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HP to Globally Launch Linux-Based PCs
Rade T. writes "Reuters UK reports that HP, the No. 1 personal computer and computer printer maker, said on Wednesday that its putting its weight behind personal computers that run the Linux operating system. I guess this is the first serious step towards solving the problems that Linux faces on the Desktop/Laptop."
Very nice. I wonder how the folks at MS felt reading a quote saying that this was "nothing to do with Microsoft" attributed to a man with the most unfortunate name of Fink?
(PS: does this mean I can buy a laptop w/ SuSE preloaded on it now, here in the US? Or does that global thing mean what most "global" corporate initiatives do - "everywhere outside of the US")?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'll probably try to buy a manufactored PC for the first time in 10 years simply to support the principle of having a choice.
*DrugCheese rants*
...that a major computer manufacturer started offering desktop PCs with Linux pre-installed. Even though I'm not terribly impressed with HP's hardware, this definitely makes me more likely to support HP in the future - but only so long as they don't back down when Microsoft and SCO come calling and tell them to quit it.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
From the article:
... The operating system has made inroads in corporate data centers, gaining ground against the Unix operating system on which it is based and other operating systems.
Even Reuters seems to be falling for SCOs crap.
Sigh.
in light of the similar one recently regarding HP and Linux in Asia.
A thought, though; is HP willing to provide indemnification to it's Linux users against actions by SCO?
--
Discuss homemade renewable energy systems
I understand the Linux PCs are destined for some very specialized applications... ...but still it will be interesting to see what kind of support issues and options come with this offering.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Those chip makers who say they don't want to release information on their chipsets without a NDA had better take note. They're likely to miss out supplying chips for "Designed for Linux" style PCs.
Novell is latching onto anything they think can make them money because they certainly haven't made a penny in years.
What about HP? HP-UX is dying, they need to jump on something.
Red Hat will help push Linux to desktops. HP is wandering in the woods.
Windows dominance is already threatened by Linux existence. Keeping that threat manageable is the key to Windows survival.
The coolest voice ever.
Selling Linux boxes is cool. But there are many other sources of cheaper Linux systems. HP should kindly understand that logic.
Because Dell's effort was completely half-assed, at best. Dell made as much effort to sale Linux as you wanna kiss your friend's date's ugly girlfriend. Simple fact is, if someone actually makes an attempt, they make actually be able to do something with it.
Dell's attempt was worthless and self defeating.
I wonder if HP and IBM will squeeze out service-only firms like Redhat and Novell as Linux improves in ease-of-use. If Linux becomes very easy to use, there will be less demand for service and support providers that configure and manage Linux systems -- users wil be able to configure and manage their own boxes. I'm sure there will stil be a role for systems integrators for big enterprise rollouts (which IBM and HP can do), but even there I'd bet that many companies will prefer to hire a few Linux techs to oversee these easy-to-use-boxes.
Perhaps profits-from-hardware will supplant profits-from-service as the OSS business model. Why buy support if the system is so easy-to-use that it does not need support? At the very least, service revenues will be inversely proportional to ease-of-use.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Hmm, last time I called HP for a support issue with a HPUX server, I had a support person that used the words "dude" "Winblows" and "Microsux" quite often. Quite refreshing to hear personaly on the business side =)
If HP is outsourcing, then it is in their home/printer department...I doubt they are outsourcing Linux support.
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
iPod and AAC DRM are open standards? If so why is it that only iTunes seems to support the iPod?
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Create a WAP server
Excellent!
As a person who was 6 months ago blocked from working in the US (actually I was supposed to go there to train people in the use of software I had written, but this was blocked by a union using US work laws.. I would have been there for 3 weeks.) after the same group of people had spent over 6 months here in my country working without problem or limitation (and I must say they had a great time also!) I am completely in support of HP, thank you for pointing this out!
Of course, I was not informed of these 'problems' until 2 weeks before I was due to leave, so all the development work ended up being wasted, at my expense. The company involved turned around and said it was not their problem, so no payment for any of my work.
