Ars Reviewer is Happily Bored With Dell's Linux Ultrabook 181
Ars Technica reviewer Lee Hutchinson says that Dell's Ubuntu-loaded 13" Ultrabook (the product of "Project Sputnik") is "functional," "polished," and (for a Linux laptop) remarkably unremarkable. "It just works," he says. Hutchinson points out that this is a sadly low bar, but nonetheless gives Dell great credit for surpassing it. He finds the Ultrabook's keyboard to be spongy, but has praise for most elements of the hardware itself, right down to (not everyone's favorite) the glossy screen.
Still fiddly if you RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
"It feels like there is a tiny bit of input lag on the trackpad, which made grabbing Unity's razor-thin window edges an exercise in screaming frustration"
This does not equate with "Just Works".
Re:Still fiddly if you RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the problem here is the razor-thin window edges.
All the UI's I've used with the thin window edges have been difficult for me to interact with, by mouse, trackpad, or touchpoint ("eraser-pointer"), because of the challenges of hitting a particular very small spot.
Re:Still fiddly if you RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Then try KDE, where you can adjust the thickness of the window edge for grabbing. About six thicknesses to fatten up or slim down.
Yes, they buried the setting, but it's under "Workspace Appearance".
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Huh, did not know that.*Increases size*
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The size of the UI receiving area for window resizing shouldn't be coupled to the pixel size of the actual border. That's stupid. Trade pixels of screen space as a hack to get easier to use UI. No. This is 2013. We should make UI that works -- Hover mouse over the edge of the screen frustratingly? Activate a window resize event then. It's not rocket science.
Re:Still fiddly if you RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
What do you need window edges for? Setup you window manager to use a modifier (alt in my case) key to interact with the window itself, eg:
alt-button1: move
alt-button2: resize
alt-button3: lower/raise window
Beats trying to grab edges, especially with "focus follows mouse" and a high anti focus stealing setting for the wm.
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alt-button1: move
alt-button2: resize
... which are, in fact, the default bindings in Unity.
I'm not sure how that Ars reviewer was picked to write TFA, but he seemed a bit dated in his ideas about Linux compatibility. Granted that I do my research on hardware before buying, but it's been a very long time since I've had any trouble using two-finger scrolling (with inertial scrolling), or getting wifi to work, or getting (for crying out loud!) sound to work. Those are issues from a decade ago; they shouldn't be problems now.
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I think the problem here is the razor-thin window edges.
The trouble is that the implementations of X seem to conflate the visible border of the window (possibly 1px wide) with the grabbable area that ought to cause the cursor to change to the "i can move this" double-arrow. That needs to be several pixels thick for most people to grab it. The designers of Unity and other windowing systems appear to place more emphasis on "looking pretty" than on "working well".
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touchpoint ("eraser-pointer")
Also known as [xkcd.com]
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I think the problem here is the razor-thin window edges.
All the UI's I've used with the thin window edges have been difficult for me to interact with, by mouse, trackpad, or touchpoint ("eraser-pointer"), because of the challenges of hitting a particular very small spot.
I too raged against this, even before Unity. The simple answer to please the UI design folks and the usability folks is to decouple the border interaction size from the actual pixel size of the window border. Just make an invisible region that is the clickable border, and it can be as big as needed. I'm no Ubuntu apologist, in fact I switched DEs but they fixed this somewhat in the new version of Unity. Even the scrolling bars have adopted that larger interactive layer and smaller visual appearance. How
Re:Still fiddly if you RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
no, i said "i fucking hate fucking touchpads"
That might be the problem. They're for controlling your mouse pointer, not sex.
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They're for controlling your mouse pointer, not sex.
Really? Not into Internet porn, I take it...
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Grow up
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Oblig. http://xkcd.com/243/ [xkcd.com]
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The parent means a three-finger tap (three fingers at once on a multi-touch compatible trackpad), not three sequential left-button taps! It's a neat feature -- you can also do a three-finger drag to move the window around.
Re:Still fiddly if you RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
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Samsung Series 9. Expensive, but worth every penny if you can afford it. Amazingly good screen, too ...
