Slashdot Mirror
HP Starts Pushing Desktop Linux
iswm writes "HP has supposedly been selling MandrakeSoft Linux on the desktop for a while but has been so quiet about it that for all intents and purposes it's been a stealth operation. That's all about to change, with two new Linux desktops ready for rolling out by HP to the North American SMB market, both boxes to be sold with Mandrake Linux."
Strange alliances indeed. This is prolly gonna scare the craap outta Microsoft.
Sig* sig = theOneSig();
Wow, HP is really doing everything right so far. Signing deals with Apple, Starbucks, and now Mandrake. My respect for the company has shot up within the last few months.
While Mandrake may not be the best distro, it is probably the best for new users, and at least a better alternative than that FreeDOS Dell offers
Setec Astronomy
Because the uber-cool super-fast computers get bought by gamers who want to play games and think that Linux is that funny thing that doesn't run any of their favorite games. These guys haven't heard of WineX or the like. HP, Dell, and all the others cater to the mainstream like good little corporations because it makes more money. We can't really expect them to do otherwise in this market.
There is nothing wrong, of course, with building your own computer and putting a distro on it. And if you do it like I did you save ~$1,000 US in the process. ~$1,100 if you don't have any reason to buy Windows.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Could you please recommend a trustworthy computer company?
The way I see it, we're forced to play a "least of many evils" game on the way to world domination.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Yes, because if Microsoft cut off HP, customers would just suck it up and start using Mandrake the next time they wanted a new PC, right?
More realistically HP PC sales would fall through the floor as people would just deal with other vendors and save themselves the trouble. To most consumers an HP box is a box just like any -- generally an interchangable commodity part. Claiming that HP holds the power position in such a scenario seems dubious.
Of course this is a silly academic exercise anyways. Microsoft was barred, via the whole antitrust thing, from performing such retaliatory practices. Microsoft doesn't have the option to, as you claim, "cut off their own balls".
And how does this differ from any other publicly traded company that has been around for more than 5 years. Adapt or die.
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
At the moment, Linux is viewed as good enough for the desktop of people who only use their computers as a glorified communications device. We're talking Internet, Mail, and Office utilities. These users want to do these three things without viruses, spyware, hardware upgrades, and crufty Operating Systems that crash. As for users who want to use a PC for gaming, music, and multimedia... Linux is probably not the best choice. However, when it comes to getting work done without all the nonsense, Linux is where it's at.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Mod me down and bury your head in the sand if you can't take the truth, but...
Every time some manufacturer has linux somewhere and it makes the Slashdot news there are always the same comments, but the main hold back for wide adoption of Linux isn't getting manufacturers to sell PCs with it or public recognition. The main hold up is the mantra of any highschool composition class, "Who is your audience?" Who is the audience? Geeks? No, Geeks can and do already use linux. The audience that needs to be targeted is the average user, and no it is not 'joe six-pack', or at least not entirely. The primary audience for wide-adoption consists of your parents, your grand parents, your neighbors and friends who call you to fix their systems, children, etc. People who want to use their computer with a minimum of fuss, and who DO freak out when they get an unexpected pop-up, and DO run anything sent to them in an email, and DO use their first name as their password. Advances in Linux performance and functionality are great, but for wide adoption to ever succeed usability and intuitive design must take precedence. And as long as there is anything that requires a text file to be edited in linux, Windows will remain king.
It's right around the corner now...
So's AmigaOS4, Doom III and Duke Nuke'em Forever
(actually I think mandrake is doing well enough now as is to be a competitor to windows. Both have quirks that need fiddling from time to time, and mandrake is improving quicker than win)
How about Mandrake laptops? With wireless, ACPI, etc, already supported?
This guy is way out there
Someday, someone will explain to me why 'We' want linux to be adopted by the other 95% of the market. 'we' all lament what has happened to the Internet since 'they' finally found out about it (and thought it had just been invented). We pine about the good old days of the usenet, when it was like, useful.
