Moore's Law Is Microsoft's Latest Enemy 395
Glyn Moody writes "Until now, the received wisdom has been that GNU/Linux will never take off with general users because it's too complicated. One of the achievements of the popular new Asus Eee PC is that it has come up with a tab-based front end that hides the complexity. But maybe its real significance is that it has pushed down the price to the point where the extra cost of using Microsoft Windows over free software is so significant that ordinary users notice. As Moore's Law drives flash memory prices even lower, can ultraportables running Microsoft Windows compete?"
Yes? Is this a question? (Score:2, Insightful)
Familiarity isn't worth that much (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot less people all the time. Every single electronic gizmo nowadays has its own menu system, along with half the websites and such. People are used to learning slightly different interfaces all the time these days, 'familiarity' is much less of a barrier. And then there's the fact that Vista's Aero interface isn't all that familiar to XP-users compared to the latest Linux systems, anyway.
There are still plenty of dealbreakers - niche Windows-only software - but those niches are shrinking, and 'familiarity' alone isn't enough to save Windows forever.
Re:Familiarity isn't worth that much (Score:3, Insightful)
I've met a few of these people... set up a network with an Active Directory domain at a church about 4 years ago, and the secretary still can't grasp the concept of a user account being the same anywhere on the network, and occasionally sends an e-mail asking for the password for another computer. In this case, she couldn't handle the difference between the Win95/NT/2k style taskbar and the Playskool-looking one in XP, so even apart from issues of taste (avoiding the tacky blue and green), running anything other than the "Classic" look and feel would be too much of an adjustment for her. More typically, the color schemes are something that people seem to be able to handle changes in, so long as the layout is the same. There are millions of these people out there - they're the masses of regular users for whom Microsoft does massive market research towards designing a UI that will work for them as well as the rest of us.
It's not that they couldn't have learned the Gnome or Nautilus (or MacOS) UIs, but that they've now learned how to do what they need in the Windows Explorer UI by rote and are too intimidated to try anything else. From their perspectives, it's a completely different system to memorize, and there's little (if any) incentive to do so.
Re:Yes? Is this a question? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yes? Is this a question? (Score:2)
Re:Yes? Is this a question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes? Is this a question? (Score:3)
I mostly do programming (intense computational, big arrays, lots of math, 3D graphics) and play a MMO occasionally when I have the time, so the RAM is welcome by both applications. 1.5G on Vista is plenty for both in my case.
Don't get me wrong I like linux, here at work I have two computers under my desk, one is XP, one is RHEL, but Vista really isn't as bad as people paint. A $350 laptop will run it just fine.
Re:Yes? Is this a question? (Score:3)
I have 6 tabs open on Firefox, and I've been using it continuously since this morning, and it's only taking up 70 MB of RAM. I never understood how people got it up to 200 MB. Maybe if you leave it open for weeks at a time, then eventually it piles up, but for the most part, I've never experienced Firefox going up to 200 MB.
This is how you do it:
Home PC:
5 windows, 73 tabs, 420M memory usage.
Work PC:
8 windows, 110 tabs, 550M memory usage.
The point I'm trying to make though, is that just running vista and browsing your files with explorer requires at least 1 GB to do smoothly. Wouldn't it be nice if it required a more sane amount of memory, for doing such trivial things, so that applications that needed memory, like MMO, Office suites, browsers, and image/video editing could make use of the memory you had?
The OS gets out of the way when the memory is required by apps, as designed. Further, the extra memory is so cheap it's practically free. Personally I don't see it as important - I haven't had a PC with less than 2G of RAM for ~4 years now and hadn't had one with less than 1G for ~4 years before that.
Re:Yes? Is this a question? (Score:3)
Internal intranet site (static)
Google news (reloads)
School webmail (static)
GMail
Slashdot (static)
Gamasutra (static)
And am consuming 166M at the moment.
The point I'm trying to make though, is that just running vista and browsing your files with explorer requires at least 1 GB to do smoothly. Wouldn't it be nice if it required a more sane amount of memory, for doing such trivial things, so that applications that needed memory, like MMO, Office suites, browsers, and image/video editing could make use of the memory you had?
1GB of RAM is like what, $20? $30 in a notebook? And it's not like it's hog tied to explorer.exe, the OS utilizes the free resources and gives it up when needed, giving it to programs like firefox and MSVC and whatever else I'm doing at the moment. Yeah, I'll take 1.5G on Vista over 0.5G on Linux, anyday
Re:Yes? Is this a question? (Score:2)
Re:Yes? Is this a question? (Score:3, Insightful)
so let's see you can get a $600 'windows' laptop that has $400 worth of hardware that BARELY runs windows XP acceptably, and you can forget vista compatibility... or you can get a laptop with $150 worth of hardware that runs a specific variant of linux that is streamlined for the 'cheap' system hardware.
