Back when the whole netbook thing started, Asus was king of the hill with a focus on netbooks with Linux pre-installed. Since they were kind of popular, it didn’t take Microsoft long to start working together with Asus to ‘port’ Windows XP to the Asus line of netbooks, and with that, to other netbooks as well. The result was that Linux netbooks are now harder to find for many people. While Dell committed itself to Linux on netbooks, Asus has decided to just skip the first date and jump right into bed with Microsoft.
Asus and Microsoft have started a join advertising campaign promoting netbooks with Windows. It basically comes to Asus and Microsoft saying that netbooks are better with Windows – that is, better than netbooks with Linux. “Windows helps you easily get online and connect to your devices and services – without dealing with an unfamiliar environment or major compatiblity issues.” Mind that the emphasis is theirs, not ours. Here’s the teeth-grindingly cheesy video that’s part of the campaign.
It’s interesting how a vendor can go from being one of the first computer makers able to market Linux to the non-geek audience, to what we see here today.
We used to sell crap. It had unfamiliar interface and serious compatibility issues. You couldn’t run iTunes on it. You couldn’t play your DRM-encrypted porn. Now, we realized our mistakes. Throw your old netbooks away, and get a new one! Pfff…
I’ll never buy ASUS netbook/laptop again
Agreed, but let’s not forget that Asus loaded its EeePCs with Xandros from the very start. Xandros is not coincidentally a Microsoft-approved vendor. Few people realized that from every EeePC sold, Microsoft profited too because of its Xandros deal.
In any case, bye bye Asus. Since Dell has finally started to sell Ubuntu mini laptops in the Netherlands too now I’d kindly refer any Dutch people hanging around here to Dell, or of course, the Lemote Yeeloong. 🙂
Dell seems to be less dependent of, or screwable by, Microsoft in this respect.
But as for all the other vendors, it’ll only get more interesting as the Android thing comes up. And with American and European purchasing power dramatically declining, the margins on those netbook machines will only drop further. So if Microsoft wants to stop cannibalising its consumer market Vista sales (i.e., on the “regular” hardware sales) it has to come up with more than just this. 🙂
Edited 2009-05-31 11:31 UTC
There are some geeks inside their linux bubble that are light years away from business realities. Companies, and especially cheap hardware vendors are in desperate need for cash, because their margins are so low, compared to their costs. They need to find ways to make money, it’s vital to stay in business. Netbooks are definitely not cash cows like Apple products. And to make money, you have to offer what your customer wants. Most computer users want Windows, they don’t want Linux, in spite of geeks wanting it to be the opposite. Microsoft charges very little money to OEMs for the Windows licenses on netbooks, and offering Windows increases sales, so it makes perfect sense. I’m not saying Windows is good or bad, I just say this is what most people want on their netbook. They don’t want Linux. Offering a product an audience doesn’t want goes against business common sense. If a small percentage of users want Linux, fine, they can buy a pristine netbook and install it themselves, or they can buy a Linux netbook, but it’s a small insignificant percentage that’s hardly interesting from a business standpoint. So advertising a netbook that has Windows and the applications the regular user expects is definitely enticing and leads to sales.
Why do you say that? There are plenty of geeks that make money off of Linux, from major corporations such as Red Hat, to smaller vendors who do pre-installed desktop Linux such as System76. Why is it that people always insist that there is no money to be made with Linux?
I agree with you, but in the same end, that’s the business model they chose, with high volume and low profits. Apple chose a different model, and have been very successful at it. One thing that could be tried is as more platforms become available (from ARM, VIA), to maybe shop around for a lower cost platform, and either undercut competition by a large margin to help increase volume, or undercut by a smaller margin to increase profit per unit.
It’s important to remember why Linux is being preinstalled at all by any vendor. Customers wanted it. Dell began installing Ubuntu due to overwhelming response on Dell’s Brainstorm. Also, if it’s so obvious people want Windows and not Linux, then why is there a need to actually create an advertisement to tell us this?
IMO, I think Asus just hurt it’s reputation and a (although maybe small) portion of it’s supporters. It’s stint with Linux lasted less time than Dell’s. Than Dell. Think about that. Asus created a movement to at least offer an option for Linux on netbooks. Even HP and Dell offer this. Now they’re offering less choice than their competition, using the same hardware platform, and they expect this to boost sales? Let’s hope that light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t turn in to a train…
There is a need, but what about the ratio between customers who want Linux and those who want Windows? What about the proportion of those who want the Linux version to install a pirated version of Windows? I’m asking because the overall market share of Linux is around 1%, and I don’t know why it would be different on the netbook market. People use what OS they feel more comfortable with, no matter if it’s a desktop computer, a laptop, a netbook, etc… The overwhelming response on Dell’s brainstorm is because a lot of geeks have rushed to have their voice heard.
Because ASUS has burnt its wings with the poor Linux netbooks that Windows users didn’t like that much. A communication campaign is necessary for ASUS to recover its brand image and for Windows users to know that ASUS has the right product for them.
The bigger difference I see between Asus and HP/Dell is that Asus didn’t really do any work for their Linux distro. They didn’t use Xandros… they used a “free” derivative and payed some no-name company to support it far less than they paid for windows even after Microsoft lowered the price. Asus invested essentially nothing in the distro other than cheap stuff to throw on their cheap computers. The early units they didn’t even bother to make sure all the hardware components worked properly….. that has nothing to do with “Linux” as the OEM is the one organization with the rights to write and release those drivers for linux and Asus choose not to polish up the drivers but to release a broken product.
Dell on the other hand is using Ubuntu.. from Canonical… and they’re willing to choose the hardware that works properly (even if it means limited choices) before they ship something. They’re paying the Linux company for actual support after the sale.
The real issue is that most OEM providers, especially the cheap ones, provide little to no driver configuration or end user support. In spite of the OEM license requirements that OEMs are supposed to SUPPORT Windows users, very few actually do. Most skate by with the default Windows Updates and letting users fend for themselves getting drivers from the chip makers like ATI or Nvidia or Broadcom directly. When it came to Linux netbooks they thought they could get away with “community” support instead of being a company that PAID for support and getting developers’ hands dirty with fixing actual problems.. and it came back to bite them.
“Linux” isn’t the problem.. the problem is cheap OEMs that can’t handle making a functional product when it’s not handed to them for free and they have to work at it. Most of the netbook OEMS shipped netbooks with missing drivers and non-working hardware in the Linux version and didn’t seek out working versions (when often it existed, or required changes from the default configuration) or pay to write the drivers needed. It’s squarely on OEMs that shipped broken systems, not on “Linux” no matter how badly OEMs want to wash their hands.
[edit]Put it another way: When the Linux Rumors first started on Eee Asus was rumored to be paying $5!! a copy for the Xandros knock-off. Then they got a “good deal” and rumor was knocked the Windows price down to $25 a copy… That’s the whole problem in a nutshell. Why wasn’t “linux” worth $20 a copy (for R&D and support) in the first place? They’ve sold upwards of a million units imagine $20 a copy for support in Canonical’s hands… it would nearly double their income and provide funds to buy the drivers/support needed to do the product right.
Edited 2009-06-01 13:13 UTC
You are 100% right. If they could get the Netbook companies to go standard on something like Ubuntu it would be great.
Right now it just seems like when it comes to Linux everyone wants to 1. Dumb it down and 2. Make it seem like you have a big toy.
Netbook remix with the ability to turn off and on the Remix part is what is needed. Ubuntu needs to be PUSHING as many companies as possible to ship with NBR as the Linux version of default. Even if they have to give it to the OEMS for now to get them on board and let them pay after it is shown that it can sell.
