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Comments: 471 +- Hardware: Linux Desktop to Appear On Every Asus Motherboard on Wednesday May 14 2008, @12:05PM
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An anonymous reader writes "We first heard about Splashtop back in October, when the instant-on Linux desktop was announced. At the time it was a really exciting concept but Asus only rolled out the technology on high-end motherboards. Splashtop just announced that Asus will be expanding the desktop to the P5Q motherboard family and later on to all Asus motherboards. That's embedded Linux shipping over a million motherboards a month! The release also mentioned that the technology will be appearing on notebooks this year as well."
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Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not as much as I thought it would be, these motherboards should certainly boost that figure.
I wonder how long before Microsoft start shipping an embedded Windows version....
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's one thing to have your OS die and you've got to reboot. It's another if your motherboard dies and you've got to buy another.
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Interesting)
They'd probably push Embedded XP. They've already backflipped on XP availability for the Asus EeePC etc., which does nothing to improve the image of Vista. ("Look, our soon-to-be discontinued 2001 OS can compete with Linux in the 'ultra-low cost' computer market!")
However, I think they've painted themselves into a corner. If they bully Asus into providing an embedded XP version of the motherboards, the customer is bound to ask: "I don't want Vista; why can't I run XP as the OS on the same motherboard?" The more features that can be crammed into the embedded Linux version, the sillier Microsoft's inevitable justifications will seem ("It's not really XP", "you can't do real work in an embedded environment" etc.)
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Interesting)
I found that Puppy seems to be the best mix of size and usefulness,especially on former Win9X machines. I just think it is a shame how many functioning machines end up in the dumpster when they could be given a good home. Hell,my first gaming rig,which was a Pentium 100Mhz with a whopping 32Mb of RAM is still in use at a local lumbar company running DOS 3 as a ISA controller for an ancient lathe they have making custom columns. So the thought that folks will throw out a good running computer still just strikes me a wasteful to the extreme. But that is my 02c,YMMV.
Oh,and as a disclaimer-I have actually thrown out a running machine in the past. I had a girl bring in her old computer to see if I could upgrade it for her in class. This poor girl had actually been doing her schoolwork on a 30Mhz with 12Mb of Simm RAM running Win 3.11. I took one look at that ancient thing and told her to leave it and I'd see what I could do. When the girl left the teacher asked "you aren't actually going to try to UPGRADE that thing,are you?" I told him HELL no! And when she showed up the next day I presented her with a 550Mhz that one of my SOHO clients had donated. Last I heard her kid was still doing his reports on his "new" machine,just as happy as a clam. I tried for a week to find a use for that 30Mhz,but damned if I could find a use for it.
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? Asus reported 350k the last quarter of 2007, and 700k for first quarter 2008. They project 1.2 million for second quarter. However, a majority of that will be the models that come with Windows.
Not even close. Apple sold 1.4 million laptops first quarter. Asus's 700k plus the rest of the Linux laptop vendors don't come anywhere near that.
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:4, Insightful)
Many people have their user-agent say they're using IE on Windows even if they're using Linux, bacsue dimwits still code their pages to not display if you're not using IE ("please upgrade to a modern browser? It's Opera's latest!") So web site metrics can't be reliable either.
IINM it was Mark Twain (Samuel Clemons) who said "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and ststistics."
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Insightful)
But I get fed up.
Then I promptly switch back to whatever OS I feel like installing.
Then I get fed up again.
And I think 'Oh, someone on slashdot said that this is the time to switch to linux! I should try it AGAIN!'...
then I switch to linux.
Until I get fed up...
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Funny)
I switch to Widnows every month or so.
But I get fed up.
Then I promptly switch back to whatever Linux I feel like installing.
Then I get fed up again.
And I think 'All the marketing says that Windows is better than Linux! I should try it AGAIN!'...
then I switch to Windows.
Until I get fed up...
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact is it still takes a very informed choice to switch to Linux. This type of thing could go a long way towards solving that ("what, an operating system already onboard?!"), but at the same time this is only one manufacturer and its the kind of thing only people building their own PCs are going to see, anyway.
The general market still has so much to learn about other options besides Windows. Mac is gaining popularity because of cool-factor and crossover conversions, none of which Linux has. Honestly, it won't be until you can fool someone into using Linux before they figure out its not Windows that you will see a change in general market trends. Either that or some unforeseen landmark change in the computer landscape is going to have to take place.
In this regard, the comparison between open source solutions and alternative energy options makes sense here, except that the open source industry has had _superior_, WORKING solutions for the past decade, and the alternative energies industry hasn't. Its kind of like people choosing to stick with their internal combustion engine technology and refusing to try out a hydrogen car because "no body else does." But really, its because there's been no mass awakening to it, and unlike the energy crisis, there isn't likely to be unless someone brings it about.