this is why sub $200 laptop projects are so dependent on Linux. If you streamline it and skip the modern Linux bloatware, you can probably make an even cheaper Linux laptop. India is focusing on trying to get a sub $20 piece of hardware that can be used as a 'school' computer, at that price point they're looking at little more than a cell phone, redesigned to run educational software, but that's not like it's missions impossible.
if you know what feature set you want to implement, it's really much easier to fix linux to work within your constraints, than to try to make everything work in 'windows ce'
so basically the only competitor to linux on the 'cheap laptop platform' is to make a windows ce device into a laptop... and i have to wonder if the WinCE license lets you run it on a laptop style device at all.
besides which, windows ce is only available from Microsoft (end users can't buy it) so you can't convert say a super cheap linux laptop into a win ce laptop unless you're the company selling it.
windows ce is popular for a windows based thin client (pda's aren't as popular as they once were) and some cell phones run CE, and you definitely could run ce on a stripped-down (hardware wise) windows based laptop, but then you loose all the advantages of open source software.
but realistically if these 'ultra cheap' laptops start coming out in mass quantities, windows CE is the only weapon Microsoft has to try to compete.
yeah, right (Score:3, Insightful)
No, thanks.
I would rather use OO, not because it is cheaper, but because it is more familiar.
Maybe If They Ran Windows 3.1? (Score:2)
Re:Maybe If They Ran Windows 3.1? (Score:2)
Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
*Shakes head*
Get out of mom's basement once in a while, guys.
Re:Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
The school district I grew up at pays MS $400,000 every year for the software assurance program (and then $75,000 to Symantec to secure it). The total budget is about 150 Million. This can not be sustained.
Windows can not compete with Linux. That's why they use lock-in, FUD, etc.
Re:Slashdot (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot (Score:2)
In the meantime, proprietary software will do quite well. It's really hard to get excited about something that's 100 years out.
I realize the "100 years" wasn't meant to be a precise number, but it does illustrate the point that, while it might seem highly probably that Open Source is going to *eventually* supplant Proprietary, you still have to live in the here-and-now.
Even so, I'm not fully convinced that proprietary software is going to vanish from the consumer market. For that to happen, it would require that there's no sufficiently desirable improvement over the current (at the time) state of Open Source/Free software. It does seem inevitable, but it's all to easy to underestimate how much room for improvement there is. For example, the apocryphal quote from (interestingly) about 100 years ago about everything inventable having already been invented. Or, just 10 years ago, did it seem logical that word processing programs from 2008 to *still* be sluggish on modern hardware?
So, that day may come, the day Open Source supplants Proprietary. Or it may not. But it's definitely not here now, and the cool thing about that day is that when it *does* come, those of us using Proprietary software will (by definition) have switched over to Open Source, so we end up using the best software the whole time.
Re:Slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
I use to be be a diehard Free Software avocate... Over time Free software has disapointed me, with dealling with with people who have many different motives Bragging rights, Software Purity, Freedome, etc... vs. dealing with a company who has one motive... To make money.
In a hundred years from now do you think any software stands a chance in hell? Computers and software as you know it today will be so antiquated You Newest and Fanciest Computer Today in a hundred years will be like those Machanical Adding Machienes 100 years ago. If not true AI at least good enough to get and alter data when you need it will probably just a thought away, stored in a spec imbedded in your earwax.
All this fuss about priority and open source software may be just a bit footnote in some history book
Re:Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Propietary TENDS to have closed standards by its very nature - it's just a logical procession by the coders of closed source unless forced to otherwise by outside circumstances.
Re:Slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure. Why would you think proprietary software would "go away"?
It just is not sustainable to have every business, school, and government paying 1 provider of software for an operating system.
Agreed. But these two points within your paragraph are non-sequitur. ("Proprietary Sotware" != "Operating System)
What's happening in software is the same thing that happens to any marketplace that gets commoditized... the base price of the commodity (EG: Operating System) drops to a very low level based on the cost of production and distribution. But value added can increase that price sharply.
A tomato is quite cheap. Tomatoes made into salads and served on attractive plates by sexy waitresses in fancy restaurants are not cheap. The value added is in the air of the restaurant, the clean plate, the sexy waitress, and the tasty salad.
Grocery store tomato is analogous to OSS software.
Restaurant is analogous to proprietary software.
It's been happening in marketplaces for a long, long, LONG time.
Yes and No (Score:5, Insightful)
This is somewhat akin to asking in 1920 "100 years from now, do you think Ford's cheap cars have a chance?".
At the rate we are going, it's entirely possible that the Ford Motor Company will go Chapter 11 (or more likely be bought by some other company) and for all intents and purposes cease to exist. In both cases, there is broad mass appeal in the first wave of a technology adaption, and a cash horde and corporate infrastructure with "legs".
In 1920, electric and steam were still competitive engine technologies. In the 1920s it was probably apparent to most that gasoline engines would dominate. This happened, and the engine in mass-market autombiles was fundamentally the same (emission, computer, and many other refinements aside, still the same fundamental technology) until hybrids were mass-marketed in the late-90s. Now it looks like hybrids might dominate some day; but gasoline-only had quite a run, didn't it?