They also need to include some good docs and make it easy to update. And they need to get off the 6 month release cycle for OEM versions. Go with a 1 year to 18 month release cycle (Which works well for Apple)
What would be a good is if they could when they push out updates then attach a small fee like Apple does for the iPod touch. For people using OEM NBR they could charge say $9.99 or something and when the update came out it would pop up in the updater telling you all the new features, how to protect your data, how to pay the fee and then allowing you to update. They could make some much needed money off this and put out a more stable version.
I don’t know about everyone else but I don’t mind Ubuntu making money charging people for OEM versions etc.
Regular users don’t want either Linux, Windows nor OS X. They just want a f–king computer.
Regular users mostly don’t even know what Windows actually is, or have some vague idea about it being an OS (and most of them have no idea what an OS is).
People, PLEASE, get off your collective asses and realize that most people don’t choose Windows nor Linux. They just buy things, sit down and expect them to work. It’s not an unrealistic goal for any OS if you’re sold an OEM-fitted PC, which is tuned to work out of the box. Of course, we also need to expect some work from the OEM (I’m looking at you, ASUS, for selling the EeePC with the lousy and poorly-supported Xandros, and making a rather poor effort at a good out-of-the-box experience).
People don’t install Linux. People don’t install Windows. People don’t deal with drivers. People don’t deal with hard drives or partitions. Those who do are getting into a great deal of effort–no matter the platform you’re dealing with.
Regular customers expect any computer to ship with Windows. That’s for sure!
Some People does know what they want.
I have a friend who bought a hp-mininote and it came preloaded with SUSE. The netbook worked perfectly out of the box, but after a week he told me “i don´t like this, can you put windows on it?”
So i installed windows XP via pen drive,and as someone else already said it was a total nightmare. and after the windows install it required 86458411811451+ drivers.
IMHO the point is that average Joe user does not want invest time to learn a new OS (and therefore a new set of apps) they just want to work with their usual tools.
If he knows what an operating system is, he’s not a regular user. Period.
So if someone knows what an OS is they are a power user?
And then they call me a pirate for using an “illegal” Windows copy, while I am forced to pay an MS tax on any notebook/netbook. I have had to buy a netbook with Windows preinstalled, while I use Ubuntu on it.
There are 2 companies that I pirate IN SPITE: Warner Music Group and Microsoft.
And at the bottom of it, it’s not about promoting Windows(’cause there is no need to promote Windows on netbooks), it’s about “dumping” on Linux and others.
I’d like to see Asus drivers and utility software updated through a consolidated “update” function. I wouldn’t mind it being a little better than the CPU/Mem/Temp monitor utility hanging my Windows system on shutdown. I’d like my Asus hardware to be better supported across platforms; easily done by allowing platforms to write in there own support.
In IT… it’s been a very long time since anything was done because the customer wanted it.
Let’s see if I got this right.
– People don’t want GNU/Linux (nevermind the average netbook user doesn’t even *know* about the underliing OS)
– People want Windows
– ASUS realizes this, and sets up a website to convince users that “It’s better with Windows”
Right. Since customers want Windows, let’s persuade them that Windows is better. Makes perfect sense.
The funny thing is that the tiny fraction of netbook customers who _really_ want Windows is almost entirely composed of people who want to run their old, heavyweight win32 apps (usually games) rather than generic productivity software. So when they finally get Windows, they’re disappointed that a netbook doesn’t come with the necessary resources to run those games.
If this is really by Asus, this is the message they send:
“Yesterday we sold netbooks with broken software, but we didn’t said you. Today we do, but you do not get a refund, a software update or a new netbook. Instead we ask you to buy a new netbook. If you buy this new netbook, you also will be screwed, but obviously we do not yet tell you. In less than a few years we will tell you the hardware of your netbook sucks. We will tell you that this is the reason why your Windows netbook got slow and why it got infected with virusses and other malware. Of course, this is still a secret today.”
I wonder how much Microsoft had to pay Asus to damage its own reputation.
Does someone feel interested to create a website (or banner) that highlights this? For instance http://itsbetterwithoutasus.com/ . On this website it can be written that Asus today claims it sold broken netbooks and that its customers do not get a refund or any other free fix. Of course this website should link to the itsbetterwithwindows.com website. …with a little press attention this can drive Asus to withdraw the whole campaign B-)
Another idea is to create an online petition for Asus EEE Linux owners. This petition should ask Asus to send *free* Windows XP licenses to Linux Eee PC owners *because* Asus today claims the Linux netbooks they sold are broken.
Nope. They claim they are less good
Come on…This has been debunked on Digg as a hoax. Take a look at the WHOIS information
Yes, the whois information and the design and tone of the entirely website screams “troll” and “hoax”. But I read that Asus actually officially confirmed that this website is legit, and links it from the Asus website.
I can’t find the source (I’m sure I read it somewhere) but I found it highly suspicious that Asus and Microsoft didn’t take any measures after all the media hype. The website is obviously infringing Asus’s and Microsoft’s trademarks, so if it was actually a troll then Asus/MS would have sent this guy a cease & desist.
Trusted. Familiar. Compatible.
Maybe from a Windows user’s perspective, but let’s try from a (totally unbiased and not in any way being deliberately awkward) Linux user’s perspective.
I simply can’t trust a proprietary OS. DRM, security, proprietary formats etc. Plus I’ve been using Linux exclusively for 6/7 years, so Windows is quite unfamiliar to me.
I’m sure I could install Cygwin, figure out how to get all my usual Linux apps working, and figure out Windows multiple systems for keeping things up-to-date. Or I could find Windows equivalents for my usual apps. Then I’ll need to find out how to replicate all my keyboard shortcuts, and something to replace explorer.exe. That sounds like quite a hassle.
Or I could stick with Linux. And it sure won’t be living on a computer bought from a company that brings out this sort of propaganda.
Edited 2009-05-31 11:14 UTC
But the advertisement isn’t aimed at people like you. It’s aimed at families, regular people, not geeks.
Yes, that would be better for you.
I did claim to be in no way awkward or biased! And yes, sticking with Linux would be better for me. Undoubtedly I could have expressed myself better, and brought some well researched and indisputable examples to the fore.
Either way, there is a still a level of FUD in the advert, which debases the OS that I have chosen to use and like, and therefore I must express a certain amount of distaste at it.
Welcome to the world of capitalism. It’s all about critisizing your competitors products. Coke says Pepsi is shit, and vice-versa. Same for Microsoft and Linux.
Every other machine in my network including the osX boxes natively and naturally share data in a secure manner. Then I run the CIFS windows sharing hack so my Windows machines can share data with the rest of the network also. Ironic that Windows takes work-arounds just to work with standards respecting platforms.
The preinstalled Xandros Linux was extremely limited and buggy. Installing additional software was a nightmare. So anybody who wanted to use Linux on these just slapped on a distro of their choice.
I have an EeePC 901 and have tried a lot of OSs on it: various Ubuntu derivatives, OpenSuse, PC-BSD, Mac OS X, Haiku. ATM it triple boots Crashbang Linux, XP and Mac OS.
But I mainly use XP. Because it’s the fastest and most reliable. It wakes up faster from sleep and reconnects to WiFi faster that Linux. Linux tends to crash network-manager ever so often after wake up. Firefox is slow on Linux and fine on Windows.
Firefox is slow on Linux and fine on Windows.
That’s something that I too have noticed. FireFox IS noticeably slower on Linux and I don’t quite understand why.
I’d take a guess that it would be; crappy compiler, not using a profiler and GTK+ (plus all the gunk that underlies it).
As I gather it could in part be related to the ext stall issues that are ironed out in the 2.6.30 kernel, and also SQLite problems.
The slowness I see here and there is fixed in Firefox 3.5 (digging up old history items in the AwesomeBar for example).
So this situation seems temporary.
As far as I know Linux Firefox binaries are still not using PGO.
I don’t believe the Firefox GCC builds are using file combining to simulate C++ inter-procedural optimization (IPO) either.