Re:Still fiddly if you RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
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Until you read a Mac laptop review. There it seems they forget to review the trackpad - about the only complaint I found was a news article way back in 2008. I don't think they have any revi
Re:Still fiddly if you RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)
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Probably in setting this whole thing up, they actually had developers write code and put it in a PPA and have it merged upstream, they apparently include a year of support with their own support staff that at least knows some Linux, they're trying for a few more value-adds but overall I think you're underestimating the overhead in doing a small run compared to selling millions of Windows machines. Also all the crapware they bundle with Windows puts the OS cost at ~$0, here you really get a no-crap standard
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Back in Feb I bought a Dell Vostro 2520 laptop w/ i3, 4GB, 500GB HD loaded preloaded with Ubuntu 12.04 for only $450 (including tax & shipping). I used $220 in spare change at a CoinStar machine to pay for half of it (no fees charged by CoinStar because Dell is one of their "Partners").
I had trouble ordering it on their site because I couldn't use my CoinStar issued 'Gift Card' on a registered account (GCs are for consumer purchases and this was a "business" computer). I couldn't order it over the phone
Re: Still fiddly if you RTFA (Score:2)
You choose to ignore that you could have bought it the first way you mentioned BUT you felt the need to pay for half the laptop in coins, using a credit the first order process doesn't recognize.
Be fair, I you had chosen to use one o two credit cards this would have been a trivial purchase.
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Re:Still fiddly if you RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Still fiddly if you RTFA (Score:2)
The last update to Mac OSX did this too. Drove me crazy until I found a fix.
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$ sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
$ ccsm
Find the "Unity MT Grab Handles" plugin and set:
"Toggle Handles" binding to <Super>h
Then you just press windows-key + h to make some nice large resizing handles appear. They should fade away automatically after a few seconds.
Re: Still fiddly if you RTFA (Score:2)
That's why Mac forced using just one corner for a half-dozen versions. Because trying mouse to a thin outline is just silly. It was silly they put it back now.
Of course the next gen of UI needs to remove Windo Resizing... Because moving UI elements means I'm not doing whatever task I picked up the device for.
glossy screen (Score:5, Informative)
This is why I will (sadly) never buy one of these.
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The good thing (Score:2)
is that the matte wins in the long run. Shiny new object turn matte, and aging people's eyes can't tell the difference, and Ra's shine is for all practical purposes eternal.
Long live the matte screen!
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The problem I find is that with a laptop of any kind you often can't control the environment where you are using it and the glare can become a real issue. If I'm wearing a light colored shirt in a bright area the reflection in a glossy screen is horribly distracting. If I am using my work laptop instead with a matte screen I never even give it a thought.
Re:glossy screen (Score:5, Insightful)
The eternal rift among users. Glossy, or matte; that is the question. I don't care for matt screens as they dull the contrast and bleed colors together. I can tune out the glare as it doesn't bother me much.
I used to think I cared, then I got a MacBook with a glass screen and joined the 90% of PC users who just don't care either way as long as the display has no stuck pixels.
Re:glossy screen (Score:5, Insightful)
interesting, you complain about color sharness and contrast, but dont mind looking at a reflection of a light source that kills contrast and blurs the screen
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same here. when looking for a laptop, "matte" screen is a mandatory thing (one of a few)
Too Expensive (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Too Expensive (Score:4, Informative)
Nearly 1600 before tax and no user upgradable components? You'd think it was a macbook
Actually 50% more than the new MacBook Pro I bought last summer. The MBP has upgradable RAM, disk (SSD or spinning), and even the ability to swap out the optical drive for a second disk. And believe me, if Apple gets one thing right, it's that "it just works."
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Yes but some of us do prefer to run Linux than OSX. Granted this laptop is too expensive. I'm going to be shopping for a laptop soon and frankly I'll probably be caught between this and another MacBook Air... sigh.
So... why not just run Linux on the MacBook Air, if that's what you prefer?
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11" is not enough real estate for development. Doesn't matter what resolution it is. I have a pair of 24" 1924x1200 monitors that I use for development and I find the real estate far more usable than the 1920x1200 15.6" laptop I had a few years ago.
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Try the System76 laptops. The Gazelle is a very nice machine for the price, and I think all of their machines come with matte screens, with glossy being an option. The Bonobo is a 17" beast of a machine that is not particularly portable, but makes a great gaming or development machine. Both have 1440x1080 screens.
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Sorry, that resolution is 1920x1080.
Re: Too Expensive (Score:2)
So now that somebody has delivered a product using a mainstream Linux Distro and ironed out all the hardware bugs... You don't want to REWARD THEM for their work?
