oblivion.
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Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 8, 2012 16:30 UTC (Sun) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] > as time goes on it becomes harder to install Linux on PC, not easier. Not in my experience. I first tried to install Linux on a PC around 1997 or 1998, and couldn't do it. Since then it's gradually gotten easier; the last few times I've installed Linux (most recent one was this past December or January), I had no trouble whatsoever. > Either Linux desktop will finally reach general consumer or it'll die off. That's pure FUD, nothing more.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 8, 2012 19:40 UTC (Sun) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] Oh, and: > Well, the history repeats itself with GPU, at least. Not so much; right now there are only three major desktop GPU manufacturers (Intel, AMD, nVidia), all of which have free drivers available for all GPU variants up to almost the newest ones, and the latter two manufacturers also have proprietary drivers for Linux. And for mobile GPUs, proprietary drivers for Linux are readily available, and work is underway on free drivers for one mobile GPU family/manufacturer.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 9, 2012 1:40 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Care to explain how can I use switchable GPUs (ATI and Intel - both officially supported) on my Sony VPCSE?
Right now I have to blacklist radeon driver, or it simply hangs with black screen.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 9, 2012 8:44 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
That's not because they're being evilly kept secret by nasty hardware manufacturers trying to destroy desktop Linux. It's because switchable GPUs is hard enough when they're *not* completely different GPUs with distinct drivers. Even the first case has only been working for a year or so.
(And the people working on these free drivers are funded by... AMD and Intel! Normally, you'll note, competitors.)
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 9, 2012 14:34 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
But that's exactly what khim and me is telling. Good switchable GPUs are a hard task to implement.
So vendors simply don't bother with Linux where it'll be useful only for a fraction of 1% of their users. NVidia hasn't even ported their Optimus technology to Linux in proprietary drivers.
In the area of switchable GPUs all we get is airled. And while he's a mega-super-developer, he can only do so much.
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