KDE does it. I use the trick in some of my own C++ software. It helps a lot because C++ needs a lot of compiler intelligence.
Firefox should look into using LLVM as well. Since LLVM looks at the entire program before compiling to real machine code it provides IPO as well.
werecatf wrote:
–“That’s something that I too have noticed. FireFox IS noticeably slower on Linux and I don’t quite understand why.”
As has been stated before, Mozilla got profile-guided optimization working with the windows version of Firefox first, then they got it working on Linux aswell. However, not all distros build their versions with profile-guided optimization. I use Arch linux and Firefox is just as fast on Arch as it is on windows for me.
Weird. I normally use Windows (Vista on the laptop, XP on the desktop) but also have Ubuntu Jaunty installed on the laptop for occasional fun. My observations are that Firefox is faster on Linux than on either Windows version. In fact, Firefox sluggishness made me switch to Google Chrome which I happily use on Windows now.
Just my $.02, YMMV, etc.
The stock builds of Firefox for Linux and Mac are built with
the GNU toolchain and very little optimizations
Firefox for mingw32 is built with some other highly
optimized compiler, probably Intel’s.
to see the specifics, enter “about:buildconfig”
into the Firefox address bar.
Yeah, NetworkManager does suck at times and can be a bit slow to reconnect after resuming from sleep. If you can live without its 3G or bluetooth (via Blueman) integration I highly recommend Wicd which keeps this laptop happy day long:
http://wicd.sourceforge.net/
i bought a 701 when they came out. installed xp and ubuntu on it until debian had a better installer and to just play around with things.
As far as which runs better on it, i’d say xp ran well but was in no way built for the screen size. For it’s use as a note taker at uni it was just too much.
Debian initially ran slightly slower (in some respects due to the display driver at the time), but was a much better fit as far as screen real estate and usability. After tweaking was a lot quicker and leaner than xp.
For those of you running XP on these things you NEED alt drag.
http://code.google.com/p/altdrag/downloads/list
By far the best feature of linux on netbooks. Also for GNOME users if you set fonts to about 8 instead of the default 10 it will feel a bit roomier.
I was going to buy another eee pc but because i couldn’t find one without windows i just bought a dell latitude.
Why doesn’t anybody sell notebooks without an operating system? i haven’t kept the original operating system on any laptop i’ve bought, linux included.
The linked site has no connection to Asus.
Even with Flashblock on, there’s a static picture of a woman using an *Asus* EEE PC. Yes, the textual part of the site surprisingly doesn’t mention Asus, but that picture clearly has the Asus logo on the back of the netbook. If you decide to play the Flash video, the first thing that appears is “EEE PC – It’s Better With
Windows” – case closed.
On the actual site itself, none of the reasons given (Trusted, Familar, Compatible) apply if you’ve never used Windows before, so to say something is categorically “Better With Windows” is bending the truth until it snaps really.
“Trusted”: Well, Windows gets attacked by viruses and malware more often than all the other OS’es in the universe combined. I’d actually trust it the *least* to do anything that requires security (e.g. financial trnasactions).
“Familiar”: Being “familiar” doesn’t relate at all to the quality of the item being discussed. We’re talking “better” here and you can’t use “familiar” in that context. Besides, there are plenty of desktop themes and window managers to make Linux desktops look like Windows ones if you really must anyway.
“Compatible”: Out of the box, Linux is compatible more hardware than Windows is. Linux is compatible with more filing systems than Windows has ever supported in its entire history. Linux is compatible with far more standards (ISO, POSIX, ANSI etc.) than Windows has ever been. If you mean “compatible with running Windows programs” (which again isn’t a metric of being “better”) then there’s always Wine to run a fair percentage of Windows programs. Is Windows compatible with Linux programs in the same way? No!
I still think it’s not an Asus campaign. There’s probably thousands of sites out there with a pic/video of an Asus Eee PC, which are not related to the company in any way.
Just looking at the compression artifacts on all images on the site should make you suspicious, both Asus and MS can do way better than that.
Frankly, I don’t know many people who might wanna buy a computer but who have never used Windows before…
linked by :
http://www.asus.co.uk/eeepc/1008HA/
http://whois.domaintools.com/asus.co.uk
forget that Asus UK resolve with
uk.asus.com/
These days.
but your also right :
http://whois.domaintools.com/itsbetterwithwindows.com
—–
That won’t get in the way of Thom saying :
“Asus, Microsoft Launch Anti-Linux Netbook Campaign”
* I am sure Asus want to bash It’s GNU/Linux offering …
* I am sure Microsoft want to push Windows XP these days …
* I am sure it’s an Anti_linux ad because you know they say windows is better , can’t say one is better then the other in reverso world.
* I am sure it’s a **campaign** , Microsoft is known to have zero budget and do one page **campaign**
Even with shutting down my brain with drugs and alcohol , I could not seem to agree with that , but that’s just me.
So in reality : Shhhh can’t upset Thom , with you know facts at OsNews , on sunday , not like he would check any other day either.
BTW I also submited this :
http://www.eeepcseashell.com/
Don’t resolve as an Asus site either , but as the logo and usual trademark notice associated with real ads. Also link to “PRODUCT REVIEWS FROM SERIOUS MEDIA”
It did not have the right message for Thom Probably , plus they are actually funny.
Last time i had an XP installation on my Notebook i was shocked at how unusable XP is for mobile usage. If you use an User account without Administration privileges, you can’t even change your energy saving options, which is hilarious.
Not to mention the weirdest file ownership issues which forced me to copy a downloaded executable to another directory and back to take ownership.
It still didn’t come with a decent set of unicode fonts preinstalled and still most 3rd party windows apps aren’t unicode capable.
Did they fix all those issues in SP3?
So it is apparently Microsoft’s fault because neither you or your companies IS department can’t setup notebooks properly? Windows XP isn’t perfect, infact all operating systems suck, Windows XP just seems to suck less than Linux (which isn’t saying much for either of them).
Yea, it is kind of like how Linux sucks because OEMs don’t bother setting it up properly.
How about Linux sucking because programmers, like the one who maintains ath5k driver, ignores all the bug reports that come his way; his drivers never the fault! oh no! its that damn user! that is what is at fault!
My netboot, Eee PC is MEANT TO BE SUPPORTED by Linux but EVERY SINGLE distribution FAILS even though ALL the enhancements ASUS made has been given back to the community.
It is NOT my fault when Linux fails – it is the programmers fault when it fails. You’re the type of guy, going by your logic who blames the rape victim by saying, “well, she shouldn’t have worn a short skit” even though her short skirt had nothing to do with it let alone the fact that she be allowed to walk the streets without being threatened.
For you it is always everyone elses fault – oh no, it isn’t the linux programmers fault! they’re without sin! opensource is perfect! flawless! any problems that occur are because of evil Microsoft or some unnamed evil corporation! thats right! someone elses fault!
Now go away and have your milk and cookies – you’re annoying the grown ups.
Edited 2009-05-31 16:28 UTC
Dude, you need to calm down. Since when is “OEM” a synonym for “user”? “OEM” refers to Asus, which means Asus is to blame, not the user.
Yes, that is very annoying. In fact it is possible, but it’s a question of adjusting the ACLs on the relevant registry keys so as to be a little more permissive. I posted about it a while ago:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?312013
I can understand that, in some environments, it may be desirable to lock down such settings but that’s what group policy is for really. Unfortunately, they didn’t fix it in SP3 but did in Vista.
It was inevitable.
Asus did not initially adopt Linux out of love. It was pure business, and still is. Linux gave them a way to market that MS could not at the time- Vista was too resource hungry, and XP was being discontinued.
MS woke up when the netbook market started taking off; without an MS alternative, not too many people minded having Linux. Again, people did not adopt Linux out of love, there just wasn’t an alternative. Things have changed now. MS have come to the party, and do business in a way business people understand.
