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Intel Portables Software Hardware Linux

Centrino-based Linux Laptops 316

Posted by michael from the tux-inside dept.
sebFlyte writes "Intel has lifted its ban on Linux-based laptops carrying its Centrino brand... It obviously makes very little difference technically what name is on the outside of the box, but does this represent a major philosophical shift for the chipmaker, or are they just leaping upon the nearest bandwagon in pursuit of a few extra bucks?"
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Centrino-based Linux Laptops More

Centrino-based Linux Laptops

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  • No excuse (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slashnutt ( 807047 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:07AM (#11419502) Journal
    Now that Intel ceased banning Linux on Laptops then I should be able to call Dell or HP and say I want a laptop that runs Linux out of the box right? Then why hasn't AMD captured the Linux laptop market? Oh yeah the vendors don't see a market. I imagine that it is time for a small time vendor to start making 100% Linux compatible laptops and if they survive and make money then great - this is similar on how Dell started in the desktop market. If the market is big enough than the small vendor took a big risk but it would pay off; if the market doesn't support the small vendor then the big name vendors will avoid Linux like the plague and say to share holders 'see I told you so - Linux is ready for primetime'. Either way works out best as I just want a Linux latop.

    • Re:No excuse (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:11AM (#11419548) Homepage Journal
      As much as I'd love to see mainstream laptops built for Linux with full vendor support, the sad fact is that there *is* no real market for it. It's a very tiny niche of computer users who would buy one. It's not just that the vendor's 'don't see a market' as you put it. There just isn't much of a market TO see. Hopefully this will change as Linux continues to evolve into a more user friendly system.

      • Re:No excuse (Score:4, Insightful)

        by fshalor ( 133678 ) <fshalor&comcast,net> on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:15AM (#11419602) Homepage Journal
        And most of those geeks who demand a linux laptop are being slightly drawn by mac's right now.

        I'm one: Gave up my dead PII 300 Cpia Debian machine for a iBook. :)

        I have came close to snapping up an amd64 e-machines a few times though.
        • I have came close to snapping up an amd64 e-machines a few times though.

          I still use my 5310 (not 64bit) every day as my main machine. I've run SUSE on it since 9.0 with no problems. Best impulse buy I eve made.

        • I have came close to snapping up an amd64 e-machines a few times though.

          I bought the M6805. I can't get any distro to even install on it. I tried Fedora, SuSe, Mandrake, and I think I even tried Debian on it. I tried both 64-bit and 32-bit versions (where available). Most freeze before the setup even completes, some won't boot at all. I think I eventually got SuSe to install, but it didn't detect any drivers and froze a few times. So I threw the XP Home image back on :(

          I'm no Linux genious, but

          • Call one of us, if it were me, I'd gladdy spend time trying to get it on there.
            I'm not only one of those guys who is gratified by getting linux on some obscure pieces of hardware, I'm also one of those guys who'd be happy just to see someone else using linux.
            I've ran across a few guys, and we start chatting and all of a sudden I'm helping them get the mandrake they installed 1 year ago to to run right on their laptop.

            You got a Linux User group near you?

          • Re:No excuse (Score:3, Informative)

            by vluther ( 5638 )
            The m6805 needs a bios update , go to www.notebookforums.com/org and follow the lead from there, theres also a Fedora developer who did a lot of work on the emachines to work under linux.

            If you use Gentoo, when you boot type emachines as the kernel type and it'll detect everything for you.

            I had a m6809 Gentoo was up and running from stage 2 in 5 hrs (X,fluxbox,firefox,thunderbird)..mucho faster than intel. I gave up the laptop because I needed a higher res screen and eMachines doesn't seem to be intereste
      • I disagree. The problem with most laptops is the dodgy quality of the manufacture. Linux as kernel for an OS is very suitable for a laptop. There are a variety of great distros out there and many of them cater perfectly to the mobile worker. Featuring everything from group calendars and addressbooks to MS-compatible wordprocessing, mediafile playback, wireless connectivity and this with good security potential and stability.. so really your post seems a little out of whack.. To get back to the issue dodgy
        • The problem with most laptops is the dodgy quality of the manufacture.