100 years from now, who knows what the trend in computing will be? Maybe most people won't even have general-purpose computers. Maybe they'll just have boxes with a dozen killer apps built into hardware for better reliability, because the "do it in software first" stage of development will be considered "done".
Or, maybe the introduction of inexpensive multiprocessing technology, smart non-volatile memory, or some other combination of these will reveal deficiencies in OS design that require re-writing the OS from scratch, and maybe that OS will dominate for 30 years. 100 years from now is enough time to fit about 3 lifetimes of MS and *NIX. In other words, 100 years is a long time even in a conservative technology like automobiles, nevermind tech where 10 years is an "eternity".
Re:Slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
*Shakes head*
And yes, I can shake my head too.
LoB
Re:Slashdot (Score:2)
The one inherent advantage Windows has is in the big name and industry niche applications written for it (Linux wins hands down on small size apps normal people use day to day - for instance k3b > nero). If the big name apps were ever to migrate their software, I could forsee big troubles for Microsoft. Today looking for tax software at Walmart, I saw a dozen different packages produced by 3 competing reputable companies (Intuit, H&R Block, forget the third). It would take only one of those companies to see Linux desktop as a great untapped market and transfer their product to it to start the slide in that area.
And with Walmart sucessfully selling low end Linux PCs, I could see that happening. When? I don't know. But Vista helped. I have it, I run it. It's okay on a powerful machine but it uses too many resources out of the box compared to Ubuntu. Thus people can get cheaper machines to check their email and surf with Ubuntu on it.
So many small businesses/people tend to stick to Windows because of just one or two apps as well. I know several business that just used Quickbooks and/or ebay's Blackthorne that would love to get off of windows if a decent alternative was present. For some, that alternative is available today (not true many years ago when websites were IE only). For others, they'll have to wait.
I'm interested in not if, but how long.
And advertising/capitalism is Linux's enemy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And advertising/capitalism is Linux's enemy (Score:5, Informative)
XP on EEE (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows XP will soon go out of print (Score:5, Interesting)
Flexibility Not Price (Score:4, Interesting)
The inability (well, ok, extreme difficulty in) to skin/specialize the user interface is going to hurt them. Microsoft appears to be mentally permanently stuck in one-size-fits-all land. And to be fair, it would be really hard to let people customize as deeply as they need to without letting them muck with the deep details of your OS.
Re:Flexibility Not Price (Score:5, Insightful)
Only because of how MS made its OS. Some OS's *cough*Linux*cough*BSD*cough* let you choose among dozens of different UI's without messing with the kernel.
The Intel Atom processor (Score:2)
Re:The Intel Atom processor (Score:2)
Despite recent events [slashdot.org], I'm betting systems with this chip will have the "Vista Capable" logo. :-)
Shiny stickers sell systems!
Parent is incredibly insightful (Score:2)
When half of the WinTel duopoly puts out a new processor two years after the introduction of the other half's latest operating system, that won't even run it, that is significant.
Microsoft should not have started OEM'ing AMD PCs in India with Zenith.
I think they don't (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think ordinary users notice. When I talk to my non-tech-savvy friends, they usually ask me if this or that price is right for a given computer, mostly without taking into cosideration its characteristics (Once a girl I know asked me if a 300 price tag for a laptop could be right, and when I asked for specs, she only replied "Acer"). Besides, we've got big PC stores here (like PC City) whose prices can be 50% more expensive than those you find in smaller, franchised, specialized shops, and they still sell the most.
So no, ordinary users will judge the price based on how awesome the salesman tells them it is (and, of course, if it doesn't come with Windows, don't bother calling it a PC, please, it just confuses them).
$3 is not significant on a $200 computer (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$3 is not significant on a $200 computer (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft can only afford the $3 XP license in the third world because the entire cost of XP development is paid by the people paying the high price of licenses in the first world. If they start making similarly low-cost Windows license available in the first world, where not only will they compete with Linux (good for MS), they will also provide a low cost alternative to Microsoft's more expensive OS earnings (bad for MS), then they risk destroying the market that is paying the premium that covers their fixed costs so that they can have a low-cost third-world version that makes a slim profit only because the entire fixed cost of development has already been paid for by the market in the developed world.
The only way Microsoft can survive if it does that is if (1) it can transform its business model to rely more on making money on service and support for business rather than software licenses, or (2) it can manage to raise the cost early adopters of its top-line OS's pay even more, without somehow losing all its early adopters.
If need be, they'll give windows away (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft can make money on windows without charging for it; they can charge $15/copy for the minicomputer version. Microsoft has an endless number of strategies, which they will employ to keep market dominance for as long as they can.