I dread a scenario where, around 2005, everyone and their grandma is buying a Linux box (that new OS that just came out year or so ago). And it all goes to shit. You just know it will.
Everyone will run as root, open viruses, execute them. All our favorite apps will become add-filled feature-burdened piles of stinking filth rushed to market despite thousands of high severity bugs.
It willl suck hard and we'll all look back fondly on the good old days.
Someday, someone will explain to me why 'We' want linux to be adopted by the other 95% of the market.
More market share than, say, Mac OS X means more chance of getting manufacturers of newer peripherals to put effort into writing drivers or at least into providing free software developers with technical information sufficient to write and maintain a driver. Lack of drivers is the primary reason I'm still on Windows 2000, as the copy of Mandrake I tried a few months ago didn't work with my Radeon 9000 card (except in unaccelerated VESA mode), and Microtek denies the SANE developers any information about my scanner (a Scanmaker 4850).
Things are beginning to move, just like a freight train, slow to start, but impossible to stop.
except that the other freight train is 100x as big, already moving, and in the opposite direction on the same track.
I don't understand the big problem with the "American's have no God given rights to jobs" statement... it is not an Amrican's god given right that they must have a job. I am not an American, but the situation is the same all around the world... companies of "developed" countries out source work to people in "developing" countries because they are willing to work for less... I don't support this, but business is business - and I bet 90% of the people who are complaining about it - if put in a investor role of a large company wouldn't be quite so high and might about the morals of it if it meant their pay check was a couple of 100,000$ more.
It's not an American's God given right to be employeed - its not even a God given right to have a chance to be employeed. The only God given right you have is the right to life... everything else, your own your own bucko!
(btw posting as AC, cause I don't have an account.)
I think Mandrake is less stable than Windows XP.
I run XP and Mandrake 10 (beta) on my laptop at work. My experience with using both OS's on a daily basis makes me wonder what facts you base that statement on.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
One major reason to want free software to be adopted by the rest of the market is so that open standards dominate, and I don't have to choose between MSN and not talking to all my friends. So I don't have to pay for software to read office documents that are sent to me.
Re: viruses, your worst case sounds no worse than the current state. The favourite apps will not become ad-filled because the base is open. Someone puts an ad in, fork the last one.
...Microsoft would gladly take away your ability to obtain cheap, Linux compatible commodity hardware (all for the sake of security, of course). If there are lots and lots of companies building Linux boxes, MS will find it a lot harder to do that.
As for everyone running as root and viruses, how is that different from when they run Windows? As for our apps, I use free ones. I know better than to run some shmuck's pop up blocker when I've got Mozilla and Konqueror.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Someday, someone will explain to me why 'We' want linux to be adopted by the other 95% of the market. 'we' all lament what has happened to the Internet since 'they' finally found out about it (and thought it had just been invented). We pine about the good old days of the usenet, when it was like, useful.
Usenet is a communications mechanism, not software. When Microsoft put the BSD FTP client on every desktop did that affect you at all? When Winzip became popular did that hurt people who use infozip? Ignore the consumer distributions of Linux and move on with your life.
I dread a scenario where, around 2005, everyone and their grandma is buying a Linux box (that new OS that just came out year or so ago). And it all goes to shit. You just know it will.
No it won't. They'll use Lycoris. You'll use Gentoo or Dragonfly or some other 'leet *nix distribution. There will be essentially no interaction between the two. Why do you care? You're like a high school student who is afraid that they won't be cool and unique if everyone else listens to the same music they do.
Everyone will run as root, open viruses, execute them.
So what? Why does it matter to you whether these viruses come from computers running Linux rather than Windows?
All our favorite apps will become add-filled feature-burdened piles of stinking filth rushed to market despite thousands of high severity bugs.
Sure. Grandma is going to ask for a graphical interface in VI and smilies in Berkley mail.
It willl suck hard and we'll all look back fondly on the good old days
The usual elitist blah blah.
