OSNews

Re-read the last sentence?

guys guys! I didn't mean it was a good idea. I don't want Windows apps. I'm only interested in the technical aspect, and I was just saying, if you did need it, the best way would be native Wine server, and emulated Wine clients. So the moment the emulated app hands work to Win32, the work is native. That beats full emulation, but it still won't be near real x86. Even if the emulator is JIT'ed etc etc. If Windows compatability is required, a x86 is required. Perhaps you could have a second processor that is x86 (RiscPC style) that is only power up to run Wine client apps. All very interesting, but not in terms of usefulness. ;-)

Actually, it is simpler and more logical, and faster, more secure and far cheaper, to just use Debian for ARM. If you need any functionality that you cannot find native in Debian (doubtful) then it would be easier to write a new FOSS Linux-native application that implemented such functionality than it would be to try to run x86 Windows binaries.

For example: Mono is by far an easier way to run .NET on ARM than any kind of Wine + x86 emulation. To create and process word-processing, presentation or spreadsheet files, run OpenOffice not MS office. Use Firefox not IE to surf the web. Use GIMP (wait for version 2.8 with a sane GUI, perhaps) not Photoshop. Run Moneydance not Quicken. And so on, and so on.

http://www.gimpusers.com/news/2009-09-19/single-window-mode-gimp-2-...
http://www.mmiworks.net/eng/publications/2009/09/gimp-single-mode.h...

For well over 90% of uses and users, this will be by far the easiest way to get whatever desktop functionality one might need on any desktop, notebook or netbook machine with an ARM Cortex A9 dual core, 2GHz CPU. As a bonus it will perform far better than any same-price machine with Windows 7, too.

PS: For decent 3D graphics but still low-power machines, perhaps a combination of ARM Cortex A9 dual-core 2GHz (topic of this thread), a low-power GPU (perhaps the ATI HD 4300 http://hothardware.com/News/ATI-Launches-the-4600-Series-Mobile-GPU... ), say 4GB RAM, and the Linux 2.6.32 Kernel:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzU0Nw

There are no artificial constraints on how much "punch" and capability OEMs put into a Linux\ARM netbook.

Edited 2009-09-21 09:59 UTC

JustAroundTheCorner(tm).