What a jerk! This is why "Linux" never took off... Because when there's finally something WORTH paying for people have to be cheap bastards.
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Can't tell if you're serious or not... I'll bite, though. I'd love to reward them for their work if their work fit my needs/criteria, but it does not. The price tag is simply too steep. As stated earlier, if there were more options as to what sort of processing power the thing had, perhaps the price point would be more flexible but alas, there are not.
What I want:
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Actually 50% more than the new MacBook Pro I bought last summer.
The nearest equivalent Apple laptop is the 13" Macbook Air (disclaimer: I have one and it's very good). In the UK, the two machines are almost exactly same price and are effectively dimensionally identical too. But the Air has less RAM (4GB vs 8GB), a slower processor (i5 vs i7) and a lower resolution screen (1440x900 vs 1920x1080).
I bought my Air to run Linux; I like OS X, but I much prefer Ubuntu. If I were buying today, I'd take the XPS over the Air. Both machines seem good but, for my use case, the
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I bought my [macbook] Air to run Linux;
Any pointers to good articles on how to do this and have everything work?
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The slower processor is probably a good thing, that i7 is too much for the battery.
Both devices have non-removable batteries, however, so both are complete failures by my standards. And the Macbook doesnt even have an ethernet jack!
That's a meta-fail.
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You know, I ended up using a Macbook Pro because that is what the standard config was at work. Fine. I'm learned to adapt, even though Ubuntu is my preference. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it, but it isn't the perfect experience I was lead to believe it would be. I find I have to reboot more often than I did with my Ubuntu laptop. I miss my Home and End keys. Installing applications is confusing sometimes because you download the installer, you click on it, and it takes a few seconds to open. Excep
MacBook Pro: How to remove or install memory (Score:5, Informative)
Re:MacBook Pro: How to remove or install memory (Score:4, Informative)
The current generation MBP has user replaceable RAM and storage. You're confusing the current generation MBP with Macbook Airs and Retina Macbook Pro. Apple even has a support document on the site "MacBook Pro: How to remove or install memory" that covers the current generation MBP introduced in June 2012 (http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1270).
I just replaced the SSD of my 2 month old Retina MBP with a 480GB Aurora unit. To do that I had to disconnect the (very removable) battery so both are upgradable on the Retina MBP. You are kind of stuck with the 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM. The later model MBAs also have upgradable SSDs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7mzTB5KoAw [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_hZdE0AKVY [youtube.com]
Reminds me of when I moved to Ubuntu 9.04 (Score:5, Insightful)
for the first time from XP.
It was a bit of an anti-climax and a slight disappointment at first. Nothing happened. No pop-ups appeared. No first-time guide. No helpful hints. No gnashing hard-drive activity. Just silence and waiting for my command.
Since then I've come to appreciate this as the #1 reason for using linux - when you actually want to get something done, it just seems to get out the way. It's a shame that more recent distro versions seem to be moving away from this though.
D
Re:Reminds me of when I moved to Ubuntu 9.04 (Score:5, Insightful)
Since then I've come to appreciate this as the #1 reason for using linux - when you actually want to get something done, it just seems to get out the way. It's a shame that more recent distro versions seem to be moving away from this though.
Mint is pretty good in this regard; that's why I've switched from Ubuntu (and to avoid Unity of course).
As to the original article, though: yes, the product costs way more than I can spend on a laptop... I would have to buy a cheaper laptop and install Linux on my own. I don't at all mind doing this, but it does take time and patience.
The article's author saying that the average user will never be able to live with running Linux, though, strikes me as incorrect. Sure, installing and maintaining Linux may be out of reach, as would be doing all the tweaks necessary with sound cards, etc.
But running it? The average Jane or Joe that mostly needs a browser and little else? I set up a Mint box for my wife; she has no idea she's using a Linux system and doesn't care, as long as she can do email and Facebook and that sort of thing. I know of many such examples.
To be fair, a key thing is to have someone available to maintain the distribution. But there aren't virus issues and "safe browsing" is just about a given, which I think is A Very Big Deal for the typical user.
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It depends. Linux tends to be nicer than Windows for USB, but still kind of falls flat on its face when it comes to GPU support, including HD h.264 video. Brute-force CPU decoding can only get you *so* far before the memory-bandwidth realities of trying to shovel around realtime 60fps 1920x1080 32-bit video data via PIO are going to bite you and cause problems.