Still, this is the extreme value of Linux to me: it's portability. Not *mobility*--we'll have to wait for Andriod for that--but its ability to fit on almost any system in any way. Scaleability and flexibility also apply here. I'd love to have a trusted operating system living at the hardware level of my comptuter. It seems to make sense in a way, even: the logical extension of CMOS in a way. Honestly, you're telling me motherboard hardware has improved for the past 10-15 years but we still have no better built in soft/firmware?
I'm doing more brainstoming than actual technical analysis here, but these are the kinds of things that get me excited like that: speculating, hypothesizing, dreaming about a more open and inherently good future.
Technorant, out.
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Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe instead they are informed of what software they wish to use, what OS it operates well with, and thus make a VERY INFORMED decision to not use an OS that would require substantial work to use with their software of choice.
Just because someone doesn't use Linux, doesn't mean they are stupid.
And with this type of prevelant attitude among Linux user's, you can bet that they will remain a very small minority.
The true competition to Windows isn't linux, not on the desktop. It's Apple, and will be becuase Linux lacks quite a few things that everyday people require.
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Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
So it's not going to change my purchasing, but it's still nice.
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to agree. I've made some forays into MSI (a relationship that was abruptly and permanently terminated when I discovered I had to have XP to upgrade the BIOS), EPoX and AOpen.
But after that MSI foray I'll be sticking to ASUS for the foreseeable future; I have yet to purchase an ASUS board that I haven't been perfectly happy with throughout its lifecycle (well, I had one or two die of the bad capacitor issue a few years ago, but that was only 30% of my ASUS boards while 100% of the other branded boards died from it).
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Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm assuming it was those specific few years ago when a Taiwanese capacitor company was selling bad caps. These caps had electrolyte in them made with a formula stolen from a Japanese company. Said Japanese company, though, was wise to the industry pirates and slipped them a time bomb.
Those caps made it in *everywhere* -- or so it seemed. And is actually probably why it's so much easier to find Slot 1 and Socket 370 CPUs than it is to find boards to put 'em in.
Oh, look, here's a nice wikipedia article about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague [wikipedia.org]
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In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Year of the Linux of Desktop (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Year of the Linux of Desktop (Score:5, Informative)
> for an install mechanism...
By writing this you reveal yourself to be clueless. The kernel would never do anything so complex, that is what userspace is for. But anyway, assuming you really mean a Linux distro....
>
> whole program including notifying and automatically installing
> programs it is dependent upon.
And just where have you been the last five years? Most RH/RPM based distros will do just that. Click on an RPM package and it will ask if you want to install it. But nobody smart does it like that. At most you would use the click to install bit to install a REPO and then just use the same package manager you use to install the distro supplied packages.
Why limit yourself to the old painful way Microsoft and Apple do things when technology is being innovated over here in Linux/UNIX land? What could be more convienent than adding a repository once and then making that 3rd party software collection a seamless part of the system. You get automatic notifications through the update widget, exactly the same as if it were included from the original OS vendor.
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Re:Year of the Linux of Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad example since they all do include Apache, but I get your point. Ok, here is how it works. Lets take Fedora since I was talking about RPM based systems and I don't know nearly as much about Debian based ones.
Fedora is based in the USA and sponsored by Red Hat, Inc. so they can't include certain radioactive bits that almost everyone wants, like mp3 support. So you just hop over to rpm.livna.org and click on the link for your version of Fedora. It serves you up an RPM package for their repository and the browser does the right thing. Up pops a dialog box asking if you want to install the package and if you say yes it prompts for the root (administrator for you Windows folk following along) password. Once that one small package is installed all of the software maintained by Livna (safely outside the USA) is a part of your system.
But nothing much has actually happened yet. Next you launch the same package manager you use to add/remove OS components and you find that a lot of new things have appeared. And when Livna updates a package it appears in the list of packages that need to be updated right along with the ones Fedora updates.
Contrast with the Windows/Mac world. Each 3rd party application, game, utility, etc. has to have it's own mechanism to find out if it has been updated, code to bug you to update, etc.
The best comparison would be to imagine a world where Microsoft made Windows Update an open platform that everyone could use. So that one unlucky morning you booted up and the Windows Update gadget in the toolbar announced you had a critical update to IE, a couple of random Windows bug fixes, bug fixs from Adobe for Photoshop and Flash Player and a new version of your fav utility that displays your hard drive temp was available. Grr. there goes an hour and a couple of reboots.
And it all 'Just Worked.' You don't have an OS and a motley collection of 3rd party apps, you have a seamless System.
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Re:Year of the Linux of Desktop (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Year of the Linux of Desktop (Score:5, Informative)
I was completely illiterate with regard to command line stuff, but I've figured out a great deal along the way. Even when I first began, installing packages was probably the single easiest thing to do in the OS. Installing a package from Synaptic is ridiculously easy, and it grabs all the dependencies an application needs. Anyone with so little knowledge of how computers work that they can't figure out a package manager is someone who wouldn't be doing anything like installing their own programs in Windows, so that's really not a fair comparison.