There will be a whole *series* of retrenchments. Microsoft is in a very powerful, very profitable place, so they will fight each retrenchment as hard as they can - but they're not stupid, they've got contingency plans to stay in the market and, frankly, to stay extremely profitable whatever happens. Put another way: they can compete with free, maybe not on a level playing field, but on the playing field that exists, and they intend to do so.
Forcing them to compete, even on a biased field, is good for the rest of us, so I'm all for it. But driving MS out of any market segment is going to be extremely difficult.
Re:If need be, they'll give windows away (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past, MS has effectively given away software -- in the form of licenses that could be used on two computers: so that a license bought for a work machine could be taken home and used on the home machine.
Microsoft has two advantages over Linux: familiarity and applications. Recent Linux distributions are as easy, if not easier to use than Windows, but many applications (such as iTunes) are simply not available on Linux. Both of these advantages can be swept away if Linux gains a significant foothold in the desktop market.
I just wish that Apple would see that helping Linux would also help Apple. Breaking MS's dominance is the most important goal and Linux can help that to happen.
MS strikes back (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.blogeee.net/2008/03/06/le-eeepc-900-uniquement-avec-windows-xp-dapres-asus-france/ [blogeee.net]
The good news is that the French customer is very well protected and forcing a software with a PC down their throat is illegal. So essentially, what will happen is thousands of geeks demanding reimbursement of the XP licenses. That oughta hit Asus really hard, and teach them a good lesson.
I read that Asus Germany announced a similar "forced sale", but can't seem to find the article.
Sure they can! (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure they can! Sure, Linux is free, but Windows can be also made free. After all, it's not like it's not already amortized, or something. They can even _pay_ the PC makers to put Windows inside, if it's just in some models. Linux cannot really compete with that, can it?
Royalty-based Windows components (Score:2)
Operating SYSTEM, not environment (Score:2)
Re:Sure they can! (Score:2)
How many of us would load Vista even if it was free?
XP Starter (Score:2)
If low-cost Linux machines become more & more popular, I'd expect to see Microsoft broaden the market for the cheapest Windows editions.
Failure of Moore's law is more of a threat to MS (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft can not possibly maintain 10 operating systems with radically different code bases and programming interfaces. In fact it's likely that some use scenarios will be too specialized for a commercial company and will instead be realized by open-source coding by the prospective users. Eee-PC and OLPC are already more about failure of Moore's law that it's continuation. People want to have a cheap, light and silent notebook with extraordinary battery life, but the technology to run Vista+Aero on such a machine is not anywhere on the horizon. So it suddenly makes more sense to run Linux in order to have the hardware that the user wants.
Clear for a long time (Score:5, Interesting)
If a P3 500Mhz system was coded with the efficiency and elegance that prevailed on the Commodore 64, your OS and every application running would be so blazingly fast as to seem instantaneous, and with 1GB RAM you would not require a harddrive for anything except storing large image/music/video files. Instead, my early-generation P4 2ghz machine at work with 2GB of RAM chugs and sputters and stutters along and I can't wait to get home and use my 'powerful' personal machine that operates much faster. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Re:Clear for a long time (Score:2)
If a P3 500Mhz system was coded with the efficiency and elegance that prevailed on the Commodore 64, your OS and every application running would be so blazingly fast as to seem instantaneous
That's probably true. The other effect is your applications would do 1/5 as much, and there'd be 1/5 the choices.
Programmers don't use processor and memory resources because they have some perverse need to use more and more resources. They do it because they can develop applications faster because they can develop applications faster by re-using code, working in memory-managed application, etc.
I do agree that Microsoft has pursued a "keep it expensive" strategy by using their monopoly power. The word processor and Spreadsheet haven't made any real improvements since at best Office 97, but the requirements keep going up. But the rest of the computing world has done the same thing. I can't really run a modern desktop Linux distribution like Ubuntu on a machine with 64 MB of memory. It might not be quite as aggressive as MS pursues, but the resource use is still prevalent.
Re:Clear for a long time (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the argument, but I don't buy it. As you even acknowledge, in many cases those choices are just fluff anyway, so why bother? What exactly do you do with your computer that didn't 8 years ago? What capabilities has all that additional cruft enabled?
Personally, I think the time has come for an old idea to return. We need to see the resurgence of low power, fixed (or mostly fixed) spec machines ala the Commodore 64 and the Amiga.
Force Development to return to "the bad old days" of using lower level, incredibly more efficient languages. Object Orientation has not just cost us in speed and memory usage, its nigh impossible to multi-thread as well. Turns out we need to turn back and dust off Procedural techniques to make use of new hardware. A return to ISO C, or possibly a new derivative with more advanced support for multithreading (but which would fundamentally work the same way). Object orientation is high level cruft to be discarded, and that means Python, C++, C#, Java, and a host of others get tossed out the window. Good Riddance.
Re:Clear for a long time (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep hearing this mantra, but I think a lot of it is a case of people looking at the past through rose-coloured glasses. Do people really think that software was more efficient in the days of the Commodore 64?