But to get back on the subject, good on HP! another step forward for choice and freedom! I was sickened over the last couple of years with the methods msoft have used to try and present the selling of OS-less PCs as a form of piracy, well here is the solution - sell them with an OS, a free one!
The people BUYING the equipment should be the ones who decide what they do (and what they do not!) pay for in their PC, if they don't want to use msoft software, they should not have to buy it!
Of course, I can only assume that this move is due to the fact that people are starting to vote with their feet, and large companies (at least some) are realising that these are good sales being missed.
My experience with the Linux offerings from HP is that they don't really mean Linux, but just RedHat or SUSE. I spoke with one of their european account managers a few weeks ago concerning their blade server solutions and basicly, if I wasn't going to run RH or SUSE on their hardware they couldn't offer support or anything. Since both redhat and suse don't meet our needs (not without rebuilding the kernels that came with them - thus voiding support responsibility) there's no choice at all.
It's the vendor lockin story all over *again*. I have no doubt that they will try to approach the desktop market in the same way. At least until HP proves me wrong and announces support for the linux *kernel* and promises at least a best effort policy on the different distros.
Now this is just my experience with HP, a talk with IBM went much smoother and their bladeservers are already on their way, just have to install debian on them and I'm all set. (yay! got to mention debian afterall!)
With ``SCO racketee^H^H^H asking Aussies for license'' news earlier on the page, just wondering if SCO will respond to this by extort^H^H^H asking HP to license it's (non-existent) IP?
I mean, why should HP be left out of the ``big companies getting sued by SCO'' list. It'll soon get to be a club kind of thing.
Or has HP cut a deal with SCO? In which case their linux-based products should be anathema.
Just wondering if anyone has heard anything.
Longer answer: If the cost is the same for a M$ system and a Linux system, the economic value of Linux will be at least to some part exploited by the hardware vendor. Perhaps with shrinking margins in the hardware business this is at least some of the appeal of Linux systems to hardware vendors. I have no idea whether Linux systems are normally cheaper than their Windows counterparts, but I think that it is interesting to determine where along the hardware system value chain the economic value of Linux is exploited.
This is not to say that having Linux preinstalled on systems is not a great thing, but there is certainly an economy to doing this . . .
Just to cut off some of the trolls at the pass:
Linux is not ready for "12 year old John gets a Linux CD and installs and is ready to go", nor is the support out there for Mom and Pop to click "DOWNLOAD ME" on a website and be up and going.
That said, for the corporate environment, Linux is perfect. It can be pre-configured and mirrored in a sysadmin's sleep, locked down to kill almost all support problems, and managed remotely with little effort. The applications, for the vast part, work almost exactly the same as their Windows counterparts and as such training costs are minimal.
Notice a pattern? The limitation of Linux is ease of administration and software/hardware support. Any place where Joe User is wanting to download and install a program from his favorite news website or Jane User wants to reinstall the OS, Linux is not 'ready' for casual use. But in a controlled environment, like a company where hardware and software falls under the umbrella of IT, these issues don't pose a problem.
As long as a company can find the applications they need to do their work (or start/join an OSS project and complete their own), Linux is pie on the desktop and has many benefits most companies would die for, once realized. Once you've got a Linux friendly IT department and have found the right apps, limitations are few and far between.
Once corporations adopt Linux, support problems will diminish, and once workers take it home, support problems will all but disappear. The snowball will feed itself.
Lack of lock-in, lack of security issues, lack of luser-stupidity-blew-everything-up scenarios and lack of licensing and upgrade costs are huge in the terms of $$$.
Cheers
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
If you live in the USA, do you only buy "Made in USA" clothes ?
I'm sure there are people who do, however, I'd suggest the majority don't, and end up with a cupboard full of clothes made in Mexico, Brazil, India, China etc. It is the same here in Australia.
It is both shareholders, wanting better profits, and consumers, wanting cheaper products, who are driving outsoucing. It happens with clothes, it happens with cars, its now starting to happen with IT.
