Windows Laptops Ship With Linux Media Player

hqm writes "Maybe this is the real way Windows will be made irrelevant, not by a Linux desktop, but by Linux embedded software. LinuxDevices has an article stating 'NEC is the latest vendor to announce a laptop with a built-in embedded Linux based media player option. The NEC Versa S3000 will use InterVideo's InstantOn technology to enable users to listen to music, watch DVDs, and more without having to wait for Windows to load. Another major laptop vendor, Toshiba, in July launched its Qosmio laptop, which also includes a Linux-based media player environment. NEC will market the S3000 in Hong Kong and China. The laptop also includes InterVideo's popular WinDVD DVD playing software, which is also available for Linux.'"

Comments

Shift?

[mfh]

The NEC Versa S3000 will use InterVideo's InstantOn technology to enable users to listen to music, watch DVDs, and more without having to wait for Windows to load.

Could this signal the end of traditional operating systems? My thoughts on the subject are that eventually programs will come with their own OSes and load from a kind of GUI BIOS. And why wouldn't they? Put all the conflicts on hold for a second and think about it. If programmers could select the OS that works best with their application, they would stand to profit. Subsystem patches could batch patch each application's common files intuitively, without the need of expensive Microsoft licenses. Sure right now, we're looking at all the space that would likley be required to do this, but if you gut Windows, for example, and only use the required systems, that would be a savings of about 99% of what 99% of us use regularly. Turn that power over to the applications designers and you get better (open source) components, custom built to suit each program. Yes I do see a small problem with this, in that you have to worry about identifying the end users' system specs to make sure the programs will function properly, but with the rise of web based updating systems, it would be possible to select only the necessary components to wrap with the software, reducing the overall waste on each system and making for a much more stable environment than traditional OSes.

Re:Shift?

[Greger47]

Well. I don't think most application vendors are interested in becoming OS vendors as well.

Besides, don't we reboot Windows enough as it is today?

/greger

Re:Shift?

[The Other White Boy]

uhm..how bout multitasking?

Re:Shift?

[garcia]

Because Microsoft will never allow that to happen. They make entirely too much money on licenses for usage of their OS.

They are already getting into bed with Phoenix to have a DRM BIOS to disable any third party software from running without their direct authorization.

Re:Shift?

[Wudbaer]

You mean as in DOS games or other DOS programs that brought their own DOS extenders, sound drivers, gfx drivers etc. ? Like in game consoles ? Like in programs for the good old home computers like the C-64, Apple II and the like that often brought their own OS-like routines delivering functionality the machine either did not have or (most cases) to do some kind of copy protection ? Everyone re-inventing the wheel every time in a incompatible way with a different look-and-feel ?

Sounds like a great idea. NOT.

Re:Shift?

[Wizzy Wig]

"...but if you gut Windows, for example..."

You may have hit on a use for the new Win XP Lite crippleware version beng foisted off on the Third World.

Re:Shift?

[Trolling4Dollars]

Actually, it does sound like a great idea. On my Atari ST, if I booted up into Leander, I had all system resources dedicated to the game with absolutely no waste. It was efficient and ran extremely well. Sure, it makes life harder for the programmers, but then again that's our job. The end user should get rock solid stability and a totally pure experience without bloat when they are working. For example, an OS that provided basic user functionailty like Web, Mail, Office Suite and nothing else would likely be rock-solid stable and very fast compared to Windows XP, Mac OS or Linux. I'll bet if it was done right, the system would boot to a fully usable state in 5-10 seconds.

Re:Shift?

[merlin_jim]

One of the primary advantages of an OS (besides the GUI fluff) is that you have a unified centralized driver store. I'm not just talking about graphics cards and sound cards and ACPI, either, though that is certainly important.

I'm talking about data access layers, common control libraries, runtime environments, and the like.

Right now if there's a bug or vulnerability in my data access layer, Microsoft can update one file on each machine to fix that vulnerability in every application. In the system you describe, each one would have to be patched seperately. If you forget to patch one, it either continues to use the bad stuff, or just stops working.

This applies to Linux too... that's the point of dynamically linked libraries.

Re:Shift?