I remember in the late 1980s, a fair number of games for the PC would take at least 3 minutes to start up, just to initialize look-up tables and pre-render sprites! In the early 1990s, Netscape would literally take more than 45 minutes to start up on his PC. In the mid 1990s, I remember seeing, for the first time in my life, a game rendered at more than 30fps.
My point is, people are a lot less patient these days with computers. No one in their right mind is going to wait a minute for an application to start up, and certainly not 45 minutes for a browser!
If you want to know how bad software was in the 1980s, try to run some software from the 1980s. I used to think like you do, that software was incredibly efficient and incredibly well written in the 1980s. Then I tried to run some software from the 1980s. A game from the 1980s often runs slower on today's hardware than today's games do. There are all sorts of ill-conceived hard coded limits in old games. Take software from the 1980s and try to run it on data sets measuring in the gigabytes: no dice.
Again, people expect more from their software today than they did from yesteryear. I'm extremely suspicious of people who say that old software is more efficient/better written than today's software. I've used software from the C64 age. Guess what: IT SUCKED.
Re:Clear for a long time (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to know how bad software was in the 1980s, try to run some software from the 1980s.
I have to totally agree. Several months ago I was recovering data from my old C64/128 disks. The word processor of the time was really good by the standards of the time (80 columns? WOW!). In 2008 however it was a total piece of garbage. Forget about data sharing of export, those things didn't really exist. As far as features, one decent programmer could pretty easily recode the thing with the features it included in maybe a month.
Re:Clear for a long time (Score:3, Insightful)
I could dial into the big computer, download and compile code as fast as as any modern machine.
My video game consoles started immediately, and game play was real time.
Many computers started up rather quickly. Many applications started up rather quickly. MS did not.
I am not saying things did not suck, but it was more a matter of available resources and the state of the art. comparatively not that the code was bad. It is clear that code today is worse, and the good practices we were taught are no longer valid. At some point, programmers became more expensive than memory or cycles. At that point it no longer made economic sense to spend money writing something that would fit in 8K or ram, or run on the cheapest CPU, or avoid the need for a GPU. It would be cheaper for the consumer to go out and buy these things rather than pay the person-hours it would take to write. The end result is that we live in an age of clearly bloated framework, that require huge resources for even the simplest jobs, simply because it is cheaper for 1000 people to buy an extra gig of memory than to pay a person to write an efficient program. Who today would write a GUI(I have written parts of one, it is not the hardest thing to do) when there are so many available, even if one has to suffer with the bloat and silly API>
Re:Clear for a long time (Score:3, Insightful)
Does Linux run as fast as you describe an OS would if its authors didn't have ulterior motives?
More refined programming practices (Score:3, Interesting)
I do not believe there is anything malicious that has caused this inefficiency to rise. The cost of developing software means that slow and bloaty is what we end up producing as software engineers. It just makes more sense economically.
I hope that in the future, with capped per-core CPU speeds, we will see a renaissance in tight programming. Perhaps new languages will spring up that offer the efficiency of C++, but with the coding efficiency of ECMAScript4 or even C#. D is one such language [digitalmars.com], and there may be many more to come.
We may also see much smarter compilers built on ideas like LLVM [slashdot.org] that will offer statically compiled languages some of the benefits of dynamically compiled VM code, just as taking advantage of specific architectures, and extensive inter-process analysis of code.
With many software problems becoming better understood, we could see much more extensive system libraries that offer the same features as say the .net environment. Cocoa and QT4 are already heading in this direction, with a really feature rich set of libraries, but also with the eye on cutting down memory usage and CPU cycles. In the future, we may see much more optimized shared library usage for system-level applications. This will lead to a snappier user experience. We won't need to have 100s of megs of shared libraries duplicating so much across so many apps.
I think massive parallelism in user applications will never happen without a complete rethink from the OS up, or a new application development paradigm. Furthermore, most developers simply aren't up to writing thread-safe code - it's very hard to get right, and often you don't gain that much for standard applications. That's because of the types of problems being solved in typical applications. We're having a hard enough time writing single threaded apps regardless.
I admire the managed code empire that M$ has built into vista, but ultimately we may want better performance than this heavy-weight approach can offer. Both OS X and KDE are staying away from the managed code "heaven" for the time being. I believe that apple will find a way to make future versions of Objective-C have most of the benefits that managed code can offer, but also with extremely tight machine code.
rolling my eyes (Score:3, Insightful)
This is 100% true. (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe in ten years that won't be true. After all, I didn't really expect Word to overtake WordPerfect and other alternatives in the market the way it did back in the 90's... but even in that case, it's because something has happened to Office, not because of Moore's Law.
already started (Score:2)
received "wisdom" is wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you meant "perceived" wisdom. But in fact, I've installed Linux on several friend's PCs who had never used a computer before (Mandriva 8 IIRC). None of them have had any trouble whatever using it. In fact, I get fewer "how do I" phone calls from them with Linux/KDE than I did when their new machines were running Windows.