If you only buy locally made goods, you are supporting your country. Fair enough. However, if all countries did that, then countries which are currently export positive, such as the USA, Australia, Japan etc, won't have a market to sell to. Longer term, it will cause these export positive countries to fail, a fate (arguably, depending on who you are) worse than the outsource alternative.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
As we all know, IBM and HP was the start of the Windows hype... and now, neither one are even using that operating system. Since HP/Compaq have now chosen to use Linux, what do you think that means for the rest of the computing world? The same thing.
Do you think Dell, eMachines, and anyone else will be able to stand alone on their own selling Windows based computers? Nope. People aren't really going to notice a difference when their new HP's operating system has changed, but is still easy to use and flexible towards all of their hardware. Yes, this is the beginning of the rise of Linux and the fall of Windows.
Even if Windows gets Longhorn done in time, I think it'll be too late... unless they just want a rematch to rebattle over the mainstream OS that is...
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
But isn't Microsoft a monopoly? I thought monopolies kept the competition from the market?
Gee, wonder what people would say if it turned out Microsoft never was a monopoly...
[begin antitrust 101 lecture]
A monopoly is a company that dominates a market. There are natural monopolies, and they are legal. It is not legal to leverage legally-gained monopoly power to "enforce" your monopoly on others (by keeping competition out of the market) or to gain monopoly power in other markets.
Microsoft dominates the desktop market. They are now seeing some competition entering. Since it is illegal for them to use their monopoly power to smack down the competition, they'll have to just try to provide a more attractive product. This is not something they are used to doing. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
This is the first step in solving the problems that Linux faces on the desktop - getting it preloaded. Well, you have been able to do that for years, and it still hasn't made any inroads. But leave it to Slashdot to overexaggerate the importance of this.
At least when it fails now, they can come up with some other reason it failed, other than the fact that it is way too cumbersome and annoying for most people to use or configure.
"First HP goes with Apple for music (iTunes and HP iPod) and now they are trying out Linux... that's twice microsoft has been bested in favor of open standards. I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but go HP!"
.Mac subscriptions, iSight, etc.
Before I get modded down or flamed for writing this, I think it would be the sanest thing for HP to put forward a rational suggestion to Apple for them to license the Mac platform to HP. And here is my reasoning:
1. Longhorn is in developmental hell. The more setbacks Microsoft suffers PR wise regarding security issues and the more applications like iTunes shows up Microsoft developed "solutions", the more PC manufacturers dependent upon Windows suffer. On the other hand, OS X keeps improving, and even the hardest Apple basher on Slashdot has to admit this begrudgingly.
2. The Media Center PC experiment is not prime-time yet. And its only a matter of time before TiVo throws down the gauntlet at Microsoft on IP violations just as its done to Echostar (DishNetwork).
3. As long as Dell is Microsoft's preferred vendor, HP is going to come up on the short end.
4. Linux is not prime-time for Joe Six-Pack. Even the great Mandrake distribution suffers from the same problem as do all other Linux distributions...the availability of known game releases and consumer friendly titles on the store shelf.
Now compare that to the OS X platform.
If HP jumped in and became the SOLE Mac hardware and software licensee, this is what would happen:
1. Component prices would fall for the Mac side of the business, thereby improving both Apple and HP's costs.
2. Consumers gun-shy about buying a Mac over a PC would evaporate because it is no longer locked to a single vendor.
3. The demographic for HP consumer customers is not generally the same as an Apple customer. So there is not a large chance of Apple actually suffering from defections. If anything, Apple would be sure to gain marketshare because HP would legitimize the OS X platform for corporate America.
4. Even if HP did "steal" some Apple customers, Apple would still have a bigger chance at grabbing them with value-added purchases like
5. HP's Unix team could directly contribute to OS X. Its not like HP would be a disaster of a "cloner" like what Dell would be. Well, maybe after all the SCO mess is cleared up to be on the safe side.
