“Intel is going through a major internal struggle over desktop Linux, and the pro-Microsoft marketing droids are currently winning, according to Lindows.com CEO Michael Robertson. As evidence, Robertson puts forward the lack of Linux support for Centrino, the mysterious blocking of his company’s request to participate in an Intel roadshow, and the last minute pullout of Intel speakers at his Desktop Linux Summit earlier this year.” Read the report at TheRegister.
Lindows CEO Attacks Intel’s Centrino Linux Lockout
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I read that this morning and was waiting for the press to grab hold of it. Well done Michael, you’ve got most of the tech press writing about (advertising) lindows again.
Cry me a river…
Not really a lindows fan, but I guess I have to
say ” go,mike go.”
from the article:
“But once it hit marketing, “we are told we cannot participate even though we are willing to pay the required fees and they have told us there is room. Perhaps it is because Microsoft is also a major sponsor of this event”.”
And yet MS wants to show up at any Linux event it chooses to. Typical of the “Software Giant”
The “Lindows” may not be copyright violation but everything Lindows does is an attempt to make an exact replica of MS windows. Robertson says he is to Linux what AOL was to the internet? I’m glad to see Intel take a stand against that clown.
I don’t know if this Centrino package will work on Linux, but even if it can, this kind of situation underscores what could be potential problems for Linux. Once some piece of hardware/file format/whatever comes out, if it runs on PCs, you can almost bet it’ll run on Windows. If it works on Linux, it’s usually an afterthought. And if it doesn’t run on Linux, then you just kinda have to sit around and wait until the Linux community finds a way to ‘hack’ it so that it works on Linux. And usually, these kinds of solutions don’t contain all of the functionality either – just enough to make it work.
But as more and more proprietary technologies are introduced, there are only so many things that you can hack and make work, and it’s going to suck big time for Linux when some killer new proprietary technology is released with the kind of copy protection/license restrictions that make it illegal or damn near impossible to run it in anything but Windows.
Its a good thing Lindows and Michael Robertson is on our side.
Support for new CPUs in the Linux kernel depends basically on availability, so that developers can test the new features. Intel Pentium M notebooks are not available yet, so LInux users can expect to get support once availability of Pentium M CPUs becomes a little more widespread than it is now.
I don´t think Intel is holding back any information from Linux developers regarding the Pentium M. In any case, it shouldn´t be too difficult to support, it´s just an x86 CPU after all.
The only issue I can foresee now is the larger cache (1MB), which may have to be initialized. But the BIOS takes care of that, normally, CPUID should be pretty straighforward. Power management, to can be managed by the BIOS, unless there is something really fancy.
he said laque of support that doesnt mean it cant run linux at all I seriously doubt that it cant run linux hell they have linux for Xbox and PS/2
I generally agree with you, but with two caveats:
1) Waiting for Linux people to hack things doesn’t take a whole lot of time. IIRC, we had stuff like BlueTooth and USB supported just as quickly (and sometimes quicker) than the Windows folks.
2) The trend has been towards more open technologies, not more closed ones. Take the recent rush towards XML file formats for example. Or the popularity of PDF. With respect to hardware, the situation breaks down into a few groups:
a) Hardware interfaces that obey a multivendor standard. This old “SB-compatible” thing is making a comeback. Today, there are a huge class of devices (USB Human Interface Device, Firewire Mass Storage, Firewire Networking, CompactFlash WiFi, USB Audio) that obey a single interface by virtue of adhering to certain bus standards. All those devices get supported on Linux the minute the generic drivers are
written.
b) Hardware manufacturers that have realized that their hardware interfaces aren’t interesting enough to keep proprietory. Stuff like sound cards and network cards fall here.
c) Hardware manufacturers that think their hardware interfaces are “da bomb” and keep them closed. Basically, the only ones in this position are 3D graphics card manufacturers. However, a very interesting phenomena has emerged: the smaller players (like Matrox, SiS, Intel) have released the specs to their current chips, while the bigger players (NVIDIA, ATI) have made binary-only Linux drivers because they want to compete in the workstation market. Consumer level graphics cards (with a few tweeks, like in the Quadro and FireGL) are enroaching into the low-end to mid-range graphics workstation territory, where Linux is a big up and coming player (ILM, for example, has switched most of their workstations to Linux). As long as Linux stays big in the graphics industry*, and companies like NVIDIA and ATI stay competitive in that industry, consumer level graphics on Linux are quite safe.