          This is why ThinkPads have been such good Linux laptops in the past, and why I am worried about the purchase of IBM's Personal Systems Division by Lenovo. The 600 series is solid as a rock, so is the current R series, T series and X series. The "i" series sucked...they were actually designed and built by Acer and badged by IBM.

          Yes, now that IBM PSD has been bought by Lenovo, perhaps all we have left as far as reliable laptop kit is App
          • Actually, since either 10.2 or 10.3 the shell has been bash in Mac OS X. I wouldn't use tcsh now if my life depended on it.

            In addition, you can run KDE inside the "X11" application that comes with Mac OS X; it takes a bit of work but can definitely be done. It's slightly easier just to install XDarwin and do the same, though.

    • Re:No excuse (Score:3, Informative)

      by dsginter ( 104154 )
      I hate to piggyback the FP with something that isn't exactly a reply but this is mu humble experience.

      I work at a large corporation and we periodically bid our laptops in units of 5000. Centrino ultimately means nothing. It is just a standard for a "Pentium M with wireless + extra premium". What we have found is that it is much cheaper to just buy a "Pentium M with wireless - Centrino logo" for much less money. HP, Dell and IBM basically said that we could have the same PC with the Centrino sticker but
      • It is the same thing yet millions of people are eating it up and paying a lot more simply to have the Centrino sticker on their machine. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large quanitites.

        If you don't have a clue about the product, you go by a substitute like brand name. People go for a Centrino laptop because they've no idea what a "Pentium M with wireless" is. That's why people want a "Coca-cola" or "McDonalds" too. They wouldn't know how to "break it down" to order a soft drink or hambu

    • Re:No excuse (Score:5, Informative)

      by DenDave ( 700621 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:17AM (#11419631)
      Actually Intel reports a pretty interesting reason for the "ban" and also as to why they now allow it..


      Karen Regis, manager of mobile programs and promotions at the chipmaker said the reason for the change was that with the release of the 2.6.8 Linux kernel, the open source operating system's power management abilities now meet Intel's requirements for Centrino notebook battery life.


    • Re:No excuse (Score:3, Interesting)

      by canuck57 ( 662392 )

      ... I should be able to call Dell or HP...

      Not sure many major vendors, especially Dell and HP are ready for Linux on the portable PCs just yet. Although I know of quite a few Dells running Linux it is not officially supported by Dell. They do not want to upset the Microsoft monopoly agreement as their per unit costs go up if they do not "recommend Windows".

      I know that is anti-competative. But the US legal system doesn't care or is operating under the principle that Microsoft is a US business so it

      • There's nothing wrong with "recommended" solutions. So long as Microsoft isn't requiring that the companies not support anything else, this is a perfectly legitimate tactic. I've seen web hosting companies that "recommend" Plesk or Cpanel, car companies that "recommend" Goodyear tires, and electronics shops that "recommend" Blaupunkt. They're doing it because the company cuts them a deal in exchange for the advertising.

        Note to anyone who may think I'm a Microsoft junkie: I'm one of those who supported t
    • For Intel this is a Low to No Cost way to improve sales and PR. Is saying Hey you can use our sticker to advertise our product on your system. Even if they don't sell a single Laptop with Linux on them Intel is not going to get hurt by this, and mabey they get a .5% increase insales or mabey more (even from the windows market) Because peole may get a windows system and knowing that it would be linux compatible they will install Linux on it later. But for the Dells and HPs out there Selling Linux laptops
    • Now that Intel ceased banning Linux on Laptops then I should be able to call Dell or HP and say I want a laptop that runs Linux out of the box right?

      Intel never "banned" Linux on laptops. Intel could care less what you do with their hardware after you buy it, including smashing it with a hammer, or immediately throwing it in the trash.