I'm willing to bet that MandrakeSoft will profit from this a great deal. After all, it is their software that runs the system, right? Without software, the hardware is useless. I'm also pretty sure that HP wouldn't want to pull an IBM right yet.
Nonetheless, Linux is rising. Windows is falling. Anything and everything that helps the open-source community is great in my book. I've never really disliked HP, but I've never really liked them as much as I do now either. =)
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Now, with this HP development, I have to wonder if we're going to see more of the same, particularly since there's no mention that the Mandrake-equipped boxes will be any cheaper than their XP counterparts. Granted, there are some people who, for whatever reason, feel some dislike for Microsoft ;) And these people might be willing to have their computer ship without an XP license solely to deprive Microsoft of a few dollars.
But I have to think that most people, if they can't get a discount by going without Windows, would want to receive XP. After all, why turn down something that's free, and something you might decide to install later -- if only to make the machine more valuable for resale?
With this in mind, the option of ordering Linux boxes from major manufacturers just isn't all that exciting unless there's some kind of discount involved. Once you have the option to save thirty dollars by ordering your HP or Dell without XP, that will really be news.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
But above all installing programs is a pain.
I agree, for me that's one of the most annoying things about most distros. While legalities and shortages of people to make new packages are understanable, I still hated either installing from source on an rpm based system or trying to make updated packages based on how mandrake did it. That's why eventually I settled on Debian Unstable. What it lacks in configuration utilities it more than makes up for in available packages. I use the command line for it since I've usually got it open anyway for working on my own code, but had I wanted to everything I've installed could have been done through synaptic's gui. Well, excepting comercial releases.
Everything will be taken away from you.
But I have to think that most people, if they can't get a discount by going without Windows, would want to receive XP. After all, why turn down something that's free, and something you might decide to install later -- if only to make the machine more valuable for resale?
You have a good point, but I cannot resist noting that between dealing with spyware, a future SP2 release that may break who knows what software, and product activation worries that there is an old quote with a new twist that seems very applicable:
"Windows XP is only free if your time has no value".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is this not high end enough for you? Kidding aside, the biggest reason more workstations are sold with Linux is that there aren't enough professional applications (design stuff like ProE, The pSPICE family (at least Cadence and Synopsys, etc) haven't all been ported to linux yet. Most made it to Windows a few years back. Keep in mind that it took some time for the software to make it over to the Windows world, and that was for a 50%-75% cost savings. Moving from Windows to Linux doesn't bring the same one time cost savings, and workstation buyers aren't afraid to spend a signficant amount of cash if it means that their employees will be more productive by not retraining on new application software if a different version exists.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Err yes, but due to the DMCA will Mandrake-running HPs be able to play encrypted DVDs out-of-the-box?
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Until Linux desktops adopt an installation/uninstallation standard beyond the simple RPM-alike crap that's around now, Linux will always be an experience like that.
An installation API needs to exist that allows for software makers to have a simple installer on their CDs, just like in Windows, that allows them to install binaries, create shortcuts on the menu, and allow for proper uninstallation.
Doesn't look like that's gonna happen any time soon, though.
The major reason we want Linux to become a popular OS is that more third-party software will be ported to Linux.
Windows, being the current popular OS, has thousands of independent yet commercial developers and companies investing time, effort and research making cool tools and apps for it.
As a developer, it's great to have tools like Emacs and Python for free. But let's face it: some top notch tools probably won't be replaced by OSS any time soon. It just requires too much effort, research, and knowledge (much of which is patented by Adobe) to create a graphic suite as powerful as Adobe CS.
So making Linux popular is the only way to lure all these powerful art and development tools to the Linux environment.
That answer someone provided you confused me as well lol. Seemed to do with nothing about your question.
./configure until you're a lot more comfortable with the command line and I rarely use it apart from installing bleeding edge programs.
/usr/local/ that are built from Source. Quite a few times installing from source requires a few more development packages to be installed.