d) Companies that do DRM. Of all the hardware I’ve recently tried on Linux, the only one that didn’t work was my DRM-enabled Sony MiniDisc player (which I quickly got rid of, eat that Sony). This is the stuff that will pretty much never be supported in Linux, first because they’re consumer level and have no use in the workstation or server markets, and second because there is no legal way to reverse engineer them.
All told, the situation is thus: If the industry moves to more proprietory technologies, yes Linux will have a problem. Otherwise, the hardware situation will get better rather than worse. Of course, the user can play a big part here. If he chooses his hardware reasonably carefully (in this day and age, that just means making sure your graphics card and MP3 player are supported) then they’ll have no problems. Apple users have had to deal with similar problems for a long time, and they seem to have gotten along okay.
People who don’t think Micro$oft wants to destroy Linux are clueless. Intel is definately not helping the Linux case either. Their type of strongarming is what helped drive Apple into proprietary everything. We need hardware vendors to listen up and start realizing there are more OS’s than just Micro$oft.
I agree. Most people are clueless. What we need is for consumers to stop buying software from Microsoft or hardware from Intel. There are many alternatives that offer the same features for a lower cost with less legal restrictions. But until people learn about these things they will continue to purchase hardware and software that will eventually cripple their systems to make sure they don’t accidentally break the law. Isn’t it ironic?
Isn’t it about time that Linux proved that it could stand on its own feet? Make your own bloody GNU hardware instead of riding on the skirts of the PC hardware producer du jour.
“Their type of strongarming is what helped drive Apple into proprietary everything.”
^^ funniest thing I’ve read all week.
[DRM] is the stuff that will pretty much never be supported in Linux, first because they’re consumer level and have no use in the workstation or server markets, and second because there is no legal way to reverse engineer them.
Well, it is my understanding that Linus is more interested in pushing Linux on the desktop than the server, no?
And you may be right about more companies getting behind open standards, but I also think (unfortunately) DRM is definitely not going anywhere. Hell, if the DVD protection hadn’t been cracked, there’s a chance that folks on Linux might still be DVD-less. That is definitely not a good position to be in.
What we need is for consumers to stop buying software from Microsoft or hardware from Intel. There are many alternatives that offer the same features for a lower cost with less legal restrictions.
But even still, DRM may not be such a terrible thing so long as a) It does not impede upon fair use and b) It works across mulitple platforms.
In the case of MS, with some apps that run on Windows, there are no other alternatives on the PC platform – not yet anyway. There’s more to life than just Office and IE.
Intel is becoming (or has become) as arrogant and closed-minded as the M$ people ever were. “Wintel” surely applies in this case.
Do you think Intel would tell Red Hat or SuSE they can’t come? Just Robertson because he’s an asshat. I think andrew had a good point, I don’t believe Intel is holding back any info and I don’t see why running Linux on it is so difficult. Is this a problem with Intel not supporting Linux, or Linux not supporting Intel? If I am not mistaken, I believe standard versions of XP will install on the platform. If that is the case, the lack of ability to run Linux on the platform could be viewed as a shortfall of Linux.
“Intel is becoming (or has become) as arrogant and closed-minded as the M$ people ever were. “Wintel” surely applies in this case”
Intel has always been arrogant and closed-minded. They are a 800 pound gorilla and certainly have flirted with being the target of anti-trust charges.
All I can say is thank freaking God for AMD. We’d still be running PII’s and be paying a boatload of cash for entry level cpu’s if it weren’t for them. I really hope this whole 64bit x86 thing turns out well for AMD. I’d hate to be stuck with only Intel cpus to choose from.
RTFM = the reason you will never get consumers to stop buying windows.
Where the hell is my Linksys (now cisco) WUSB11 Ver 2.6 802.11b Linux driver? Where is my “3 clicks to install / 2 clicks to remove” Linux software? Gimme a freeware Installshield for linux (how hard would it be to port Nullsoft’s free Installer) !!