      Intel was protesting companies using the Centrino brand name with a Linux operating system because Linux did not sufficiently work with the features of the Centrino brande

      • I don't know the status of Linux on a Centrino based laptop, but my guess is that its still sufficiently broken and/or sucky in general

        Did you RTFA? The reason Intel is allowing Linux based laptops to use the Centrino brand name now is:

        Karen Regis, manager of mobile programs and promotions at the chipmaker said the reason for the change was that with the release of the 2.6.8 Linux kernel, the open source operating system's power management abilities

        now meet Intel's requirements for Centrino notebook b

    • Re:No excuse (Score:5, Informative)

      by pyros ( 61399 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:30AM (#11419767) Journal
      HP has been selling the nx5000 [hp.com] with Suse Pro 9.1 preinstalled for months. Granted, they say the Intel Pro wireless isn't supported, but Intel has drivers for these cards at ipw2100.sf.net and ipw2200.sf.net. I believe the drivers are open source. So the only thing left is the multibay DVD+RW. But power management should work out of the box, I believe.
      • Yes, the drivers are open source, outside of some firmware you need to download from intel after agreeing to the license.
        I will say too, these drivers rock. I've had amazing stability after .66 (They're on 1.02 or something now).
        Even in the case you don't use these, the ndiswrapper one was kinda stable.
        • Yeah, now if only they could get the drivers to work reliably with AMD64 systems... My laptop refuses to load the firmware properly with a dmawaittimeout(I think that's it) every time it tries to.

          The wireless and the alps touchpad are the only things stopping my from ditching windows completely on that thing(and games, but that's only at lan parties anyway). And the alps touchpad probably just needs me to spend some more time on it to solve.

        • I just wish Airsnort worked with ndiswrapper :( Using a Linksys WPC11 (version 4 - Realtek), and can't get Airsnort to work... Haven't tried Kismet yet though...

          • Re:No excuse (Score:3, Informative)

            by MoralHazard ( 447833 )
            Airsnort and Kismet both depend on a function called "RFMON mode", or just monitor mode. It's characterized by the card not transmitting any data, but receiving all 802.11 frames that it can sense. Every frame is passed to userspace--the card has no association to any access point, it's just a radio receiver and frame interpreter.

            Monitor mode allows apps like Kismet and Airsnort to work by making wireless traffic visible to userspace without having an association to an AP. For instance, how can you gath

    • I imagine that it is time for a small time vendor to start making 100% Linux compatible laptops

      There have been a few out there for a while now. Emperor Linux [emperorlinux.com] has some really nice laptops, though most seem to be on the high-end price-wise. There is also LinuxCertified.com [linuxcertified.com]. They have few nice laptops, including a Centrino based laptop and an AMD-64 based laptop.

  • Reasoning? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:08AM (#11419513) Homepage Journal
    It obviously makes very little difference technically what name is on the outside of the box,

    To them it does, as they've been interested in projecting a particular value of the Centrino brand, being low power consumption.

    but does this represent a major philosophical shift for the chipmaker,

    Obviously not, did you actually RTFA?

    or are they just leaping upon the nearest bandwagon in pursuit of a few extra bucks?

    Most likely they have been promoting Linux, but not at the expense of their own brand of stuff. After all their marketing (possibly preceded by some actual innovation, but that's usually optional for any company) they want to ensure their brand lives up to their beliefs. If you were selling a line of Linux Laptops which didn't conserve power and ran the batteries down and some guy in an airport, surrounded by dozens of pairs of ears (some not connected to iPods) and started carrying on about what a piece of shit your Centrino laptop was because it drained the battery before you even got on your flight, well, that's the kind of damage lots of $ of advertising and spin can't undo.

    I do have reservations about a company like Intel telling people what they can and can't do with their product, but if it's meet some specification to earn the right to logo the boxen, I think that's within the realm of acceptable business practice.

