Canonical reveals plans to launch Mir display server (The H) [LWN.net]

Canonical reveals plans to launch Mir display server (The H)

Posted Mar 6, 2013 8:40 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: Canonical reveals plans to launch Mir display server (The H) by mmcgrath
Parent article: Canonical reveals plans to launch Mir display server (The H)

[The hardware vendors] don't want to offer Linux because people don't want to buy it for their desktops.

Also (and mostly) because Microsoft will come down on them like a ton of bricks if they do. Since most of their business is selling Windows machines, losing that nice discount on Windows would be tough on them. Hardware vendors live by selling hardware, and if Microsoft didn't essentially pay them to push Windows they couldn't care less which OS went on their computers – they would happily sell you CP/M if it helped them move more boxes. Besides, the kickbacks from pre-installing junk software on top of Windows are nice if you're a hardware vendor.

If OSX were free (in every way) few would use the Linux desktop. It's not enough to be free anymore. It also has to be as good if not better.

The important point to remember here is that Apple is a hardware vendor. They're doing OS X not because they are in the business of making operating systems; they're doing OS X because it helps them shift boxes at higher margins than if they were Dell or HP. They didn't want others to sell computers based on Mac OS even way back when it sucked rocks, since what they really want is for people to buy Apple hardware. (In any event, Apple's main business these days is selling lifestyle gadgets rather than computers. They could stop making computers tomorrow and would still be highly profitable.)

There are people who will put Linux (or Windows) on their Apple computers because the computers are really rather nice if somewhat expensive. These people are not necessarily masochists. If OS X was clearly that much better in every respect than the other operating systems then that wouldn't ever happen.

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Canonical reveals plans to launch Mir display server (The H)

Posted Mar 6, 2013 21:54 UTC (Wed) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

>Also (and mostly) because Microsoft will come down on them like a ton of bricks if they do. Since most of their business is selling Windows machines, losing that nice discount on Windows would be tough on them. Hardware vendors live by selling hardware, and if Microsoft didn't essentially pay them to push Windows they couldn't care less which OS went on their computers – they would happily sell you CP/M if it helped them move more boxes. Besides, the kickbacks from pre-installing junk software on top of Windows are nice if you're a hardware vendor.

Yes the big "institutional" vendors, Dell, HP etc... might be exactly like that, like an implicit blackmail threat, comply and have bonus or else...

But what about letting the "potential" Stormy Peters do it lol (just an example with a picked name, nothing relevant or personal) http://lwn.net/Articles/541625/ ... i mean there can be many "local" smaller vendors in a model similar to the traditional white box model, but attaching themselves and their clients to a model resembling Android, with free and non-free (per say), paying or freeware "appstore"...

The main distros are only a repository / appstore, the local and other customizations is up to those small vendors that can derive a good business out of the hardware selling (and customization that could surpass windoze by miles, or any attempt to emulate by any distro-> simply because one size can't fit all).

This will break the Redmond barrier i'm sure.