Linux will never disappear because of some new hardware. If Intel wants people to write software that uses their stuff, they’ll have to release spec sheets or other usage notes–it’s only a matter of time.
I don’t mean to sound unappreciative of Linux developers, but so far I’ve tried out Mandrake, Red Hat & Debian–it meets 85% of my needs, but 802.11b with Atmel chipset support is missing.
I don’t mean to sound unappreciative of Linux developers, but so far I’ve tried out Mandrake, Red Hat & Debian–it meets 85% of my needs, but 802.11b with Atmel chipset support is missing.
Windows people have the luxury of buying hardware without any concern for drivers. Every other OS: Linux, BSD, OSX, Solaris…. you choose hardware from the “supported” list. BTW these lists existed for PCs back in the 1980s and even into the early 1990s too.
Being able to buy hardware without checking is a fluke of 90+% market share. It really doesn’t change much to pull things off the recommended list even for systems with far fewer drivers (like the BSDs).
“I generally agree with you, but with two caveats”
You have caveats? Then I strongly recommend you brush your teeth more frequently
FUnny you didn’t link straight to Michael Minutes, and instead take a commentary of it… hrmmm
In the roadshow, Intel only allowed companies directly involve is pushing Centrino. Lindows is a company too small to do that, has little consumers, little support from the Linux community – it makes absolutely no sense. Meanwhile, the pullout of Intel from the Desktop Linux(Lindows?) Submit was not because Intel doesn’t want to back desktop Linux, it is because the event’s most major press partner dropped out in addition to other important participants, namely HP.
Robertson didn’t fulfil his promise that the event would be vendor neutral and even promoted a laptop (that was later on canceled anyway) using a processor competing with Intel. Tell me, from a marketing point of view, why go to that submit.
Meanwhile, Intel likes to distance themselve to Lindows. Why? Take a look at AOL. Just because they allowed Netscape to be bundled with Lindows, suddenly they made it sound as if AOL was backing Lindows. Lindows manage to successfully twist words around. Meanwhile, Lindows does sound like a rip-off. In a informal, unscietific survey, I asked non-geeks I know of what do they think of a technology company named Lindows. All except two answered a ripoff to Microsoft/Windows. A few even thought it was some mainland Chinese company product… (note, i never told what Lindows was besides that it was a technology company). 2 replied a website relating to technology.
Meanwhile, as to Microsoft attending Linux events, in response to pnghd, I see no problem with that. However, the events you speak of here aren’t Microsoft events, and it is unlikely they were blocking Lindows from participating – they are not complete idiots you know. Having a small company with a relatively small presence wouldn’t harm your position anyway. And plus having a OS optimized for Centrino to compare with Lindows sucky support for laptops, especially power management, I doubt they wouldn’t be all too gleeful making Linux look inferior.
Besides, it isn’t like Microsoft is a big gigantic company where Intel fears relatiation for all their actions – Intel is also a rather big company too. And if Microsoft looses Intel as a partner, they risk a lot. The same otherwise for Intel. So it can be said to be a symbiotic relationship.
If Intel wants to allow Lindows from participating, Microsoft can’t do anything that can be felt by Intel without ultimately hurting themselves. However Intel can’t support Lindows to the extend that they block Microsoft from participating, because that, again, would hurt themselves in the end.
Besides, Rayiner Hashem, the last I checked, while the specifications of PDF is open, the format itself is controled by Adobe. By comparison with XML, PDF is far from the “open standard” you speak of. PDF became popular for a reason, that is because it provided an important tool that previously relatively didn’t exist.
Besides, Intel too have closed source drivers for Linux, the last I checked, while ATI has almost complete documentation of most of their hardware. Ironically Matrox is after the workstation market, not the gaming market. Besides, while open source reverse engineering of DRM-enable hardware is illegal, at least in the USA, it doesn’t prevent Sony from releasing support for Linux in a closed source fashion, or block Linux companies to reverse engineer it as long it doesn’t spoil the DRM (e.g. by reducing restrictions, by releasing the source).