    • Re:Reasoning? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sophrosyne ( 630428 )
      It's almost rational to think that way, but in reality it probably has more to do with an agreement or understanding with Microsoft.
      No guy in an airport whining is going to blow centrino out of the market--

      • Re:Reasoning? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *
        It's almost rational to think that way, but in reality it probably has more to do with an agreement or understanding with Microsoft.

        That's way harsh, considering Intel has been very much a promoter of Linux, giving out compilers to their new processors, even the much maligned Itanium, and making technical information available to developers. You seem to forget Intel has much to lose, with a strong competitor in AMD, taking chunks of their market. As much as I like my AMD processor, it was AMD that not s

    • To them it does, as they've been interested in projecting a particular value of the Centrino brand, being low power consumption.

      That's what it looks like to a lot of people. It's more than that. Anybody can make a low power low performance processor and hook it up to a wireless NIC. There are three parts required in order for a manufacture to put the Centrino logo on a laptop.

      The explination direct from the manufacture explaining it is here;

      http://www.intel.com/products/notebook/centrino / in dex.htm
    • It seems to me that the Centrino brand is much like Microsoft's 'designed for' program, you can use their branding and marketing power but to do so you've got to meet a certain set of requirements. I don't see that as Intel telling anyone what they have to do with their product, they are simply saying this is what you have to do to take advantage of our branding campaign. Same as I can write Windows applications all day long, but if I want to use Designed for Windows XP I have to meet that program's criteri

  • Intel sells chips... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fitten ( 521191 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:09AM (#11419523)
    I know a few folks who work at Intel (some are CPU designers). If you ask any of them, they will repeat the mantra: Intel sells chips. They don't care to who or for what purpose (this was before 9/11). If it is to someone who is going to run Linux or to someone who will run Windows, it doesn't matter because they sold that person some chips.
  • bandwagon. Somehow, my belief in Intel's profound desire for a "few extra bucks" has never let me down.

  • How banned? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:10AM (#11419541) Homepage Journal
    How did Intel enforce it's "Linux on Centrino" ban? Isn't that unfair competition? It stinks of Microsoft collusion...

    • Re:How banned? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:13AM (#11419587) Homepage Journal
      Not everything is a conspiracy out of Richmond. The Centrino brand name is a trademarked property of Intel. They didn't say they wouldn't sell chips and chipsets to companies selling Linux based latops; they just would not license the Centrino lable to said vendors until now.

      • Re:How banned? (Score:4, Funny)

        by BlowChunx ( 168122 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:23AM (#11419703)
        Not everything is a conspiracy out of Richmond.

        Maybe not, but out of Redmond, definitely...
      • Right, but some things (an awful lot, actually) are conspiracies out of Redmond. Notably the conspiracy for which Microsoft was convicted, as a monopoly, including requiring PC manufacturers to bundle Windows, and exclude competitors, or lose their Windows certification. The ridiculous "remedies" to their monopoly status have given Microsoft a license to anticompete. I offer the exact conspiracy, proven in courts, which I suspect Microsoft is merely repeating in this case, with specific evidence to suggest
    • How did Intel enforce it's "Linux on Centrino" ban? Isn't that unfair competition? It stinks of Microsoft collusion...

      I guess they could severely raise their OEM pricing or ban them from selling their Centrino products entirely. I don't believe its a Microsoft collusion, Linux has always sucked in power management (maybe this is different with the 2.6.8 kernel as the article alludes to), and the Centrino is marketed as a low power/long battery life package with wireless. If none of that works, its not C
    • Oh RTFA and stop being so alarmist. They simply didn't allow the Centrino trademarks be used with laptops whose OS didn't take advantage of the low power consumption profile associated with the Centrino chipset.

      They spent marketing money pushing the power usage of the Centrino, they didn't want to have to add "* Microsoft Windows only" to all their ads. Imagine how twisted your knickers would have been then.

      Better had they spent the money developing the drivers for Linux, but that's life.