Don't use
KDE has Control Center that has Peripherals that also lists mouse, this is where you can change the mouse tracking speed, make sure to hit apply after each change.
You say your soundcard worked, then say it didn't in the next section as you wanted to install the correct driver?
Are you sure you're not running to the commandline quicker than needed?
Not sure on Mandrake, but most root installed programs end up in
Sometimes you're better off getting Linux as a box set, at least with SuSE you'd get plenty of manuals that show how to use programs and to do installations, the price alone is almost worth it for the manuals alone.
HP sells MS Office too. Does that mean we will see MS Office ported to Linux?
Uhh, no.
Buy yourself a f. clue.
Just as the web became riddled with OBJECT tags and Flash menus, Linux distros will follow the money and be ruled by the desires of the PHBs that control that money. There will be ads. There will be godawful UI's. Talking paperclips. And....DRM!!!
... with the possibility of a trend in user education if the vendors will give a damn.
Sure, but you're talking commercial linux distros here. There will be always the side - Debian, Gentoo, Fedora and the people who care will just (e)merge the good (GPL) parts of the other side and leave the bad ones. I for one don't see Debian and DRM mixing too well >:)
It's not going to be much different from today - and the GP poster has a point. The "popular choice" will be something like Lindows or Lycoris for desktop users - and remember that Lindows already has those problems, default root and 'windows-type convenience' (hah!) So there will be 'secure Linux boxes' and 'insecure Linux boxes'
But the most important part is: if you're using a GPL distro you won't care about commercialized Linux! no, scratch that - you will probably get drivers due to commercial Linux distros, so it's not that bad.
The people who buy these machines are going to just wipe them clean and install an illegal copy of windows and spend their $40 on ice cream.
That's still a good thing for Linux folk. Less funds for Microsoft mean less funds used to attack Linux.
May we never see th
In the world of US defense department computing the major roadblock for Linux acceptance is accredidation. Linux is deployed in many places but frequently in typical roles as a server thus out of sight of many users. My work location is exceptional in that Linux desktop presence is increasing but we continually run into problems with sites refusing to run the OS because of lack of accredidation. This is an expensive process for companies such as Red Hat and SUSE but must be persued. The deep pocket companies continue to lead.
You're full of it. You are trying to say, with a straight face, that people expected Linux to take over the desktop in *'98*?
Most of the time in the past was people getting excited about the ability for *geeks* to use exclusively Linux -- Open Office, Samba, etc made it feasible to work with Windows users and still keep using Linux.
Red Hat's CEO said, what, six months ago that Linux isn't ready for the desktop war just yet?
This year and last year are big because there are a lot of major open source apps coming out and being *usable*, by *typical users*, at at least a basic level, as a substitute for Windows apps.
Finally, if you don't think Linux usability has improved massively since '98, you just plain don't remember 98. We had no GNOME or KDE apps. Preference dialogs didn't exist. Widget sets were Tk, and black-and-white Athena. Boxes required a serious sysadmin to secure out-of-box.
Last year, I agree that there were a lot of people on Slashdot that were predicting big gains on the desktop. And guess what? A bunch of governments and big companies starting transition processes, or at least made it much more easy to move a chunk at a time to Linux. If anything, I'm surprised that things are going this quickly.
My prediction is that Linux will break 10% desktop market share before the end of 2006. That is a *huge* number of users to move from one platform to another -- perhaps around 100 million users -- , but remember that there's a threshhold effect at which point application vendors, people doing file formats, etc cannot ignore Linux, and once that hump is over, it becomes much easier to move to Linux.
Web sites are already improving -- I don't see the number of "IE-only" sites that I did thanks to the spread of Mozilla, Linux, and Mac OS X running Safari.
That being said, I think that as Microsoft gets more worried, they will do whatever it takes to fight back effectively. That may be as far as moving to a Linux-based distribution and porting their products to it. Microsoft is unlikely to die, no matter what.
May we never see th
Well, perhaps nobody else does, but I buy my video cards based on open source support (not Linux support alone).