Gnu/Linux/KDE (and most likely Gnome as well, although since I haven't used it I can't say) is easier to use than Windows for a variety of reasons, the first being that stuff is put in logical places (at least with Suse and Mandriva) as opposed to Microsoft's way of putting stuff any old place. At least that's what it seems like; I can't see the logic of where Windows' stuff goes at all.
So please stop spreading this this FUD. It's simply not true. Windows is NOT easier to use than Linux.
Re:received "wisdom" is wrong (Score:2)
Treo Palm vs Treo Windoze (Score:2)
Treo 755p (palm) - 320x320 screen, 312mhz processor
Treo 750 (windows)- 240x240 screen (looks like crap compared to Palm), 300mhz processor
The windows version does have a persistant file system and the palm does not, which is nice if your battery and backup battery both die, but this has never happened in my 4 years of owning a treo.
The price difference? The windows one costs $100 more, for (imo vastly) inferior hardware.
No. (Score:4, Funny)
No, it can't.
Here, on this laptop:
# du -sx
4677115
# du -sx
2026303
# echo "4677115 - 2026303" | bc
2650812
(This is Gentoo so you need to subtract about 300M for the metadata caches,etc. Also,
2 1/2 Gig. That's it. Sure I could slim it down more if needed (I don't really use timidi much at all, etc.).
That's for a FULL, USABLE Operating System. OOo, Full install of KDE, several other User things that make this machine (a near 9 year old laptop) a User's PC and not a "workstation".
Given that same space, Windows will get your machine to boot to a Desktop and that's about it. Linux will soar on flash drives, especially with them getting larger and cheaper. Windows (unless you run CE...
How Linux can compete with Windows (Score:3, Insightful)
+ Simplify the interface and make it usable
- As much as I love KDE, there are just too many options.
- GNOME needs to be more usable. Sometimes I think that it was made for 5 year olds.
- Once you get over the fact that Office 2007 is not Office 2003, Office 2007 is a good example of how to make things simple AND usable.
+ Get support from big companies that sell to schools
+ Increase interoperability with Windows applications
Linux is on its way and I think that Windows XP highlights just how far Linux has come. As much as it many not seem like it, Windows may have moved more towards Linux than vice versa. Linux developers need to understand what Apple has done. Linux is great, but I think that the people who develop it don't understand the people who actually use the products!
Re:How Linux can compete with Windows (Score:3, Insightful)
GNOME needs to be more usable. Sometimes I think that it was made for 5 year olds.
A lot of irony in this comment. The sign of a great UI is that the young and uninitiated can easy learn them.
Actually, Moores' law is what keeps MS afloat (Score:5, Insightful)
Eventually, Open Office and Linux would catch and match them feature for feature, so new customers would have no incentive to go with the proprietary solution, since their protocols would eventually be reverse engineered bug for bug, feature for feature, driver for driver. The only way MS keeps Linux at bay is by releasing new feature laden stuff that takes advantage of new, updated hardware.
My prediction: The end of Moore's law will herald the end of Microsoft.
MS Enemy? (Score:3, Funny)
- Put their own lawyers on the case. To extra effect, make Ballmer shout "Lawyers, Lawyers, Lawyers"
- Buy another law, rename to MS Law, include it with new versions of Vista for free, and put the Moore Law out of the market
- Patent something related to some of the words of the moore law, and sue anyone trying to use it
- Finance a dying company to sue Moore for prior art.
- Add some undocumented code in Windows, to make it stop working if the Moore law tries to come into effect (they already are doing a good work in this direction)
Simplicity does not mean usability (Score:5, Interesting)
The main problem Linux faces is not that it's too complex, but that it's designed with a philosophy that tends to value "technologically correct" above all else. There are times when being less precise, less technically oriented, less detailed or less optioned is better for the human user, even if it is not as "true" to the computer itself. Apple seems to explicitly understand this, Microsoft seems to sort of intuit this without understanding it (so they don't make the right choices, but they realize such choices need to be made, which is better than nothing), while on Linux, this seems to be poorly understand, and often seen as a negative.
With most cases of usability efforts on Linux, it's often just trying to copy (and improve upon) some existing system (GIMP vs Photoshop, KDE vs Windows, GNOME vs Mac OS (classic), etc.), it's an attempt to be more usable for admin-types (dselect, aptitude, etc.), or--and this is where Linux truly falls flat on its face--when someone attempts to make a truly usable Linux, they don't think, "let's make a Linux that works the way people work," they think, "let's make an interface that is so simple, even an idiot can use it." Instead of respecting the humanity of their target audience, they insult them.
That is a problem Moore's Law can't do anything about.
