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.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
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.
Member since:2006-09-12
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
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Member since:
2005-07-06
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.