There is no longer a business benefit for Asus to continue with Linux.
Technologists place way too much emphasis on “free”. The business world does not understand that; they do not see how “free” can provide a sustainable business model, particularly with the potential threats; patent threats, copyright threats or threats of obsolescence.
They, the business world, do not see why it should be “free”. They take umbrage at being prescribed to by technologists, who in their mind should NEVER be in the driving seat.
To the statement “Linux is technologically superior”, business people reply “So what? Is it underwritten by a large monolithic organization who can protect me from intellectual property threats? Does it provide me with a ready-made market for my product?”
While technologists work for love, righteousness and the quest for perfection, no matter how long it takes, the business world are motivated by greed, and lust for the quick buck. Long term thinking and ethics are generally not part of their vocabulary.
Believe me, the only time you will ever see a business supporting “free”, is when it means they do not have to pay the silly technologist a salary to get what would otherwise be worth billions of dollars.
– The louse
You’ve touched on the ‘free’ thing quite well; I know many people from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds who all say they would sooner pay a little more for something that relieves them of not having to deal with the drama’s associated with computers.
The problem with Linux advocates here is that they’re unwilling to be self critical – which is why their marketshare of netbooks have dropped like a lead balloon. Don’t expect constructive self criticism or any projects starting up anytime soon within the opensource/linux community to address the issues because it is almost a knee jerk reaction these days to abuse Microsoft and the said vendor and claimed it ‘sold out’ (as if there was an ‘us and them’, those who aren’t with ‘us’ are against ‘us’).
Edited 2009-05-31 13:15 UTC
It has a lot less to do with free (as in beer) and a lot more to do with freedom, specifically freedom of choice, but also freedom from being locked into someone’s roadmap and having to dump the machine when the vendor won’t support the operating system any more, or when the platform’s applications are so bloated that they render the hardware unusable.
The drop in market share is quite possibly due to the usual channel manipulation tactics than anything else. Maybe vendors don’t really know what to do when people suggest running Linux or something else – who should they turn to? We might well see Android moving in to mop up in the netbook space as it’s obvious who leads that effort and the vendors have all heard of them before.
Nonsense! You’re merely projecting your own attitudes if you really think open source projects don’t get any criticism from their own users or don’t take that criticism on board, at least from time to time. Sure, some people will reject criticism, but there’s no shortage of efforts to improve usability.
And yes, of course Asus has sold out, and by reducing the choice available to potential customers, they’ve let those people down, too. Dell, on the other hand, have stared into the abyss after having Microsoft lead them right there, which is why I suppose they’re more interested in ignoring Microsoft and expanding their Linux offerings.
Philosophical intellectual wankery that no one outside the die hard Stallmanites actaully caring about. How about joining the real world where real people have to solve real problems – and have no interest in spending the next 10 years of their life gaining ‘freedom’ because you think you know what is best form them.
And up pops the usual blaming Microsoft, monopoly etc. etc. Why address an issue when complaining about something is oh-so-much easier.
Where is this ‘improvement’ that you claim exists? the programmers reject criticism and feedback across the board (my experiences with: Banshee, GIMP, Firefox, ath5k driver and a few more) then fall back to what you did in the above reply – blame everyone else except themselves.
‘Sold out’ – customers wanted Windows, ASUS provided Windows – end of story. You resort to concocting conspiracy theories because you would sooner believe in men working in smoke filled rooms and in dark allies than admitting that Linux falls short in what customers expect from their operating system.
Edited 2009-05-31 14:09 UTC
It took me 10 minutes to connect to a 3G network using a Windows Asus eeepc 900, only 20 seconds to do the same with eeebuntu on the same machine and 1 minute with Xandros.
Linux runs everything out of the box, windows requires drivers to put anything extra on it.
Compatibility? Familiar Interface? Are they joking?
I have the Netcraft toolbar installed on FF. When I went to the linked site, the phishing indicator turned pure red. Seems dangerous.
Just a preamble before I look at the slogan used (Trusted. Familiar. Compatible. ) in the ad.
I actually like the advertisement; I bought an Eee PC 1000HA last week and the first thing I wanted to do was give Linux ago; prior to picking the 1000HA up I downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 and Eeebuntu. Both of them fail miserably at supporting the hardware just as I experienced with Acer Aspire One. Problems again with the reliability of wireless, sleeping either didn’t work at all, worked by failed to wake up or the whole thing came down in a screaming heap. Thus I am back using Windows XP (thank god it came with a recovery dvd/cd).
Maybe instead of pages upon pages of hate and vitriol that the Linux supporters, developers and sponsors all get together and be honest about the sad state of affairs when it comes to things just working out of the box for the consumer. The end user doesn’t care who is to blame, they just want things working and working well. I don’t think it is too much to ask for my wireless to hold a connection longer than 5 minutes, that what I download isn’t corrupted or my battery life isn’t drained because of stupid decisions such as the design of HAL.
Just you watch; we’ll have the Linux advocates come out in full force blaming everyone else for mine and other end users problems; watch the mouth froth and the use of ‘monopoly’ being screamed about as if incompetent programming, poor distribution quality and crappy hardware support are all down to the ‘evil monopoly’. Oh, that’ll include the token raising about the EU and other peripheral issues – but don’t expect a single one of the issues to get touched – and like so many times in the past this post will be moderated down to -16 because we have people here who treat this forum like some sort of holy crusade against the unbelievers.
“We’re a big company who sells a products and have lots of people who sell supporting products to run ontop” – if you’re Joe or Jane Six Pack, are you going to purchase a device with something that only a small number of vendors support or are you going to go with the product with the software which is supported by a wide range software and hardware? just look through linux printing at the number of half finished, half baked and half-assed printer drivers.
I think that familiar is also code for, ‘easy to use’ then this is another thing that Linux developers need to have a good hard look at; Network Manager is horrible; try disconnecting from a wireless network from the drop down menu – there is no option! the eeepc applet doesn’t work at all with 9.04.
Which is really a duplication of trusted.
Edited 2009-05-31 12:58 UTC
I’ve used Fedora, Ubuntu, and OpenSuse almost exclusively for six months. I hang onto a Windows installation because of iTunes. I started encoding all my music in Apple lossless years ago, and I’m not going to redo thousands of songs. In addition, there’s no linux solution for ipod and iphone connectivity that is as good as itunes.
I have a dilemma with linux distros. I’m not a power user. I use them for fun. They’re faster, more secure, and in many respects easier to use than Windows. Seriously. If you can get past the unfamiliarity at first, many mainstream distros “just work” better than Windows does.
However, every once in a while, I will encounter a problem that just makes the whole linux experience suck. For instance, flash just started to crap out last night on my fiancee’s laptop with bars across the screen. It works on every site except youtube, but of course youtube is the only site we want it to work on. gnash doesn’t work. that other open source alternative doesn’t work. and adobe’s own flash plugin doesn’t work on youtube. i have an identical fedora installation on another laptop, and flash works fine.
i don’t have time to peruse forums and wait for responses that may or may not work for problems like this.
this is my frustration with linux: basic plugins that the end user needs to “just work” often don’t or are crippled (skype), no good apps for apple products, and no good tax software.
i’ll still stick with linux; i love it. i think it’s superior in most respects, but unlike the linux users you cite, i think i have my eyes open about linux’s limitations
I have mine saved in AAC format which although supported for playback the problem is if I want to keep ripping in that format I am forced to use the inferior FAAC which has pretty much become abandonware.
The iPhone/iPod Touch unfortunately is unsupported, however, even when they do support the ‘normal’ ipod such as the classic, I have found that there are bouts of bugginess that cause problems. iTunes is no walk in the park either; if you store you music on a USB hard disk and syncronise your ipod via USB, there are issues which arise and strange error messages occur.