Linux won't truly take off until they stop insulting the normal person, and start respecting them. Ubuntu is close, but it's still too technically-oriented. The thing is, though, I'm not sure this is a bad thing. It might be, as it does keep Linux from being a mainstream OS, but on the other hand, it *is* an excellent OS for the people who are more technically-minded, and prefer absolute control, who value technology over aesthetics and the humanity of the interface. If Linux truly evolved to become a user-oriented OS, it would leave a void for the technical user. I suppose there'd still be the DIY Linux distros, plus there's always BSD or Plan 9, or some new OS yet to be created. Still, I'm not sure that if a User-Oriented Linux became a major OS player, that the more bare-bones technically-oriented Linuxes wouldn't find themselves losing significant attention by both users and developers alike.
Re:Simplicity does not mean usability (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect that given the choice, most users would opt for the simplicity of something like XFCE over the ever-intrusive, incredibly annoying, and totally persistent Windows popups.
I'm still waiting for outlook to pop up with a "You got your latest installement of pr0n" email over a powerpoint presentation. I don't know how the h*ll people get anything done with the constant annoying whining that windows does about *everything* it does.
See, you got email.
See, I checked for viruses.
See, I'm going to upgrade your system.
See, I'm gonna annoy the sh*t out of you.
Last time I checked ... (Score:2)
Microsoft will threaten Asus (Score:4, Funny)
It could go something like this:
Microsoft, "You have a nice business here; you sell a lot of motherboards."
Asus, "We sure do. The motherboard business has been very very good to us."
Microsoft, "And we at Microsoft have always been good to you, right?"
Asus, "Well... there was the tablet fiasco. Remember how you convinced many of us...
Microsoft, "Nevermind that. I am talking about all the help and access you get in order to write all your drivers for Windows. We have always been there for you, right?
Asus, "Well... Vista didn't...
Microsoft, "Forget about Vista for now! Just how far would you get without confidential access to all our operating systems?
Asus, "We couldn't sell any motherboards to Windows users, just Linux, BSD, Solaris...
Microsoft, "In other words, You Would Be SCREWED!"
Asus, *hangs head* "What do you want?"
Microsoft, "We are not happy about your $200 little laptop running Linux."
Asus, "But we can't stop it now - we have taken orders..."
Microsoft, "We want you to offer it with Windows!"
Asus, "But Windows is too big and too expensive and...
Microsoft, "Let me tell you what you are going to do. (1) You are going to raise the price to $400 instead of $200. (2) Then you are going to offer a Windows XP version for $395. (3) Then you are going to make a larger version that will actually work with XP.
Asus, "But our original version is underpowered and doeesn't have enough storage for XP and Office..."
Microsoft, "Too bad. Our customers have to become used to much less performance - haven't you tried Vista yet? And you leave the storage problem to us - once we trim out all the useless crap XP will fit - so will Office. It will still be slow but who cares."
Asus, "But our customers..."
Microsoft, *screaming* "They aren't YOUR customers!!! They are OUR customers!!! The only reason they buy your motherboards and computers is to run OUR operating system. And if you don't cooperate with us, you just may have all kinds of problems getting the information you need to create the drivers for your new products. UNDERSTAND?"
*CRASH*
Asus, "Yeah, sure. We understand Mr. Ballmer... Could I get you another chair?"
Microsoft, "Maybe later. Where are the girls?"
And so it goes, Microsoft Standard Operating Procedure for the last 25 years.
Ed (UnDead)
what cost? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is also the issue of people who have licenced windows in the past and thrown away those machines. I expect to see consumer issues if consumers can't transfer those lic. Esp., in Europe with the regulators having MSFT in their sights.
With only 1 Billion PCS in a world of nearly 6 Billion, I still feel the world needs a $25 computer.
The secret to being a financial genius ... (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference between geniuses who made a bundle in the dot com bubble and the fools who were left holding the bag?
Timing.
It's been clear for a long time that sooner or later Microsoft's license based business model is going to be seriously undermined, especially at the low end. It goes without saying that somebody is going to be making money off this development (possibly including Microsoft itself, if it is smart). The problem is nobody knows for certain which it is: sooner or later? There's really only one way to find out: to give it a try.
The Asus approach is quite interesting; they've tried to define a new niche. This makes is much more likely that they'll have a modest success even if the time is not ripe for the Microsoft model to crumble, while getting a toe over the line if it turns out that the land rush is about to start.
Pertains to density at a given price (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pertains to density at a given price (Score:5, Funny)
Why don't you actually read the Wikipedia article? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, if you'd bothered to look at the article, you'd find that the quote provides a citation, and that citation points to a PDF file of the article in which Moore made the statement in question:
ftp://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Articles-Press_Releases/Gordon_Moore_1965_Article.pdf [intel.com]
In short, you lose on both style and substance.
Yeah, but (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why don't you actually read the Wikipedia artic (Score:2, Funny)
I seriously thought you meant the line about goats. I was trying to search that PDF for "zionist" and "goat" and wondering why I couldn't find it!
Sorry to post twice, but thanks for the (Score:2)
"With unit cost falling as the number of components per
circuit rises, by 1975 economics may dictate squeezing as
many as 65,000 components on a single silicon chip
Certainly over the short term this rate
can be expected to continue, if not to increase."
oh know, not 65,000! heh, I love how times have changed.