      They never stopp
      • Stopping the trademarks stops the sale of these machines both by stopping retailers from joining the expensive marketing campaign they finance with their wholesale orders, and gives Intel the ability to sue people who use the trademark anyway, directly stopping the sale. What's "alarmist"? I'm just pointing out how anticompetitive (against Linux) this is. You're the one who's getting all worked up about my knickers.

    • How did Intel enforce it's "Linux on Centrino" ban? Isn't that unfair competition? It stinks of Microsoft collusion...

      Intel is a big enough player to be able to strong-arm (no pun intended) system vendors all on their own, without any help from MS.

      • I agree. That's why I suspect Microsoft of getting Intel to stop Linux on Centrino - so MS can "compete" with Linux, without doing something. In the past, MS has enforced this kind of exclusivity on Intel by witholding the Windows installs that the HW maker needs to sell their PCs to the majority of the market.

  • Getting Back Market Share (Score:3, Interesting)

    by teiresias ( 101481 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:11AM (#11419557)
    I think this is one of the steps in Intel's strategy to curb anymore inroads that AMD might be making into it's market share. AMD has had several good months at Intel's expense and it wouldn't be suprising if Intel was rolling out an aggressive plan to take it back.

    One of those ideas might be aquiring the linux laptop market. As a person with a laptop with a centrino let me tell you it's a great chip, with it's best feature being the fan control and power consumption. To have chip the draws both the MS and Linux crowd would be a business oppurtunity to big to miss.

    It's about time too. Been waiting to get rid of XP off this latop :)

  • Not just Centrino brand... (Score:5, Informative)

    by teaeg ( 815878 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:11AM (#11419562)
    Support for the wireless networking, the new a/b/g thing, is coming whithin 30 days. This is according to the news.com report here http://news.com.com/Intel+lets+Linux+into+Centrino +camp/2100-7344_3-5542514.html

  • Wrong question! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kid Zero ( 4866 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:13AM (#11419575) Homepage Journal
    You should ask "Will we also see Sonoma based, Linux laptops?"

    My guess would be "No, we won't." Centrino is now the old technology, isn't it?

    • Re:Wrong question! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You should ask "Will we also see Sonoma based, Linux laptops?"

      My guess would be "No, we won't." Centrino is now the old technology, isn't it?

      Instead of guessing, why don't you read the article?

      FTA:
      "This time, Intel is moving faster. The company will support Sonoma's wireless networking with Linux within 30 days, Regis said. That support will cover both the dual-band Intel Pro/Wireless 2200 networking chip for 802.11b/g wireless networks and the tri-band Pro/Wireless 2915 chip for 802.11a/b/g networks."
      • And they will still be called Centrino just with an updated chipset in them. You don't throw out millions in marketing just to make Linux use the old stuff.

  • Drivers? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ironsides ( 739422 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:13AM (#11419579) Homepage Journal
    Does this mean that Intel will be releasing GNU/Linux drivers for their wireless chipsets (among other things)?
    • There are already drivers, check http://ipw2100.sf.net/ and http://ipw2200.sf.net/
    • No, there's no such thing as a GNU/Linux driver. Drivers (except for X11 graphiocs drivers) are a pure kernel thing, and there's no such thing as a GNU/Linux kernel, even not for RMS. So it's a Linux driver, which is used by the Linux kernel of the GNU/Linux operating systems.
      • GP asked a legitmate question. What is the idiotic "picking a fight where there is none" responce? Apparently the finer points of naming conventions matters so much to people that we will needlessly talk about the crap even when we have _no_ vested interest to begin with. You, sir, are a moron.
    • Does this mean that Intel will be releasing GNU/Linux drivers for their wireless chipsets (among other things)?

      Have you been smoking crack this morning?

      GNU/Linux drivers? no. Unless you mean GNU/Linux in the RMS sense.