Of course, HP would have to overcome their reluctance of purchasing microprocessors from IBM (maybe part of the deal would be that IBM had to license the G5 line to Motorola). Apple would have to overcome their licensing reluctance and actually sit down and analyze the fact that HP is no Umax or Power Computing. Apple has come a long ways with the iPod licensing; I would hope they could do they same here.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
"I haven't looked at HP laptops recently, but it's reasonable to assume that they're cheaper than an equivalent Apple. Therefore, if HP sold computers wiht OS X, I probably would have bought from them instead of Apple. I believe that historically Apple has refused to allow mac clones because of people like me, and that they will continue in the same way."
x t-best-thing-from-Apple that the company relies upon. While Apple would be competing with HP for new OS X converts, they wouldn't be competing for their core customers for the most part. Ergo, Apple has little to lose over my proposition and much more to gain.
Well, take into account what you have used to base your arguments. Are HP laptops cheaper than Mac laptops? Yes. On a pure MHZ/GHZ scale, they are. Why is this? Because Intel/AMD chips are generally cheaper because of volume.
If HP and Apple were both procuring the same resources together, that being PPC chips, they would drop in price. Apple would actually increase their profits per machine sold because their costs would be reduced.
Furthermore, you yourself said you purchased an iBook strictly because of OS X. You are a switcher; you aren't Apple's bread-and-butter-continuously-upgrading-to-the-ne
Besides, if they can do a focused license with HP on the iPod, which they generate the largest profit margin from (38% per unit sold) than from any other item in their arsenal, then it would not be a losing proposition to do a limited license with HP.
And, I bring this up again...HP could help with the developmental cost of OS X. That is why my suggestion is not damaging to Apple like the typical "cloning" suggestion most people make, ala what happened with Power Computing and Umax, no name companies that competed with Apple for the very same customers.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
You're right, we just don't have that BSOD trick down like Windows does, probably never will :-)
Seriously, though, that statement needs some qualification and narrowing. The question "Same capacity for what?" will help.
Yes, there are some areas where Linux lags quite a bit behind Windows. The most significant of these are, in my opinion:
- Multimedia, including sound, video, and graphics editing (yes, I know about The GIMP and use it, but it's still not Photoshop)
- Gaming
- Easy discovery of other resources on the LAN
- CRM (yes, I know about Compiere, but those who have used it have told me it's not yet as good as what's available on Windows, and there is more choice of software on Windows)
Of these three areas, which ones are of importance to business? Only the last two, unless your business is multimedia, and if it is you're probably using a Linux render farm and have a lot of custom software that runs on Linux workstations, too. If you're not that big, you probably do all of your work on Win or Mac. However, multimedia businesses are a small segment of the market.The general business sector is where people will care about easy discovery of LAN resources. Now, I confess to not having looked very closely at this, to see what is being done in the Linux world. Probably some progress has been made of which I am totally unaware, but speaking in general terms, I think it's easier for an average user to find network shares and printers on a Windows LAN (including ones that actually have a Samba PDC) than to do the equivalent work on a LINUX LAN. One answer to this might be to implement Rendezvous on Linux. Another would be to make up some user-oriented graphical tools for Samba that would make it easy for users to create shares and browse for printers (I believe there are some of those, but don't know how good they are) and tightly integrate those tools with Gnome and KDE. Vendor-specific tools are not the solution to this problem (coiughMandrakecoughSuSEcough).
So, what areas that are important to business does Linux cover well?
So, we have most of the business core areas covered and are making progress in the ones where we still need to do some work. And as you said, Linux is coming from all angles, which gives it the potential to be a total vertical solution from the staff PDAs and cell phones all the way up to the server farm. Microsoft is the only other vendor who sells software at all those levels. At some of those levels, Linux is already better, and it's improving rapidly at the others. And it's [Ff]ree.
Yes, MS is scared. Linux is doing to them what they did to the big iron software vendors, or doing it a lower price point and with more freedom.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!