Linux on laptops has gotten *enormously* better over the past few years, but it seems to consistently still have one set of problems with laptops tha
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There are unclean hands on both sides, and as usual it's the end users who get caught in the crossfire.
If Linux's kernel developers made even the most half-assed token effort at not wantonly breaking the ABI with every new release, or allowed drivers to have an intermediate thunking layer that stabilized the ABI for at least a year or two at a time in exchange for a little more overhead, the driver problem would largely fix itself and become a non-issue. The problem is, Linux's stewards *want* kernel-depend
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nVidia and AMD could simply release open source drivers that do NOT support DRM.
The third paragraph of the GP post explains why they cannot.
Sadly, that's actually noteworthy these days (Score:5, Interesting)
"It works" and "it's not riddled with crappy 'trial' ware you can't easily get rid of" has become something worth mentioning when reviewing laptops.
EULA? (Score:2)
WTF?
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Unless something has changed since I looked into it last, Ubuntu doesn't have a EULA. It obviously has the GPL, which it may or may not prompt you to read and agree to. Other than that, some of the bundled proprietary software has EULAs, which it always prompts you to "agree to" when installing them- Flash, font packs, codecs, etc. If they're installed by default on this ultrabook, it's conceivable that you would be required to view the EULA on first run.
So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, my new Lenovo Twist Thinkpad Ultrabook running Fedora 18 also "just works" (including the touch screen) and didn't require any special "project" to accomplish.
We have heard this line from Dell before. I trust them about as far as I could throw them. Most potential Linux customers don't need a preinstalled Linux laptop from these companies or even a special support division. ESPECIALLY if they plan to charge *MORE* than for their MS-Windows model. For one, many customers won't want Dell's choice of Linux nor the way it was installed.
What we need is commitment from the vendor that the hardware is not Linux hostile and they won't try to avoid their warranty obligation using Linux as an excuse. Even better, how about a nice support page describing the hardware in detail and the names of the Linux drivers and in what kernel for each component and some install tips. None of that is expensive or complex.
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What we need is commitment from the vendor that the hardware is not Linux hostile and they won't try to avoid their warranty obligation using Linux as an excuse
Having worked for HP I knew that all their x86 (64 and 32 bit) machines could run Linux although they don't actually wave the flag about it and when I had an overheating problem there was no issue with getting the machine repaired under warranty even with Fedora on it. I actually have two HP laptops which I own, one which is about 5 years old which I use for testing and the other (HP dv7 just over two years old) which I use for personal and corporate use and both run Fedora 18 which "just works" even though
"Just Works" is boring; Borked Drivers aren't (Score:2)
Of course it's sort of boring. Having broken drivers, now that's exciting! You'd really hope that Dell would ship a machine where that doesn't happen.
And most people in the market for a Linux laptop have been running Linux long enough that they expect the operating system to let them do real work.
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Sadly laptops are not so easy to accomplish. I have built several desktops which are childishly easy to do and have the added benefit of no microsoft tax. I've never purchased a new laptop and only once a new computer in the last couple of decades, that being the refurbished mac mini quad i7 server I got from the Apple store last year. It was a dreadful amount of money but the last few videos I edited on it made the purchase worthwhile. I've edited movies on Linux but it is a chore while on a Mac it is
Because it's a laptop (Score:2)
Why don't you just build your own computer and install linux on it
Let me know who sells a decent kit for building an Ultrabook laptop and I'll tell you.
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I have no idea what parts of my post you think are "OCD", but there is no "building" your own ultrabook. They are mostly unconfigurable. However I do build (which is really more like "put together") my own desktops, servers, and thin clients, and have for many years. Except for servers, it is always more expensive, but they are also much higher quality and usually perform better too.... and, of course, they all run Linux.
All notebooks (Score:4, Interesting)
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It depends on the Zenbook. The earlier ones had bad keyboards and even worse trackpads. Apparently, ASUS was embarrassed enough by the reviews that they made a real effort on later models. I have a UX31A and it is just awesome. The backlit keyboard and trackpad are roughly equal in quality to a Macbook Air (which means they're better than everything else I've used) and the display is a wonderful 1080p IPS display with a matte finish that is the nicest 13" display I've ever seen. Throw in an i7 processo
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The keyboard on the business class Dells used to be good. I have an old D630 that has an excellent keyboard. Trackpads are another matter. I find the apple laptops have pretty good ones but nothing in the "peecee" world seems to match up. I end up using a usb mouse instead.