Thats a subjectivism if I ever saw one; a computer is only as secure as the weakest link in the chain, it is only as fast as what you install on it and the hardware underneath it – don’t confuse romaticism of a new operating system to actual perfroamce difference. I did that many years ago when I was a Linux zealot (having used it full time for 9 years on one computer I had).
For me, I am at a point in my life where I have no interest in tweaking and trying to get things working; if something doesn’t work out of the box with minimum fuss and bother – I take it back. I am not going to spend my whole weekend trying to work my head around some hair brained piece of software that should just work.
When I install Linux, I want to be able to plonk it on a thumb drive and load onto the machine; this machine is no different to the LInux version so it should just work out of the box. I find it funny that Lumer or what ever his name is, the one who hangs around any linux thread like a parasite, who was trumpetting Ubuntu as the ‘ideal Netbook Liunx distribution’ and that I shouldn’t ‘waste my time’ with Eeebuntu. Well, I gave it ago and it failed to work as it should.
When Windows 7 comes out I am going to upgrade this machine and put Snow Leopard on my two Mac’s. Quite frankly if people think that they get ‘geek credibility’ through the obsecurity of the software they use then god help them.
“a subjectivism if i ever saw one”
well, you’re right and wrong. a computer is only as secure as its weakest link, but on linux i don’t have to worry about viruses, and for a desktop user like me, fedora’s firewall and selinux do the job without any fuss.
as for speed, i don’t know the last time you booted up the same computer in vista/xp versus fedora 11 or ubuntu 9.04, but the latter are faster by any metric, by an order of magnitude. even after i get to windows’ fake-out desktop, i have to wait another minute or so to launch any programs. any you never know if windows is busy chugging away in the background loading something else while i twiddle my fingers.
and another thing, linux is far more transparent. i’ve had updates in windows crap out entire installations on at least four separate occasions, and i couldn’t even tell where the file corruption had happened. after days on escalated tech support with MS, it’s time once-again for a repair installation.
at least when you do an update on linux, you see exactly what’s happening and where it’s happening. you don’t have to go through a two hour long service pack installation only for it to tell you at the very end that it failed.
i said that i am aware of linux’s limitations, but don’t be blind to its advantages, as you apparently are.
Nor do I; my two Mac’s I own run Mac OS X, and my Netbook I run the Windows XP that came preloaded on it when I purchased it. I install security updates when they are released (unlike those who complain about conflicker even though an update to correct the problem was released at the end of October 2008) and I have a anti-virus for shits and giggles – nothing has tripped it off yet.
I don’t get virus’s because I don’t download and install software off dodgy websites, torrent, nor do I hack around with the internals of the operating system – where I have no business being as an end user. I’ve been using Windows PC’s for over 10 years and haven’t had a single virus – I’ve either been very lucky or I’ve simply avoided doing stupid things. I also don’t run Internet Explorer because I find it too limiting (I prefer Chrome) – so that mitigates the risks even further. Its not rock science – just common sense.
Security is as good as the weakest link – if you refuse to install updates because you’re too lazy to do so or because you think that you’re smarter than the security experts at Microsoft then the only person you have to blame is yourself.
On the same netbook Windows XP loads faster than Ubuntu. I can’t comment on Fedora 11 because it hasn’t been released. Windows Vista is slower, but are we talking about Windows Vista? no we arent, we are talking about Netbooks and WIndows XP – so stop bringing in unrelated topics to poison the well and move the discussion completely unrelated to the topic at hand.
As for the tripe, “i twiddle my fingers”, why you twiddling your fingers when you can use it straight away – talk about grasping at straws for you irrational hatred of Windows.
Amazing, I must be Jesus of the computer world since I can install updates without things crapping out. I’m either gifted or you must be doing something very wrong.
As for Linux – call me when I can update Ubuntu without poor reliability of their servers constantly being left in an inconsistent state when installations turn to hell because of missing dependencies.
Again, its amazing that not only must I be Jesus, I also must be Buddha and Krisna all rolled into one given my apparent luck with Windows.
What advantaged? you spent a whole post talking a load of unsubstantiated tripe. None of it based on reality – little more than anecdotal stories based on what it seems to be the inability of one geek to stop fiddling with his computer and start using it.
Edited 2009-05-31 16:20 UTC
your statements are just as anecdotal as mine. i’m happy you haven’t had a problem with viruses. many of us have. fedora 11 has been out in beta and preview release stage for months.
your smugness doesn’t do any benefit to your assertions.
i’m also happy that updates have been painless for you. for me they weren’t. we both have our own anecdotal experiences.
unsubstantiated? how do you suggest that i substantiate what my experience has been in this forum to your satisfaction? i use windows, as i mentioned earlier. i just find it slow, buggy, and prone to corruption. anecdotally, of course.
just because you had a bad experience with one distro on an asus, you have proclaimed all linux an inferior option to xp.
forgive me if i choose to ignore your incompetence and continue happily to use linux for what it is good for, and windows for what it is good for.
Edited 2009-05-31 16:32 UTC
Which re-enforces what I said, Fedora 11 hasn’t been released. When Fedora 11 Final is released, then we can start talking about the whether it is good, great or marvellous.
How about this; you screwed up your computer and complaining about WIndows not working; I do a vanilla install of Ubuntu and it doesn’t work. Notice the difference. You screwed up your computer – I used Ubuntu as it was designed.
What are the chances you screw up your computer because you consider your ‘geek credentials’ higher than what Microsoft considers the optimal settings and setup? 9/10 when I see a screwed up computer it is because the end user itself have buggered around with it – I see on the rare occasion a screwed up one because of an update gone bad but that is due to the shoddy third party rather than anything to do with Microsoft.
Compared to your pathetic idiocy when you ignore the review I did on acer, the NUMEROUS and NUMEROUS examples of Linux programmers ignore bug reports, suggestions, and work done by non-programmers. But hey, you keep abusing me and ignoring the 7 year legacy (I was using this website way back when Eugeina was manually moderating and there was no login at all – I am not going to try and collate 7 years of discussions in one post – thank you very much) of evidence I bring to the table and articles I have written regarding this topic.
Edited 2009-05-31 16:39 UTC
you’re right about the third party potential for screw-up. it was bitdefender that corrupted my most recent SP2 installation on Vista.
the other times, it was indeed xp. updates tended to have problems when xp wasn’t on the active partition, which is the case when you use grub.
also, i had difficulty with a complete lack of x64 drivers for xp, but that’s toshiba’s fault.
so, i guess you’re right. it really was my idiocy all along. sorry for getting upset with you.
I don’t get virus’s because I don’t download and install software off dodgy websites, torrent, nor do I hack around with the internals of the operating system – where I have no business being as an end user. I’ve been using Windows PC’s for over 10 years and haven’t had a single virus – I’ve either been very lucky or I’ve simply avoided doing stupid things. I also don’t run Internet Explorer because I find it too limiting (I prefer Chrome) – so that mitigates the risks even further. Its not rock science – just common sense.
I haven’t gotten a single Windows-virus either in ages. Keeping updates installed and using anything but IE is more or less enough. Oh, and yes, avoid pirated software or atleast read the associated comments if the installation actually has any viruses in it or not..
Amazing, I must be Jesus of the computer world since I can install updates without things crapping out. I’m either gifted or you must be doing something very wrong.
I have two times had the update crash my Windows and had to reboot, but other than that it’s been painless. Not even nearly as bad as people want to make it out to be.
As for Linux – call me when I can update Ubuntu without poor reliability of their servers constantly being left in an inconsistent state when installations turn to hell because of missing dependencies.
Use something else than that crappy Ubuntu
I still recommend Mandriva, haven’t had any issues whatsoever with it so far 
Reminds me of the ‘oh nooos!!111oneoneone lulz’ posts claiming that Mac OS X is a security nightmare after some people got a worm/trojan – interesting that they ignore the fact that this trojan was spread through pirated software. I avoid pirated software altogether – the price paid isn’t worth the risk of it being hacked up and possibly having identity theft as a result.