[BrokenStructure]

Wouldn't the GUI BIOS just be another type of OS? This just sounds like another pitch for opensource, riddled with all the same pros and cons as every other opensource comment to me. I do see what you're saying about the difference in structure, but there will always be a need for some common ground to start from before loading the application in mind... even if that starting point is DOS, it's still going to be some sort of OS.

Re:Shift?

[E-Rock]

Of course this is great, if you want to do one thing at a time. Some people like to have a word processor, email client, mp3/music player, development environment, web pages, network files and thier favorite game running at the same time.

I like single use devices, but the computer isn't one of them. That's its power. That's why we're here.

Re:Shift?

[btwIANAL]

Unfortunately this would be highly waistful. The OS is what takes care of memory management and processor scheduling. If you have each app boot it's own os, then programmers are going to have to proverbially reinvent the wheel each and every time they write a program. And on top of that the wheel would have to be diferent each time, due to copywrites on many efficient algorithms. Then comes the worst part, your because of memory management and processor scheduling, you are enabled to run multiple processes "simultaneously". If each program has it's own kernel then you would have to dedicate the entire machine to one task at a time.

Re:Shift?

[ShaggyBOFH]

What about multi-tasking? For example, some people may play "new-cool-guy-RPG" and also view a walk-through office document explaining how to win the game they just played $60 for. They may also want their IM client, music player, and web browser going.

You have a good idea, but under further examination, I don't think it's really practical. I can already see my desk with a bunch of Knoppix Nintendo cartrages.

Re:Shift?

[drinkypoo]

But how many things do you really want to do while playing a game? Admittedly I tend to leave a lot of stuff running in the background, most of that stuff will be almost entirely idle when it doesn't have focus anyway, and I have a gig of core.

Your average user only does one major thing at a time. They read email, or they do "office stuff" maybe involving multiple office apps, or they do "graphics stuff" maybe involving multiple graphics programs, but they mostly do one thing at a time.

Granted, I don't want that kind of environment, but I think it makes sense for the average user. However, I think that we'll be more likely to have a system which spawns multiple virtual machines and runs sets of applications in them, then another virtual machine with access to the graphics hardware will handle displaying it all. All of the benefits of the single-purpose environment without the drawbacks.

Re:Shift?

[The Conductor]

"Hardware-banging DOS all over again" was my first reaction, too, but the presence of a large library of free/open software changes things a bit this time around. Also, hardware is more standardized and auto-detection is more more advanced than it was 15 years ago.

This means that the alternate boot environment can grow commonly-used multitasking features: webbrowser, IM, email (every program grows until it can read email), etc. In the DOS days you couldn't expect Ventura Publisher to add a spreadsheet feature. Software development costs and hardware limitations made that impossible. The integrated suite software of the period (Remember Magic Desk?) was never popular for lack of features compared to full-blown DOS apps.

In essence, this is a way to slip dual-boot systems in the back door. Can MS stop it with OEM pricing contracts?

Re:Shift?

[severoon]

Well, I don't know about that, but I can point to what's currently happening with applications. It seems several major applications are now no longer applications in the traditional sense--instead, the original "app" developer writes a plug-in framework and then develops the bulk of the application itself as hot-swappable plug-ins.

To wit: eclipse, the framework application that is an IDE. Firefox, the framework application that is a web browser. Someday, someone will have the idea for a platform-independent (Java?) "framework framework" in which any application can be developed in this way. Wait a minute, that day is here...I just had that idea!

Seriously, though, it's a great idea. Look at how extensible Firefox is as an example. Every app developed in this way has to come with a standard core set of plug-ins that allow the app to do its basic job, like Firefox requires a plug-in that shows a window with a menu bar, a plug-in that determines what's in the menu bar, a plug-in that loads web pages into the main pane of the window, etc. The main advantage is that these things can be replaced, and can themselves be frameworks for more layers of plug-ins...again, as in the case of Firefox, where the main browser window supports plug-ins for neat features like right-click dictionary lookup.

Re:Shift?