Meanwhile, Rayiner, the DRM for MiniDisk wasn’t created by Sony solely. It is part of the MiniDisk standard – they tried to popularize it among the recording companies as an altenative to CDs and cassetes, instead it had become a almost indispensable tool for small time recording studios for… uhmm… recording.
And Darius, for consumers, Linux is DVD-less. Unless you know how to compile or edit config files to find those files on Usenet or a foreign site, you are pretty much without DVD support. While I, maybe Rayiner and most geeks, can play DVDs on their Linux system, there is no easy way to enable it.
And to Captain Chris, caveat from Dictionary.com is
noun.
1.
a. A warning or caution: “A final caveat: Most experts feel that clients get unsatisfactory results when they don’t specify clearly what they want” (Savvy).
b. A qualification or explanation.
2. Law. A formal notice filed by an interested party with a court or officer, requesting the postponement of a proceeding until the filer is heard.
v. ca·ve·at·ed, or ca·ve·at·ted ca·ve·at·ing, or ca·ve·at·ting ca·ve·ats or ca·ve·ats
v. intr. Law
To enter a caveat.
v. tr. Informal
To qualify with a warning or clarification: The spokesperson caveated the statement with a reminder that certain facts were still unknown.
http://www.intel.com/support/notebook/centrino/os.htm
Looks like I gots me a new project on which to hack
When will we see the first “Windows Only” monitors?
“Sorry Linux is not supported by the monitor, you need to install Microsoft ™(r) Windows (r)(tm)”
Bah!!
((
from dictionary.com:
joke
n.
1. Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line.
2. A mischievous trick; a prank.
3. An amusing or ludicrous incident or situation.
4. Informal.
1. Something not to be taken seriously; a triviality: The accident was no joke.
2. An object of amusement or laughter; a laughingstock: His loud tie was the joke of the office.
You know. Its funny. Everytime an article is published here about Lindows.com, several people will get into a debate that boils down to one thing: Is the CEO of Lindows.com a force for good or evil? I tend to think his anticks are humorous. Lets face facts here: He’s good at what he does. Ever heard of ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’? He obviously subscribes to that theory, and I can’t say that it is such a bad thing. I would venture to say that more people (even if its just a handful) now know that there is more than one operating system out there. Now, whether or not they can link LindowsOS to Linux is a different ball of wax. Regardless, he gets people talking (in this case, about how far off base he is, IMHO).
I guess he’s more like a Chief Marketing Officer rather than a CEO.
But as one reader put it: “go,mike go”. At least then we’ll have something to talk about other than KDE vs Gnome vs EveryOtherWindowManager.
Just my 4% of $0.50.
Intel is about one of the best supporters of open source out there. How about that any document you could ever want will be sent to you free, and quickly? How about the GPL new Etherexpress driver that they donated? Compilers for linux? $3000 per cpu Itanium machines that they let people develop linux on? It is not in their interest to lock out any OS since they just make the hardware for it to run. I dont understand why Lindows is complaining about Centrino. Is it no Intel WiFi drivers? Chipset drivers? Intel chipsets usually are the best supported in the kernel. Power management? Maybe theres a problem with that, but ACPI is still funky even in the 2.5 series. Intel helps linux an incredible amount, so I dont see why this clown has to make a huge deal out of everything. Just my two cents
“And to Captain Chris, caveat from Dictionary.com is
noun.
(etc….)”
Next time you’re in my area, we’ll get together and I’ll order you a sense of humor (nice and dry, just the way I like ’em.)
If the li*ux cloners have nothing to rip off than they are whining. Robertson is an idiot anyway.
Intel = evil
Microsoft = evil
Wintel = evil evil evil
See their common practices over the decades:
-e.g. the Alpha microprocessor
-e.g. the Netscape browser
-e.g. the Palladium
Monopolists usually identical to evil.
Avoid their products, stay free as in freedom!
Ever heard of ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’?
I’ve heard it, but it’s not true — not in the general sense. If one is an actor caught in a scandal, yes, it probably will attract box office. However, the general public doesn’t need actors. Want them, yes. Need them, no. The financial health of an actor’s audience doesn’t require actors to be reliable, or to be around for the next ten years, or to be ubiquitous. That is not something that can be said for the buyers of various computing products.