Problems that have occurred for me, 9/10 relate to third parties – lesson to learn, never use software from that third party; the reason why no Symantec or Network Associates/McAfee touches my computer.
Ewww, having used Mandrake in the past – that has put me off their software for ever. I tend to give something ago a couple of times before I kibosh their products entirely. Mandriva/Mandrake have crossed that line. I am interested in Fedora but I have my doubts it’ll be much better given that it’ll have pretty bad battery life as I experienced in the past when running Linux on a netbook. Maybe once they’ve fully yanked out HAL and replaced it with DeviceKit along with improving the efficiency of the other subsystems I will be interested in giving it a try again.
DeviceKit development is being led by Fedora currently. HAL related power management issues have been fixed in the latest releases for a while anyway.
The HAL issues still remain because the way it detects hardware is based on a polling mechanism which is hugely inefficient. The only way to fix it is a complete redesign and implementation – which DeviceKit is doing.
Lets talk of motivation…
What motivates ASUS to commit completely to Linux, if there is even a small chance that it may someday be converted from GPLv2 to the much more restrictive GPLv3? FOSS has cut their own throats. Thanks, Stallman.
What motivates a dev to fix a bug if the patch is met with the sort of uphill we see from the likes of the inestimable Ulrich Drepper (in my opinion an unmitigated ass) with the most recent GCC bug?
see: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=5070#c5
What motivates the man in the street to buy a linux based system rather than a Windows version, backed by the most successful development firm on the planet?
Stallman reminds me of that famous cheat found in many games: AllYourBaseAreBelongToI. Basically, he started out well, and no one questions the incredible value his GNU software gifted to the world. But does anyone seriously think he coded it all himself??? Regardless, he lays claim to it! His rants do more to destroy the credibility of Linux than any other single factor!
Others, like Eric Raymond and Theodore Tso are true heroes, often unsung, and humble as heroes often are.
Nevertheless, the dream is gone. Linux will never be “ready for the desktop” as long as the agenda is dictated by Redhat employees like Mr. Drepper, large organisations such as IBM, Novell & SUN (now Oracle). How long do you think projects like MySQL will last when owned by Oracle? Do you really think OpenOffice has a future, now that Oracle calls the shots?
What does that leave us with? Firefox? Gnome? KDE? Where is Moonlight & Mono taking us with the patent issues surrounding C#?
Nope, even the core GCC library is a moving target. No-one is able to agree to anything much anymore, and the prime motivations for changing the status quo are steadily disappearing. Who made people like Ulrich Drepper, Miguel de Icaza and Stallman akin to God????
How did those large companies get to lay claim to so much open source developed code?
Who really cares?
Edited 2009-05-31 17:58 UTC
You’re frustated at a proprietary plugin from Adobe.
You can’t migrate fully because of a proprietary application on Windows.
At what point did either of those become a limitation of Linux, and not with the market of software we have as a whole. Proprietary applications will always keep you bound to the OSs and platforms they appear on.
If you gave up proprietary software, and I’m not saying it would be perfect, nothing is, but your pain would be less.
Do you realize that the only problem you mention is with a piece of proprietary crappy software?
And yes, flash also sucks on windows and can lead to all kinds of horrible issues with some video drivers, such as no video when playing full screen in windows.
The nice thing about having music encoded losslessly, is that you can transcode to another lossless format without dropping quality.
Of course if you need to transcode thousands of songs you’d have to script it. I can’t think of anyway to do it on Windows, but on the Mac you could use:
qtexport – convert ALAC to WAV,
atomicparsley – read the tags off the ALAC files,
[insert lossless encoder here] perhaps a FLAC encoder.
Well, I don’t have a 1000HA but a 1000HE, which uses a slightly different Atheros chip… but I don’t have any of the issues with wireless you describe. I’ve had the wireless connected for 16 hours at a time, mirroring a huge tree of files, and no disconnects or corruption issues. I wish my Macbook was as reliable, but my router doesn’t like it for some reason and often leaves it in a half-connected state no matter what os is driving the machine.
As for battery life, install eee-control. The eee-applet is hopelessly out of date, and why they still have it in their repositories is beyond me. Most likely it’s in a Debian section that the Ubuntu developers don’t actually maintain, no excuse for that either though. Eee-control fixes everything you’re complaining about–enables the super hybrid engine for battery life (I get up to 8.5 hours on my 1000HE, you’ll get less than that simply because the 1000HA has a lower-capacity battery), the Wifi and bluetooth toggles, performance toggles… Everything. Of course, typically, it’s not in the Ubuntu repositories even though there are Ubuntu 9.04 packages for it available right from the Eee-control web page. A typically short-sighted and lazy decision by a repository maintainer, no doubt… Personally, it’s astonishing that Ubuntu boasts of having the best out of the box netbook compatibility, when they don’t even provide the latest eeepc_laptop module or the Eee-control utility to make proper use of the Eee pc. Not only is it not installed by default when an Eee is detected… but they don’t even have it in their repositories. Stupid.
For me at least, however, there’s no better option than Linux for my Eee. XP is too out of date and vulnerable, and I don’t wish to waste already limited system resources by running Anti Malware applications. I tried the Windows 7 RC and, while it ran ok, my battery life was shortened by about two hours even with the Asus drivers installed once I managed to get them working. I’m not going to settle for 7 hours battery when I know I can get 8.5 out of it. Opensolaris, the *BSDs… they don’t fully support the ACPI needed for battery savings and don’t suspend or resume properly. I suppose I could go the hackintosh route, I haven’t tried that yet.
I find the lack of attention to some problems in Linux as frustrating as you do. One thing to consider, however, is that perhaps none of the developers can replicate these problems with wireless that you’re having. I see a lot of users complaining, but when a developer responds to them and tells them, step by step, how to either attempt to fix the issue or send the developer useful information, the user doesn’t want to continue with it. Really, it’s the same situation as phone tech support, the user just thinks you can magically fix it while they go and eat a bag of potato chips or whatever.
All oses suck, the problem is choosing which one sucks the least for which situation. For my particular netbook situation, Linux sucks the least–XP too old, 7 too power-hungry, no others supporting ACPI properly… And as for the slogan:
Trusted: In a business sense, sure. In a personal sense in my case… no way in hell!
Compatible: Compatible with what? Peripherals… sure, but I don’t always want to install a driver for everything coupled with the manufacturer’s typically god awful software that eats system resources faster than your hard drive.
Familiar: I don’t know, some of that Windows 7 UI looks awfully unfamiliar to me in a Windows context. Looks like mac OS X meets KDE meets Vista, and has the worst keyboard navigation of them all to boot.
In the end, I don’t care what anyone else uses. I use what I use, everyone else can use what they wish to use, and everyone’s happy.
Wow, that was longer than I intended.
The problem is when I am in a noisy environment the ath5k lacks the features found in the old hybrid driver – and even then there are still problems. There are a mass of missing features from their ath5k features and yet the programmers in charge of the module are doing sweet bugger all to fix up the problem. Going by the ath9k notes, the driver seems alot more complete than the ath5k one.
I have a D-Link DIR-615 which seems to work ok – although I might be pretty lucky given there aren’t many networks operating in the neighbourhood as to cause interference.
*shrugs* what ever the case maybe, as an end user I can’t be bothered dealing with setting up repositories, doing this and doing that – It should work out of the box no questions asked. Windows XP worked out of the box (pre-installed) and I expect Ubuntu to do the same – maybe the CEO of Connical should spend more time making sure his products work before going off on flights of fancy.
I’m not surprised. Very little attention seems to be paid to making sure that the repository is up to date and doesn’t contain out of date packages. As I said previously, I expect it work out of the box with no modifications by me – Ubuntu has failed to step up. I don’t hold out much hope that 9.10 will change things nor do I expect much occuring with Fedora 11 either.