[SillyNickName4me]

> Some people like to have a word processor, email client, mp3/music player, development environment, web pages, network files and thier favorite game running at the same time

Well.. for quite a few games you want to have fullscreen display and dedicated sound.. so the mp3 player is useless already, and unless it is doing something in the background, your IDE is not that usefull either.. I can see the use for a web browser for looking up stuff for playing (givemn that you can switch the game to running in a window of course wlese your browser is kinda out of reach)

Yeah, it depends on the game.. but with many games, having a zillion other apps open does no good (since you can't reach the apps) and can do a lot of bad (since they interfer with the game, either by claimning memory, cpu or sound hardware)

Of course.. I do run an mp3 player while playign a mud with a mudclient... but hrm.. I also have a seperately configured version of X for playing RTCW and Enemy Territory, this to give maximum resources to those games.

Having a seperate X config for it means having to stop X and restart it before playing, but the experience of playing without interference from other programs is rather worth it.

Re:Shift?

[SillyNickName4me]

I am getting this deja vue feeling... anyone here remembers the Commodore plus 4?

Re:Shift?

[g-san]

yeah and all that speed that comes with the games that aren't infected with the windows bloat. Did you ever try to read those disks in Applesoft basic? you couldn't. you know why? not for copy protection, cause there was bare iron waiting for the games to come off smoking. why did I have as much fun playing games on a machine with one (1) measley megahertz when today I have one thousand times the processor speed and maybe a billion times the disk performance but my gaming experience has only improved maybe 5 fold?

Re:Shift?

[bob65]

Um, one word - Multitasking.

Re:Shift?

[zyridium]

The issue with this is simple: Multi-tasking.

Re:Shift?

[Nikker]

How about an OS that handles mini OS's ....

Each "Application" would be a bundled OS + Application

Simple user interface would allow location and execution of any applicable Application

could use egg drop routine that would be its own OS + Maintenance (Application) that would check for charistics of the hardware (which will be made easier once the new BIOS's ship) and configure a kernel with the necessary options and use the appropriate resources (ie slow machines use binary's as much as possible, fast machine go from source) or what ever is applicable to boot the OS of choice (is it possible to run an ap using nothing but 'kernel32'?) ;)

That would be both amazingly fast execution and solid stability

just my $0.02

Re:Shift?

[Igmuth]

So, basically you are describing a platform independent system, in which the user can dynamically load various different plugins in which each preform potentially completely differnt functions? There would be some sort of standard API to allow the plugins to interact with the user and the world, and generally do things.

Hmm.. sounds just like an OS.....

Re:Shift?

[severoon]

Not even a little bit, actually. I'm not describing a framework where plugins could do "whatever". And I'm not describing a system that has a definite boundary of responsibility that separates it from other code, as an OS and applications currently have. I'm simply talking about applications themselves.

Again, look at eclipse or firefox as examples. Both of these apps support plugins that serve a set of particular specific purposes. For example, eclipse supports a plugin that performs revision control. This kind of a plug-in wouldn't really make sense for another kind of application (say, a web browser). The idea is, an application becomes simply an assembly of particular functionalities, but the code implementing those functionalities is left to plug-ins and the application framework simply specifies a standard protocol for interacting with such plug-ins.

There's no reason this approach couldn't be used for OSes either, assuming that top-notch performance isn't an issue (actually, even performance may not be an issue...along the framework vein, you could simply adopt plug-ins that are extremely performant if that was most important to you). For example, an OS could define a protocol for communicating with a file system...the OS hands a set of information that can be used to locate a file, the file system plug-in hands back a file handle. The specifics of how and where it retrieves that file (could be from disk, CD, internet, a database...any freaky place you can think of) is left to the implemetation of the FS plug-in to decide. Or the OS could specify to the thread management plug-in that it wants a thread scheduled with a specified priority. The thread scheduling plug-in could use round robin, shared timeslice, efficient distribution, or fair-priority algorithms for determining when the scheduled threads get to run.

I actually wrote an OS in this vein in college with 7 or 8 other guys as an independent study project, so I've done a bit of thinking about this. But you still can't have a situation where you simply establish a protocol for working with a generic plug-in. You'd have no idea what information needs to be passed to the plug-in for it to do its job, so that would be quite impossible. However, a framework itself has a specific, well-known job which is to coordinate traffic among the different plug-ins that it supports and for which it itself knows the protocols intimately...so you could build a framework framework that would provide an easy means of writing new frameworks and wiring plug-ins together by establishing a sort of "super protocol", something very generic and open-ended.