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Is it really that exciting? (Score:5, Insightful)
But, in terms of Linux adoption, it's only exciting if people keep linux once they've finished building the computer, and the precedents here are hardly promising.
And, even if you like Linux (which I do), would you want to keep the version supplied with your m/b? On my first EeePC, I tried to get to like Xandros, I really did, but in the end I wiped it and installed Kubuntu. My Dark Side Brother played with Xandros until he broke it, and then installed XP. And it's going to happen even more with the EeePC 900, since the Linux version has a larger SSD than the Windows version (at least in the UK), so you buy the Linux version in order to install Windows.
Re:Is it really that exciting? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Is it really that exciting? (Score:5, Informative)
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Also (Score:5, Insightful)
ASUS has great overclocking options in their BIOS too...until OEM's get a hold of them and put their customer BIOS in place that leaves out all the good stuff. This will be the same.
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Re:Is it really that exciting? (Score:5, Interesting)
> the version supplied with your m/b?
You would probably keep Splashtop because it is in flash, probably in a larger BIOS chip. It isn't intended to be your primary OS. ASUS fully expects 99% of these motherboards to end up with Vista on a normal hard drive before it is delivered to the end user.
The right question is how many of those end users will try Splashtop and find it handy for quick excursions into the net. If that number is large Splashtop will prosper and begin to add more and more features. Five years from now will be interesting if that happens.
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Re:Is it really that exciting? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Still don't see the point of burning it into ROM (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Still don't see the point of burning it into RO (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently if I go to my banking site, I have no idea whether my system is currently owned, and some keystroke logger is busy sending off my bank passcode to somebody who is going to empty my account.
With a RO OS, I can reboot, and I'm much more likely to be able to complete the transaction without it being subverted.
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Re:Still don't see the point of burning it into RO (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Still don't see the point of burning it into RO (Score:4, Insightful)
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*Fwooosh!* (Score:4, Funny)
Can you roll your own Splashtop? (Score:5, Interesting)
Neat - but not all that useful (Score:4, Interesting)
For one thing, for all that it's "instant on", it still doesn't load all that much faster than XP. Now maybe it's just because I have a hot processor, or a really lean XP installation, but honestly the difference isn't that noticable. Splashtop does load faster, but it's hardly "instant on"; you still need for the OS to boot.
Then, there's the fact that all my info -passwords, bookmarks, etc.- are on my hard-drive and thus not accessible (at least, not by default) to Splashtop. So I'd have to punch all that info into a second OS (and there's no security on Splashtop, so I'd recommend against leaving any passwords in the browser).
I suppose for laptop users Splashtop may be marginally more useful, although even they may prefer to load up the main OS, since it doesn't take that much longer to run and then they get access to all their information.
I do like having a security blanket of having a way to check the web for help just in case XP hoses itself. Boot to Splashtop, surf the web for an answer, and then use that information to fix Windows. But in the end, Splashtop is more of a toy than a genuinely useful feature.
This is not Linux (Score:5, Informative)
It's just a way that Asus found to leverage something that is free, in order to avoid having to write their own own code for motherboard diagnostics and such. No one is going to "switch to linux" because their motherboard has a linux based diagnostic included.
Maybe Asus will put the work "Linux" in bold letters of the mobo box, but this will not do anything. It will not "bring linux to the masses", because anyone who's actually buying a motherboard (as opposed to buying a pre-built computer), already knows what Linux is and will either run it, or not.
Re:This is not Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:This is not Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Now if ASUS which is a darling of the hardware enthusiast community says that linux is a powerful tool I expect some of those perceptions will be changed.
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Bad Precedent (Score:5, Interesting)
Hardware should never be tied to an operating system. I'm a Mac user, and even I believe in that sacred tenet. The consumer needs to be able to choose whatever components they want, and tose components should work together to the best of their ability.
Because it's free, Linux on Asus boards may not impede my consumer choice at the moment. But it sets a precedent which could greatly damage the environment of choice we currently enjoy.
Motherboard Malware! (Score:4, Funny)
I might even be able to steal some myspace passwords with it
Big target. (Score:4, Interesting)
Now we have million motherboards a month shipping with an identical OS - including a network stack and a browser - in the BIOS. Heavily used in this mode by the purchasers. If this is successfully suborned by malware it can romp all over the hard drive, even if the main system install isn't booted.
Seems to me this is a showdown between the Microsoft and FOSS sides' claims. B-)
I RTFA and cursed (Score:5, Informative)
And it ends with "Read the press release" that the submitter should have linked in the first place rather than that incredibly BAD geek.com) "here" [prweb.com].
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Re:Ok this is good... Now I have a couple of quest (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Debian "Moles" What Prevents Them? (Score:4, Interesting)
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