WIndows 7 isn’t heavier than Windows XP when they did comparisons. Its alot lighter than Windows Vista and its performance is better than Windows XP; so things have improved. The sad reality is that I’ll keep with Windows XP until Windows 7 is launched – I want to run a more up to date operating system but due to the share incompetence in the Linux community, I can’t.
Oh, they could replicate it – that is the problem; it is a known problem. The Atheros programmer refused to fix it – if they refuse to fix it, I refuse to run Linux. Until he fixes it, I won’t use Linux.
Edited 2009-05-31 17:12 UTC
I was teetering between getting a Netbook and Dell’s XPS 13. With this kind of crap from ASUS just pushed me over to going with for the Dell.
Kiss off ASUS
It is clearly a hoax, take a look at the whois for the website and then take a look at the video that sports XP on an Asus EEE PC 701???
Do Microsoft really want to advertise XP instead of Vista or pre-W7. Also, do Asus really want to advertise all of this on an old 701???
I wish journalists would do some proper work like getting down to the truth of the matter instead of going with the same stories as other websites like: slashdot, digg, theregister, etc.
Ehm, if this is a hoax… Then why do Asus’ own sites link to it?
http://www.asus.co.uk/eeepc/1008HA/
Because, as mentioned in other comments, that does not appear to be Asus’s site. http://uk.asus.com/ is with the Eee PC 1008HA page at http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=24&l2=164&l3=0&l4=0&model=2912&… . I got there by going to http://asus.com/ , selecting UK as my region, and doing a search.
I don’t own an Asus Eee but an Acer Aspire One.
It has an 8GB SSD (about 50% slower than the Eee), a 8MB Intel 950 GMA graphics card and only 512MB of RAM.
Well… I bought it with GNU/Linux (Linpus) and installed Ubuntu and turned on all the 3D features of compiz-fusion including the sphere deformation. Worked like heaven and even with the CPU on demand it didn’t cross the 800MHz (50%).
With Windows you have to use XP because if you use Vista you will get such a slow machine you will wish to smash it. And XP is supposedly dead (there is already a RC version of Windows 7).
Also they claim in the video that it brings Microsoft Works. Great!!! But how about Open Office which is complete?
And the viruses?
The Asus Eee Box was even already sold with the W32/Taterf worm aka W32.Gammima.AG aka kavo.exe (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/08/asus_eee_box_virus).
I’m very happy with Ubuntu and everything worked out-of-the-box. Even the webcam.
I never installed XP on this machine but on others Linux recognizes hardware much better. I have a recent laptop in which XP didn’t even recognized the wired network card so I needed to use another machine to install the driver through a USB drive :S
Edited 2009-05-31 14:28 UTC
My unit is the Asus Eeepc 1000HE with XP pre-installed. I can’t comment on which OS is faster/better on this particular model since I haven’t tried Linux on it yet. But I can answer one of your questions:
Yes, a complete version of Star Office 8 was pre-installed.
I’ve also installed Microsoft Office 2000 to be completely compatible with the software at work.
Each of them works very well on the eeepc, although the Microsoft apps seem to open faster and act a little ‘zippier’ than the Star Office equivalent, Word vs Writer for example.
If this is not some sort of hoax, I have just been put off Asus.
Just to elaborate on that whois information a few comments back, the registered owner is Michael Sharp. Product manager for microsoft.
http://www.spoke.com/info/p1makQy/MichaelSharp
I almost barfed when I saw this video.
And those commercials are anti-linux because?
BTW, lame title, Im turning on adblock+ again.
Edited 2009-05-31 16:15 UTC
I agree. “Anti-Linux Campaign” headline is pure flamebait.
“Microsoft Launches Pro-Microsoft Campaign” is more accurate, and hardly shocking.
Edited 2009-05-31 18:17 UTC
Could not agree more, this should NEVER have been posted, much less titled the way it was. There is not even a mention of Linux, much less it hardly seems like any ad campaign. Maybe the headline should have been “Some guy has a Windows netbook ad up for some reason”.
Shame on you OSNews for allowing this.
OH COME ON, people!!
That’s a part of Microsoft’s game – they NEVER publicly acknowledge
the existence of Linux by name in front of the general public.
But what else is this an attack on?????
WHAT OTHER non-Microsoft OS has been pre-installed by OEMs
on netbooks?????????????????????????
BTW, /. aside, this is no hoax, ASUS’s site links to it.
It’s obvious, but implicit, from the wording “It’s better with Windows”. That is imlpying that it is better with Windows than the other option.
This was refuted as a hoax on slashdot early last week, it’s hardly worth a mention. Posters more motivated than me dug into who registered the domain names and neither Asus or Microsoft came up..
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/05/28/0321251/Asus-Slaps-Linux-I…
Hoax or not, the title of the OSNews article is a crock. “Asus-Microsoft Launch Anti-Linux Netbook Campaign.” Yeah, right. None of the voiceless commercials in the series even mentioned Linux, nor did they compare Windows XP to any other operating system, not even in an unnamed vague fashion.
XP does work on the Asus Eeepc, and works very well. It’s entirely reasonable that Microsoft would highlight this fact in advertisements. And if Microsoft produced an advertising campaign for their OS running on an Asus computer, wouldn’t it be perfectly reasonable for Asus to link to the ads from their own website?
The real question, why isn’t anyone producing similar ads highlighting the functionality of Linux in the same way?
I’m not.
This is a big lack of respect for us, the Linux people.
And as a result, I’m no longer getting hardware and products from Asus.
Edited 2009-05-31 22:24 UTC
A bit of an over-reaction, considering that Asus is unlikely responsible for the advertisements?
As far as “respecting” Linux users, it seems to be not true according to this comparison chart of Eeepc models.
http://event.asus.com/eeepc/comparison/eeepc_comparison.htm
Notice that Linus is available on nearly every model, and two models are Linux exclusives.
Edited 2009-06-01 00:07 UTC
Asus have been making a lot of cool netbooks, including bamboo ones, and Microsoft has identified them as being the OEM to get on board. It’s pretty obvious that Microsoft have shared the love and the cash. They can’t do it with everyone though.
Given the state of any desktop Linux distribution today, especially with regards to getting software developed, installed and not having the system live as an island (how many 3G dongles can you plug in and get to work?), then it’s difficult to to see how Linux based netbooks were going to consolidate the gains they had made. Things are still as far off as ever.
Edited 2009-05-31 23:54 UTC
When more distros start to use Moblin as a base, I’m sure it will take off. I was really impressed with the beta of Moblin and what they have done so far. I would have liked to see more enhancements like more consistency with the toolkit used throughout. For example they use Nautilus with a moblin theme to match the clutter UI. Why not rewrite the file manager from scratch using only clutter? Maybe gnome 3 will help in that respect. Overall the distro is very impressive and intuitive. Boot times are phenomenal, way better than XP could ever hope for.
Frankly any linux based netbook offering should be based on Moblin and some of the cool things done there should filter back into the desktop as well.
I wouldlove to see an end to end linux solution on a netbook made specifically for it. For example it would be great if they dropped the Bios or go with Linuxbios like the OLPC has done, make the startup as close to a gadget as possible, no text, very low boot times(moblin already has that covered) and working, fast suspend modes. On a game console particularly the handhelds, going to suspend takes about a second and when it comes back up its immediate. If they nail that down then nothing in the netbook space could touch them.
I would like to see xorg on its way out, especially for netbooks. Its overkill, and there way too many workarounds to get a smooth user experience. For example why not look into something like project wayland (which admittedly is still way too early in development), and do like OSX does, if xorg support is needed it can be run on top of wayland. Wayland has the benefit of being small and light, something that is needed for nebooks.