Of course, the advantage to doing all this is that any part of the application (which is defined as the framework plus a core set of plug-ins that provide the basic functionality of the application) can be replaced with a different plug-in that does things differently if you, the user, so desire. All you have to do is write/find a plug-in that fits the bill. This is a particularly good idea for open source because it allows users to configure their applications in any way they want...no one has to agree on a standard way of doing any particular thing in any application (this is already sort of how the Linux distros work). Another advantage this provides open source is that if the protocols are open and well-known for a particular plug-in, anyone with the time and motivation can write one.

In any case, I would argue that the way an OS interacts with particular applications is completely different from what I'm talking about. Then again, in a sense, I suppose the OS only cares about applications insofar as they are "applications"...it doesn't really care what particular functionality they provide the user so long as they follow the rules established by the OS for being an application. In that sense, I suppose the OS could view applications not as applications but simply as "plug-ins" of a kind.

Having said all that, I think it's important to not forget exactly what an operating

Re:Shift?

[rozz]

Right now if there's a bug or vulnerability in my data access layer, Microsoft can update one file on each machine to fix that vulnerability in every application. In the system you describe, each one would have to be patched seperately.

u r missin somethin : when everybody uses a different data-layer, there's no vulnerability that applies to all of them -> most of them have no need to update/patch.

Re:Shift?

[merlin_jim]

Who's going to write all these data layers? Maintain them? How many of them are going to be free? How many people are going to write a custom one for each piece of software?

Come on people! Software is TOO EXPENSIVE ALREADY!!! We don't need to make it even more difficult to create!

Re:Shift?

[rozz]

sorry, just exhausted my moderator points ;)

Dual boot-like!

[justkarl]

Great idea! Think of all the RAM you'd save...If only more hi-mem apps would do this, rather than run in RAM-hungry Windows.

Re:Dual boot-like!

[Otter]

Sure, with all that RAM freed up you could also run...sorry, what was your point?

Re:Dual boot-like!

[stratjakt]

Do you, or any of the other slashbots get it?

This is what the device does when you turn it on:

- Checks for disc in drive
- If disc is present, and is a DVD or CD Audio Disc, the device boots the "media player" burned into roms on the board
- If not, it boots normally.

This is really dual-booting, except one of the OS's lives in firmware.

In other words, it doesn't "save RAM" when running windows, it doesn't have to do with Windows Update. It doesn't have anything to do with windows at all.

It's as if you booted from a floppy that had a linux-based media player on it.

Re:Dual boot-like!

[scot4875]

And of course it's dual booting: It has two things it can boot...that makes it dual boot.

Thanks for clearing that up. Boy, those operating systems classes I took in college sure never prepared me for this level of technical discussion!

--Jeremy

Gimme the juice!

[ElForesto]

I look forward to this in more laptops so I can squeeze more movie time out of my battery. Letting the OS drain a lot of power reduces me to 1.5 hours on a single charge.

Re:Gimme the juice!

[doofusclam]

Not necessarily. I doubt your BIOS can do all the power saving tricks that your full OS can do, regardless of whether that is Linux or Windows. This includes processor throttling, h/d power down etc etc.

Re:Gimme the juice!

[mobby_6kl]

And the OS drains power how? The System Idle process information shows that my system was running for about 5 and a half hours, next two are SVCHOST processes, with 6 minutes of CPU time and explorer wint 2. All the others are less than a minute. How exactly is that is this increasing the power consumption?

Re:Gimme the juice!

[The Conductor]

Oh, but the alternate envronment can do more to save battery energy. Like run a non-x86 processor (all of which deliver more MIPS/watt). A simple $5 ARM is sufficient if MPEG decoding is done in hardware. Other things include shutting off USB, wireless networking, & sections of RAM. Configuring an OS to shut off that stuff is clumsy because it doesn't "know" that you don't want them (unless you go into configuration & tell it).

Re:Gimme the juice!