Re:Pertains to density at a given price (Score:2)
Re:Pertains to density at a given price (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pertains to density at a given price (Score:5, Insightful)
The text you describe appears nowhere in the article [wikipedia.org] for Moore's Law. This should come as no surprise, since Moore's Law is named after Gordon Moore, not Steven Moore.
I figured that would have at least gone to the trouble to vandalize the article yourself and add in such garbage. However, a quick look at the page's history [wikipedia.org] shows that you did not even go to the trouble to do that. (not that it matters; vandalism on Wikipedia is typically reverted in under a minute.)
Congratulations, you are not only a liar, but you are also lazy. Please take your poorly made strawman arguments elsewhere.
So... (Score:3, Funny)
and Steve Moore was rebuilt faster and stronger.
Wait...
Re:Pertains to density at a given price (Score:3, Funny)
Here's a choice quote [wikipedia.org] from the page you gave: "Steven Moore was a well known ultra-Zionist that was known to make romantic passes at goats."
Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price (Score:5, Funny)
Dammit.
Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price (Score:5, Insightful)
It's such a well-known thing that anyone who makes the inference that Moore's law has anything to do with price is an idiot.
In fact, the relation between Moore's Law and price is so well known, that I'd say anyone who thinks it has *nothing* to do with price is the idiot...
Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price (Score:2)
it's called a corollary (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=2 [wired.com]
"WASTE AND WASTE AGAIN
Forty years ago, Caltech professor Carver Mead identified the corollary to Moore's law of ever-increasing computing power. Every 18 months, Mead observed, the price of a transistor would halve. And so it did, going from tens of dollars in the 1960s to approximately 0.000001 cent today for each of the transistors in Intel's latest quad-core. This, Mead realized, meant that we should start to "waste" transistors."
Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price (Score:4, Informative)
Moore's law may pertain to transistor density, but increasing transistor density indirectly affects the price of chips at lower transistor densities.
Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price (Score:3, Informative)
It implicitly refers to transistor density at a given price. You've been to get $200 computers for many years, and Moore's law means that you can now get $200 laptops capable of running Linux and a GUI.
Re:Eee PC vs. REAL UMPCs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Eee PC vs. REAL UMPCs (Score:5, Interesting)
Everex has now come out with the Cloudbook (Linux) at WalMart so, now it is being exposed to the masses. The revolution is starting!
Not a revolution (Score:4, Interesting)
I am running a 289 dollar "piece of crap" desktop. I have been 4 four years. It plays WoW and does general work just fine... stupid computer, I promised i wouldn't by another one until it broke. I gave it a year.grrr.
Maybe I should install Vista, that would break it.
Re:Eee PC vs. REAL UMPCs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Eee PC vs. REAL UMPCs (Score:2)
Sites with fixed layouts that cannot accommodate browsers with screen widths under 1 kilopixel == not suitable to be web surfed.
Switching costs of using a different web site? (Score:2)
Re:Eee PC vs. REAL UMPCs (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Year of Linux on the Ultraportable? (Score:3, Insightful)
More than that, I installed Ubuntu from scratch myself, knowing nothing about Linux beyond what I could find on Google and had picked up from using the Eee for a week or so. The only thing that gave me significant trouble was the wireless card, but that's working fine after a bit of tweaking. I'm now using egrep, shell scripts and a bit of perl to do some great stuff which has advanced my PhD research (into medieval literature) astronomically.
The problem is not that Linux is in any way "unusable", but that many people are scared of learning to use new tools. I have genuinely come across a lot of people who think they will "break" their computer if they do anything beyond what Windows easily allows. Downloading codecs for MP3s or using the command line to move or rename a file would be terrifying for them because they fear the kind of hissy fits that Windows tends to throw if you tinker with it. We need to encourage people to understand that customising your OS, playing with it, trying things out, should be the norm - and that you really have to be quite clever to "break" a computer!
Re:The Year of Linux on the Ultraportable? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I had any mod points left you would have a couple headed in your direction right now, for ou have touched upon one of the biggest roadblocks in the adaptation of linux and other alternative OS's. Before we went to 100% FOSS in our office I had to convince our president that linux wasn't some sort of "virus" or "hacker's tool". Not that I could blame her though; between the copious amounts of FUD coming out of Redmond, and the natural human aversion toward anything not in our "comfort zone", it's no wonder that people have been hesitant to even so much as give another OS a fair shot.
On the other hand, another problem I've run into in trying to convince even my more computer-literate associates to switch is that most of these guys have cut their collective teeth on Windows OS's. They know every nut, bolt, registry and DLL hack of that system, and they kind of like their view from the top. They'll never admit it but their perception is that trying on an unfamiliar OS would force them to swallow some pride and put them back at the bottom of the learning curve. I guess some people's egos just can't bear to take that kind of hit.
Re:Eee isn't "better" than Windows (Score:4, Insightful)