      What I'm trying to say is they'll certainly release drivers. And those drivers will most certainly not be GNU (or any open source license)

  • Jebus, pull your heads out and look around.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:13AM (#11419586) Journal
    Before you get all up in arms about Intel "banning linux" and being all evil and monopoly, blah blah, realize that Intel is a member of OSDL - Intel pays Linus to write linux.

    This was all about not having their brand and logo associated with something that didn't work. This is a pat on the back for the kernel hackers who managed to get good solid support for the various Centrino components into the kernel.

    So just take it for what it is. You can now say that linux officially works on Centrino laptops.

    • You can now say that linux officially works on Centrino laptops.

      This is absolutely true. Just recently, the combination of kernel power management (ACPI) and CPU throttling (SpeedStep), and the wireless drivers [sf.net] have become mature enough for things to work: ACPI is much more mature--in the older 2.4.x and even 2.6.7 kernels I had used, things Oops'ed left and right, locked up my system, and worse, and now everything just works. CPU throttling is supported through the kernel, which now has "ondemand", a p

  • Bandwagon or not... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by keiferb ( 267153 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:14AM (#11419597) Homepage
    Who cares? Isn't leaping onto a bandwagon a show of support? If they think they can make money off of it, that generally means they believe it's A Good Thing(tm).

  • Linux could really improve in wireless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by digitalgimpus ( 468277 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:19AM (#11419649) Homepage
    This is isn't flamebait... just someone who uses linux occasionally (prefers Mac OS X).

    No mater what system I use, I've really never had a simple time getting WiFi working. Always several steps... always ugly.

    IMHO Linux would have a bit better marketing if it focused on being as close to 0Config as possible. There's a ton of potential.

    The best experience I've had is with Knoppix. And even that wasn't perfect.
    • Ditto here.
      I gave an honest shot to get WI-FI working on my HP PAvillion z220 w/pcmcia card and failed. I even dloaded the latest orinoco wi-fi drivers which activate my card all right but the traffic is dropped/ignored.

      Plus R.H 9.0 apmd (advance power management ) couldn't figure out the bios to administer battery power. Basically I was pulled back to windows.

      WI-FI and Linux is reminiscent of soundcards and Linux in most of the 90's. I bought the HP Pavillion explicitly to run RH 9.0 and now Im back to X
  • The reason every single enterprise exists is for profit. There are only three enterprises that doesn't have profit as its main reason of existance. Those are call "heroic" enterprises. Mainly, army, religion (church), and health (although in USA this last one is a false statement, since there exists many hospitals that doesn't pay taxes but have serveral millions of dollars in the bank, when they should only have as litlle as necesary to subsist).
  • I already have a Centrino laptop running linux. All this announcement means, I guess, is that now manufacturers can sell centrino laptops with linux pre-installed. But since most linux users just buy the laptop they want, and then put the OS they want on it, I don't see what difference this announcement makes.
    • But since most linux users just buy the laptop they want, and then put the OS they want on it, I don't see what difference this announcement makes.

      I think it makes a huge difference that you can buy a laptop without supporting the organized crime that is Microsoft.

  • Heaven forbid a for-profit corporation do something in an attempt to make money.

  • intel has become "oss friendly" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by diegocgteleline.es ( 653730 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:28AM (#11419749)

    ~/kernel/stable # grep -i "@intel.com" MAINTAINERS | wc -l
    11

    Intel has a couple of programmers taking care of ACPI, they've merged their own GPL drivers for their network cards, they've published specs of SATA hardware or documentation of mainboard chipsets, drivers for their graphics chipsets, there're intel guys at the kernel mailing list...I buy Intel just for how good linux support is having lately. No cookie for you, amd:
    grep -i "@amd.com" MAINTAINERS | wc -l
    0

  • Man, I thought I was a Linux zealot...

    Actually, I'm just glad that Centrino support has developed to this point. There are a lot of interesting Centrino laptops out there, and since I'm shopping around for laptops (in a half-assed way), this is good news. Once Intel's name is on Centrino-enabled Linux, support should only improve.