[GlassHeart]

Oh, but the alternate envronment can do more to save battery energy. Like run a non-x86 processor (all of which deliver more MIPS/watt). A simple $5 ARM is sufficient if MPEG decoding is done in hardware.

Where do you want to play the movie from? Spinning the DVD is likely to be the costliest in terms of power, so let's copy the movie to the hard disk. Ooops, now your $5 ARM must run a FAT32 file system to be able to read the movie. Some people use NTFS? Well, that's some more code. Would a second CPU, MPEG decoder chip, and two filesystems cost less than a spare battery? (And even then Linux users will still complain that it doesn't read ext2!) Did you plan to share the onboard RAM with your second processor? How would that be wired?

Configuring an OS to shut off that stuff is clumsy because it doesn't "know" that you don't want them (unless you go into configuration & tell it).

What's so hard about a DVD player app that shuts off unnecessary stuff when in fullscreen playback mode? Hell, add a "dedicated play" mode.

I think a lot of posts here are confusing "multitasking OS doesn't currently do this" with "have to go back to singletasking OS".

Re:Gimme the juice!

[The Conductor]

Spinning the DVD is likely to be the costliest in terms of power, so let's copy the movie to the hard disk.

A couple of posts have made this statement, but such is not the case. For example, this DVD drive draws less than 5 watts under continuous read. Early optical drives drew lots of power (early CD boom boxes ate batteries for breakfast for example) due to low quantum efficiency of their lasers, but this apparently has improved. I suspect that deeper RAM buffers permit looser speed control so the spindle motors now run with almost no torque load, saving power there. If you budget 5W for the DVD, 5W for decode, and 5W to the display, a 60 watt-hour laptop battery will last over 3 hours, so you could play The Right Stuff on a single charge.

Whether you can stay interested that long is another matter.

ok, but then what?

[chachob]

the user will eventually turn the machine on, and then what? does this technology work after the machine has already booted into windows? people generally dont buy a computer to only listen to music or watch DVDs...And furthermore, this isnt really making windows obsolete, its just adding functionality to the system.

Re:ok, but then what?

[Tony Hoyle]

How many people have got 'media' PCs to play DVDs on? This kind of technology will do well at the AOL end of the market - insert DVD, switch on machine, watch DVD. No boot time - it's just there, just like every other gadget joe sixpack has in his house.

The fact that it's Linux probably won't change anything.. they could have used any embedded OS.

However, if they start building in hooks for games to use it could get interesting.... with a few million of these out there what game manufacturer wouldn't want to have an 'instant on' game with no installation/windows issues?

Re:ok, but then what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's something like a BIOS, where you turn the computer on, press some key, and it goes into a dedicated media player that's kept in memory. If they want to use the computer I'm sure they can exit the media player and the computer goes on booting like normal. I think it's great, you can boot into the media player taking up as little battery power as possible and watch movies.

Re:ok, but then what?

[antifoidulus]

However, if they start building in hooks for games to use it could get interesting.... with a few million of these out there what game manufacturer wouldn't want to have an 'instant on' game with no installation/windows issues?
You mean, like a playstation, or gamecube, or xBox or gameboy, or dreamcast, or saturn, or genesis, or SNES, or TurboGrafx 16, or NES, or master system?
Rumor out on the street is that game manufacturers may be into these.....

Re:ok, but then what?

[strider_starslayer]

Interesting; I think I see where your going:

Why buy a PS3 when you can buy sony's new laptop, put a PS3/PS2/PS1 game in there, plug in the PS3 USB controller and have it play EXACTLY like the PS3; or keep the game out and use it as a normal sony laptop; for less then the combined price of a PS3 and a laptop (That will be an important factor; if it's cheaper for me to buy both; the frugal will buy both)

Even better would be if SEVERAL laptop manufactuerers decided on some standards (read drivers in the integrated OS) for direct boot games/applications (like video viewing). You could have any model laptop (I choose laptop because then the manufacterer will know what's in there to build the standardising drivers required for this sort of application) and the drivers built into the integrated OS will translate from the standard 'direct run game' to the laptops specs, allowing you to use the hard disk for saved games, the TV-out to turn it into a TV-based consol, and the USB to plug in controllers.