Moblin has a lot of issues and you’re about to describe what they are:
There is no consistency. Moblin is yet another container desktop environment where there is little to no integration with the applications that run under it. Unless applications are re-architected for it then that won’t change.
Because rewriting new applications for a new environment takes an infeasible amount of time and resources and it would be stupid. It won’t be done. Look at how long Nautilus has been in existence and it isn’t exactly the world’s greatest file manager.
I doubt it. There’s still going to be a huge disjoint between the desktop environment and the applications that run under it.
The problem is that it doesn’t do or run anywhere near the number of applications that people run on XP. Its applications, the few that there are, are extremely limited and it doesn’t even have the apps that most Linux distros have.
Applications, applications, applications. Moblin has little to no applications that interest people and currently it’s even less functional than the Linux distros you hope that Moblin will replace. The fact that it looks nice up to a certain point is irrelevant because it isn’t what’s needed.
Because there is an awful lot of software written for it and that has to be supported otherwise we have even less applications than we do now. You can’t just drop the software that you’ve relied on for a long time. If you believe that’s easy then you’re nuts.
Because it takes too much time, effort, resources and time and it has implications for the software that has historically relied on X. It also depends on applications developers moving with you, which they very well might not.
You fall into the trap that many do of saying “Oh it looks impressive and if you they can only do this and this then it will be great!” The problem is that your environment has to go way beyond looks, it has to be functional and just doing “this and this” takes years of time and effort. You make it sound like it’s all a ten minute job.
Moblin is coming.
And IT will be pre-installed on many consumer devices.
That is what has Microsoft scared sh!tless – hence this pitiful FUD-site.
It’s an instant classic for the pantheon of Microsoft Bullsh!t…
Remember “Get the Facts?” – Ahh, goodtimes.
How about this: apparently, according to Microsoft, purchasing
a Mac Laptop AND a PlayStation 2 must be the only thing that
can make Vista bearable, just look at how happy these folks look:
http://hehe2.net/linux-general/microsoft-using-apples-macbook-pro-i…
I hate to burst peoples’ little bubbles of reality, but Moblin is absolutely useless.
It’s a thin veneer of polish underneath which exist all the same problems, because Moblin is yet another container desktop environment. It has few applications pre-installed and integrated with the environment, it still suffers from the same problems of adding software and hardware support after the fact and it still isn’t going to make things any better when someone plugs in a 3G dongle as many do with these devices.
The technology within Moblin flatters to deceive, and we still don’t have a framework where the environment and applications can inherit things such as resolution independence which is important for such a device. When they peel away the surface I hardly think that Microsoft are going to be worried by it.
I believe that when a vendor jumps into bed with another for a large sum of money – it might well be called corporate prostitution. Hope they have protection.
I’m kinda surprised it took Thom a whole week to get this story.
Anyway, everything about it looks like a scam, but if it’s true, than it’s bye bye Asus for me. I got a 701 EeePC with Arch Linux on it and I’m very pleased with it. But if Asus doesn’t want me, than I don’t need them.
Asus had zero interest in selling linux netbooks. They only wanted leverage to get windows on their machines cheaply.
Asus would have to be the least linux-friendly vendors around.
Looks like the tide will turn on Asus. There are already better netbooks than the Asus, Such as the Dell Mini Series and IMHO, they have better keyboards. The Dell Mini 9 is definitely a Hackintosher’s godsend.
Asus’ decision was made from a business standpoint. Like it or not, Most ASUS clientel are Windows users. I am led to believe that Asus’ decision to go with Xandros was Doomed from the start. Just Like HP’s decision to use Suse. From a customer prospective, I believe that they should’ve gone Ubuntu from the start. It goes to show the ignorance of businesses and their R&D to the Open source offerings.
Asus was an innovator with the first netbook for the consumer. I believe that they can innovate again with the first netbook with laptop grade resources. The UMPC was a flop, The OQO was a flop also. Why”? The price didn’t justify the product. If Asus or another manufacturer picks up teh ball and roll with a groundbreaking product that is small, fast, and the battery life can last past 2 or 3 DVD movies, than we have a Winner.
I own an EeePC 900, and I tried installing windows on it via a pendrive. I managed to do it, but I wouldn’t recommend that experience to joe sixpack that doesn’t have a clue about computers.
On the other hand, all linux distros that I tried pretty much worked out of the box with all hardware supported. It’s now happily running ubuntu. They can keep windows.
Asus had the hardware for my last system build. Being in the market for a upgraded GPU currently; looks like it won’t be the next Asus GPU up from my current.
I’ll vote with my wallet and give money to a hardware vendors that does not work towards a mono-OS market.
What’s continuously frustrating when OSNews runs stories about Linux, the resulting threads get too much of the following types of posts:
1. Linux patisans zealously defending Linux and denying flaws (and there are some).
2. Anti-Linux patisans zealously criticising Linux and saying it’s too hard or nothing works.
Both are wrong.
For a lot of users, Linux works really really well, with only minor tweaking (usually in the GUI) required.
For some users, Linux doesn’t work so well, and requires more major tweaking (often in the command line, or config files).
And in terms of an OEM like ASUS – the “out of the box” experience is entirely the OEM’s responsibility. If anything doesn’t work out of the box, it is 100% the OEM’s fault. They can choose the hardware components, they can put in the drivers (modules), and configure them. They can tweak the UI, or add their own GUI utilities – Linux is open source, remember?
If the OEM doesn’t do those things, slaps a distor on an existing machine, throws it out on the market, it’s their fault if they get a high return rate. It’s not Linux’s fault.
In other words, they need to put in the same effort for pre-installing Linux as they do with Windows (in which case they always pre-install the drivers and pre-configure them, and offer recovery CDs).
So how is it Linux’s fault when the OEM does not do the same for Linux?
Anyway, on the negative side for Linux: If fails as a platform – so many flavors, so many options for the file system, so many versions of libraries, so many package management systems, so many different locations for config files.
All of that make Linux more chanllenging for OEMs, ISVs, and hardware (peripheral, video cards, wireless chips, etc) vendors.
So personally, I don’t give a hoot what the hell they put on it. I’m not going to use Ubuntu anyway.. I’ll either throw Arch or Debian on it. I actually rather like the option of having Windows on it too, if for some unforeseen arises that I may be in need of it.
Microsoft strikes back at Linux netbook push
http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsoft_strikes_back_at_linux_netb…
Is Microsoft ‘Buying-Off’ Linux Netbook Vendors?
http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2009/06/02/is-microsoft-buying-off-…
Well, with vendors apparently doing backflips at the Computex trade show in Taipei,
http://www.liliputing.com/2009/06/asus-introduces-qualcomm-snapdrag…
http://www.liliputing.com/2009/06/acer-to-launch-an-android-netbook…
and some retailers apparently pre-declaring that they will only sell Windows no matter what Linux machines come out,
http://www.dsgiplc.com/layout.aspx?CatID={5be82fd3-0659-4b26-8392-2…
it would seem that something is afoot.
However, even amongst all that apparent effort at suppression, even the all-powerful Microsoft playing whack-a-mole all over the globe can’t stop it all:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/06/02/acer.making.android.n…
http://www.liliputing.com/2009/06/jolicloud-launches-private-alpha-…
http://www.liliputing.com/2009/06/ecs-launches-t800-an-81-inch-andr…
http://www.liliputing.com/2009/06/xandros-canonical-working-on-mobl…
http://liliputing.ning.com/forum/topics/thinkfree-office-working-on
http://www.liliputing.com/2009/06/qualcomm-introduces-13ghz-snapdra…
If Microsoft is indeed buying off vendors in an attempt to keep Linux netbooks out of retail stores, then I would think (given the recent fine against Intel) that the EU competition regulators would be very interested in this.
Edited 2009-06-03 13:09 UTC
What a crap. Microsoft is good in Marketing. Technically is a crap.
a good slogan: Microsoft Windows. It is better when turned off.