For years, Matrox had the best support for Linux with open source drivers. I bought Matrox cards. Currently, ATI has the best open source support. Right now, I'm buying ATI. I'll keep doing so, as well. I use my cards under Linux exclusively, and binary drivers are a tremendous pain in the ass to deal with. I recognize that video card vendors have reasons for wanting to keep their drivers closed-source -- that's fine, but I happen to value open source.
May we never see th
"I'm talking about professional level music creation/editing, and professional multimedia development."
:
o rge.net/m a/software /
:
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Well maybe not right now but what about 1 or 2 years down the line ? I mean compare what Linux is like now to what linux was like 2 years ago in terms of a polished enough desktop that was easy enough for the average email,mp3,web browsing home user ? Look at knoppix and look at the basic linux desktop experience now. It has come along way.
Now take a look at the current state of sound applications under linux
http://www.agnula.org/
http://audacity.sourcef
http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccr
Consider the fact that apple, a major platform in the multimedia world is now based on unix. This makes porting applications that work on osx to other unix like platforms (i.e linux) a lot easier. Also consider the fact that some multimedia companies like dreamworks are currently using linux to get stuff done
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=610
Yes at the moment linux in multimedia is primarily just used to render stuff but consider what linux in multimedia will be like 1 or 2 years down the road ? Eventually it will get there and I think it will be the home enthusiasts who will make this happen.
A lot of companies like adobe complain about the effects of software piracy in asia and eastern europe but it was piracy that helped to promote a lot of these companies among young multimedia students. The fact is a lot multimedia students are unwilling to fork out the big bucks to use a lot of these expensive tools (like maya, brice or 3dsmax) so they download them or copy them for free. When these students then go on to work/start their own multimedia company they do not use pirated software but buy a proper licensed copy and then put it down as a tax right off. At the moment thanks to projects like fink, darwin ports and people making carbon ports a lot of cool free unix apps are becoming available to mac users of different skill levels. Now at the moment their is no question that professional apps like reason or cubase are better than any free unix offerings. The question is at what point does the free apps become good enough to handle most of the basic needs of a multimedia student and at what point does it become easier just to use this free app rather than bother going to the hassle of getting a cracked copy.
I think the gimp has reached this stage and audacity is nearly there. On the macs in my college I know that multimedia students are thought to use the gimp and told about audacity, I also know that a lot of business students use the gimp and have it installed on their laptops.
I think when these students leave college and start up/ start working for a company they are going to be using at least some free software. At first maybe only to do some trivial multimedia/other tasks but eventually I think as core applications mature and their is more input in the free software community from multimedia minded people you will see the quality of applications improve and user bases grow.
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>>I have no idea where anything installs to
>Why do you need to know? Everything is installed so
>that is just works. If you really need to know, the
>package management tools will tell you.
Ha ha! Laughable. The same zealots who flame windows users for "not knowing how the computer works" and for using "an OS that hides half of the files" etc., now flame linux newbies for WANTING to know where the files actually are?
Also, the general tone of your comment is: "learn how the computer works, and learn to do it HIS way!"
Bullshit. The USER is the master and the COMPUTER is the slave, NOT the other way round. Of course one has to learn how it works (and even this is debatable), but it should be simple for the user to set it up the way HE wants. Universal drag & drop, easy shortcut creation, etc, are a good way to achieve that ease of use. Try using MacOS X for a couple days for an example of an UI done (mostly) right.
Don't get me wrong: I tried mandrake (9.0) too, I liked it, and plan to install it on my home PC soon (need to buy new hard drive); but I agree with the original poster: there are a LOT of things that should be WAY more simple on the mandrake desktop. Until fixed, don't expect no "mass adoption" anytime soon.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Perhaps if it was law that CODEC algorithms should be in the public domain, and their internal details could not be kept secret from the people who have to use them, then there would not be a need to use Windows CODECs to get media playing software to work.