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I have to agree with that - I loved the keyboards on my Latitude D610 and C400, and on Inspiron 7500, 8000, and 8100.
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Sadly, mechanical switches are too heavy and take up too much room to be practical in a laptop.
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Or one without a Microsoft Windows logo on it, and the control key placed where it belongs.
The Windows logo key on this laptop betrays it as being a Windows laptop they've just put Ubuntu on. Not a laptop with components chosen to work well with Linux.
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Sweet laptop . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF is wrong with Dell ? (Score:5, Informative)
Dell UK offers you Windows 7 or Windows 8 (Score:4, Funny)
Dell's UK site [dell.co.uk] for the laptop says "Windows 7 or Windows 8 – Choose the operating system that suits you".
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Choose the operating system that suits you"
Great, that would be UNICOS/mp!
Can I get it in red too?
so what? (Score:2)
If a potential user can't manage to install the Linux of their choice onto pretty much any laptop,
they're going to be pretty disappointed trying to actually *run* Linux, even if it's preinstalled.
I've had no problems running Fedora on my Samsung UB.
Windows logo (Score:2)
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Don't you think the laptop is expensive enough? Making a custom batch would add a premium for no particularly good reason.
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Interesting description of "Carbon Fiber" (Score:5, Informative)
Probably one of the more interesting parts of the chassis as a whole is described as plastic, rather than factory made carbon fiber parts. This piece adds a lot of rigidity, strength and shock absorption (if/when dropped on the corner) without adding much weight, and yet he glosses right over it. Resin infused woven carbon fiber is a wonderful piece of modern material science and it's completely ignored. Dell should be praised for pushing materials like this in to consumer products that cost less than $2000.
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I researched it so I could laugh at you for falling for the carbon fiber look but quickly discovered it is in fact actual carbon fiber. I did not expect that. That is indeed a very good thing.
All I want from a laptop (Score:2)
Don't need no retinas, give me my 1440x900 or 1680x1050. Bonus points for IPS.
Doesn't have to be razer thin or feather light, just around 2kg. I don't need 8 gigs or 8 cores either. I'd rather have the integrated GPU too. I don't crave an SSD. Don't need no fingerprint reader, 1080p webcam or logo-laden speakers. Keep the internals cheap I just want to pay for a decent screen.
why is this niche impossible to fill ?
They already make a great Unix ultrabook (Score:2)
It's called a Macbook Air.
If you don't like OSX, Linux installs just fine.
Linux difficult to install? (Score:2)
I disagree, it's no more complicated than installing Windows, how many people have to install an OS on their brand new computer?
I've been Windows fre
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Windows 3.1 was DOS based...
98 was the first version of windows that was an actual OS, not a graphical DOS shell
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DOS is by definition an OS. Look up the acronym for the two. DOS even had its own kernel. The windows kernel ran OK top if the DOS kernel in all versions of the original windows, which went up to ME.
NT, which was (is) a whole other operating system built from the ground up, new kernel and all. The kernel that windows uses today is derived from the original NT kernel, and thus has no DOS ancestry.
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1) dos is not a programming language, you dont base something on DOS, DOS is an OS, you run programs with it
2) no 98 was sitting ontop of a dos command kernel
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98 ran on top of DOS too, doh.
So did ME, although they saddled it with a really ugly cludge to keep you out of the primary shell.
XP was the first consumer oriented windows version that was NOT a DOS shell.
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AFAIK this helped DR's lawsuit against MS. In contrast, as mentioned in my blog post [blogspot.ca], OS/2 never depended on DOS at all.
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I am no techie, not a geek, and I must object when technical writers claim that Linux is not 'ready for the desktop.'
I think it depends what you mean by "not yet ready for the desktop."
Not yet ready for the average user to install, maintain, tweak to get everything working, etc.? Surely not, though I wonder if Windows is all that much easier in that regard, except for the important distinction that Windows requires less effort to get everything working... usually the hardware works out of the box.
Not yet ready for the average user to use? As I've posted elsewhere, lots of average users are running a Linux box set up b