  • Anyone surprised? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dracolytch ( 714699 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:31AM (#11419780) Homepage
    I'm surprised that they haven't done this sooner. Microsoft has basically shown Intel that they have no loyalties to the chipmaker anymore... I don't see why Intel would restrict their potential market by limiting which OSs their chips are allowed to run. A one-sided loyalty is baaaad business.

    ~D

  • WLAN drivers (Score:5, Informative)

    by wertarbyte ( 811674 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:34AM (#11419820) Homepage
    For some time now, linux drivers [sf.net] for the ipw2200 and older ipw2200 wlan chipsets have been usable. ipw2200 is now moving towards 1.0 [sourceforge.net], beginning with a feature freeze.

  • they need it (Score:2, Interesting)

    by comet69 ( 198367 )
    I sure hope major computer companies like Compaq, HP, Dell, etc..etc.., realize the true potential of Linux and what it can really do for their computers..

    it would be interesting if these big companies just made their own individual distros of linux.. that way you could really judge the computer by how it runs with an operating system specifically designed and customized for the hardware that makes up the computer.. they could appeal to so many customers.. and they wouldn't have to sell the same computer,

  • Cynical Topic (Score:4, Interesting)

    by utlemming ( 654269 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:49AM (#11419986) Homepage
    "or are they just leaping upon the nearest bandwagon in pursuit of a few extra bucks?"

    Now that is just an unfair spin -- after Slashdot ran a story about Intel's reluctance to support Centrino for BSD, this just appears to be a case of advocacy working. The story was a couple months back on the BSD's and their effort to get Centrino support. There was even a some information on how to bother Intel to get the support. I personally sent an email to at least ten of the Intel people on the subject. So instead of trying to spin this as Intel trying to make an extra buck, we should be celebrating a win for the open source community.

    On a side note -- of course they did this to earn a buck. Why else would they do it -- just out of the goodness of their heart. They are a hardware vendor and do what is in the best interest of earning money. But the cynical light in which the comment was given is inappropraite. Because we like free software so much, we are in a different paradigm of economic thought. We think economically in terms of value while Intel thinks in terms of money. Intel gains very little by giving software and ideas away; IBM gains a lot since they offer support for the product. So the only thing that we have that Intel wants is our money. And that is generally true for every corparation. So whether or not this is a philisophical shift is moot -- we vote with our dollars and if the philisophy of the consumer is X and is willing to vote for X with the dollar, then the producer is going to adopt X if it produces the money it wants. Those of us in the open source community, users and developers alike need to be understanding of our philisophical positions and what it means for companies. Just because we don't think that software should have a cost, doesn't mean that we should be cynical jerks about some company filling our demand for a product.

  • Remembering that the Centrino platform is the CPU + chipset + Wifi adaptor, one of the missing pieces for sensible hardware support (given they now have their ACPI and speedstep support in the kernel.org tree) was a driver for the 2200BG/2915BAG cards. Intel wouldn't released any hardware specs for either adaptor, but they did develop their own GPL'd driver which is now pretty stable and works quite well. They also have relicensed their firmware so that it can be redistributed. All of this happened in the s
  • Intel make it perfectly clear in the article what the reason for this change is.

    Centrino is a brand name that Intel let you put on laptops you sell if they meet a list of requirements.

    Linux, with kernel 2.6.8, has changed so it is no longer incompatible with those requirements, so Intel will now let you brand a Linux Laptop as Centrino.
  • Greetings,
    After having worked at Intel, and participating in one of the big Intel / Linux strategy sessions, I really don't see this as a major change / depoarture from their strategies for the last few years.

    Intel's reason for asking that laptop manufacturers not to bundle Linux has simply been due to a limitation in the Linux Kernel. Prior to 2.6.8, Linux's support for the Centrino's capabilities has been somewhat sparse and a bit unreliable.

    Due to this, Intel, rather than fight through

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