As it stands, corporations are cynically mistreating the people who pay their wages, and hiding behind "secrecy" that doesn't even work for paranoia about "competitors" who probably have already reverse-engineered their products.
The solution is to make CODEC algorithms - which are just mathematical processes, when all is said and done - unpatentable.
We asked politely enough for the codec algorithms, so we could write our own implementations from scratch, and they f**ked us off. If they think that's an acceptable way to treat people, then they shouldn't mind us adapting the Windows codecs. You can't behave one way yourself and expect other people to behave a different way.
"More market share than, say, Mac OS X means more chance of getting manufacturers of newer peripherals to put effort into writing drivers or at least into providing free software developers with technical information sufficient to write and maintain a driver."
Ah wishful thinking. Anyway what would be the point of running a free OS on a proprietary closed-source driver bedrock? If you're not going to abhere to OSS principles, why will they? Anyway I think that Windows people (the one's "requesting" binary drivers) haven't learned their lessons about the downsides of binary drivers. As one of the earlier posters pointed out "popularity" will have it's price, and it will be a high one. The only way to counter it is for us to be more like Stallman (love him, hate him, at least no one says that he doesn't stick to his principles). That's more than a lot of the incoming crowd (yeah that's harsh, but then actions speak louder than words). Point: "Lack of drivers is the primary reason I'm still on Windows 2000, as the copy of Mandrake I tried a few months ago didn't work with my Radeon 9000 card (except in unaccelerated VESA mode), and Microtek denies the SANE developers any information about my scanner (a Scanmaker 4850)." So basically this Windows user wants the OSS community to abandon one of it's core principles, so that he can migrate from Windows to Linux, and it's not even the OSS communities fault (yeah, we're making Microtek not give us any info.).
What's going to happen if that happens? Let's look at history. Geeks get fed up with proprietary OS. Geeks made aware of this up and coming free OS based on open principles. The die hard geeks move over and contribute to the growth of this OS leaving their old OS behind. OS get's good enough that the less hard core geeks make the move, leaving their old os behind. The pool of competent geeks is shrinking elsewere (sort of like salt being left behind when water evaporates). [You are here]. Now this beloved OS becomes really, really easy because it's compromised all the principles that made the competent geeks first come to it.
Competent geeks move on to another OS or create another one, leaving a desolate wasteland behind, with the same problems we presently complain about. So in essense there's a "chasing of the geek" happening. for a demographic that gets short thrift, we seem to be awful necessary(1). Why else do people want to keep playing in our pool?
(1) We're necessary, as the garbageman and taxi driver is necessary. Someone has to build and maintain the infrastructure.
There seems to be confusion about Microsoft's monopolistic practices.
What Microsoft definately did, and continue to do, is disallow dual-boot machines. This was done to kill off OS2 and BeOS, though it also continues today to prevent anybody from practically trying Linux or any other alternative. Microsoft does not allow a manufacturer to sell a Windows machine that even has the disk partitioned so that you could install Linux without screwing up the Windows installation.
I'm pretty certain Microsoft's actions worked very well for them. If this had not been done, back in 1990 or so all the manufacturers would probably have come up with dual-boot machines, where the other system was BeOS or some other (perhaps manufacturer-proprietary) system, advertised as the "gaming" system. And all the 3D graphics and games would have been made for the gaming system. Big manufacturers would have locked in their own games so they could support their own proprietary systems, and I would expect there would be no Playstation, instead that market would be covered by inexpensive dual-boot machines.
Users would be quite used to and accepting that they have to reboot their machines to switch from work to playing games. But then, to Microsoft's horror, there would be "productivity" applications that would start to appear for the game, advertised clearly as "uses the better graphics, and no reboot necessary!". They predicted this and they did what they could to squash it.
I don't think Microsoft has ever been too concerned about blank machines. Only geeks buy those. Any large corporation that did so and tried to install Windows would either be paying more than if they bought the pre-installed ones, or would be breaking the law.