The only problem I'd see with this sort of setup is the rapid version changes: If the designers of 'direct run' games follow consol standards (or even better; transcribe consol standards- IE; sony laptop = PS3) it will be fine, but if they keep programming like it's a PC you'll see 'computer direct boot hardware specs V1-v50' in a matter of monthes with each sucesssiv version being incompatible with the one before it, that would be bad; but if we only saw a version increase every 3-5 years, it would be acceptable.

Wooohooo!

[BenjiPenguin]

Bye bye Windows XP Media Center Edition!!! Honestly, are people going to wait for all that crap to load or get something much sooner, with Linux? Providing a good interface, this could very well be a big problem for Microsoft (not that Linux isn't already...)

Re:Wooohooo!

[Ziak]

I doubt it i tried installing linux on some of my friend's computer because all they do is surf the Internet and talk on IM clienets they still wanted there windows back because they didn't like the look of linux ( i have no idea what that means ) But once someone gets used to something regardless if its beter they'll throw a fit if you change it on them.......

Re:Wooohooo!

[Jason1729]

Um, have you ever heard of OS/2?

OS/2 Warp came out over a year before windows 95, and it did everything MS promised win95 would do plus a lot more. People still waited the extra year, win95 failed on most of its promises; OS/2 was far superior, and yet people still bought win95.

OS/2 warp could also run windows applications, and since OS/2 was far more stable and one app couldn't bring down the whole system, it was a long-standing joke that OS/2 was a far better windows than windows...Oh, OS/2 was also cheaper.

I was using the windows version of borland C++ on both systems quite a bit back them. I caused windows to completely crash a lot. The same errors on OS/2 wouldn't even close the C++ compiler, it would pop up a message that my app did something wrong and would be closed. I would click OK and I was right back to the compiler screen.

This will not be any problem for Microsoft.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Wooohooo!

[BenjiPenguin]

"I doubt it i tried installing linux on some of my friend's computer because all they do is surf the Internet and talk on IM clienets they still wanted there windows back because they didn't like the look of linux ( i have no idea what that means ) But once someone gets used to something regardless if its beter they'll throw a fit if you change it on them......." Yea, but I'm not talking about Windows in general here (and besides, there isn't one specific "look" to Linux, it depends on the distribution and how it's installed/configured).. I'm talking about an embedded Linux media center, such as what these laptop vendors are doing, if I'm not mistaken.. I don't know how WinXP Media Center Edition is doing, but if there were to be an embedded Linux media center...

Re:Wooohooo!

[merlin_jim]

MCE does more than just watch content. It also records content. I'm sure that'll be in this eventually, but for the time being MCE is more fully featured. It's not a souped up Media Player; it's a souped up tivo...

Re:Wooohooo!

[NMerriam]

OS/2 was also the OS choice of Photoshop professionals who had to work on i386 hardware. OS/2 actually made good use of large memory configurations, and had a GOOD virtual memory system, so running PS (2.5 I think?) with the Win32s extensions on OS/2 was far faster on the same hardware than running it on Wfwg/w32s or Win95.

Re:Wooohooo!

[timmyf2371]

Many people say the open-source option is all about choice - why is it I see so many posts like this where we're recommending offering other computer users have no choice in the operating system they use, instead forcing them to use a Linux-based operating system?

My rule of thumb is that I'll always offer the option of Linux when helping to fix a PC problem, but if they reject that option (for whatever reason) and are unwilling to use it currently then I'll teach them how to properly use a Windows-based machine. I've had my current Windows installation installed for some time now, and it's because I know how to take good care of it. Not only are you proposing we remove choice from the user, but by refusing to help unless with a Linux-based OS, you're indirectly contributing to the number of Virus/Adware infested PCs.

Re:Wooohooo!

[chris_mahan]

No, what I don't like is the idea that people have that since we're all volunteers, our time is not valuable, and they can treat us like dirt when we do them a favor.

I say they should at least have respect for someone who tries to help them.

I do agree though with your statement about choice, and I am the first to admit that my windows boxxen work fine. However, I take responsibility for them and if something breaks and I can't fix it, then I expect to pay someone to do it, not to schmooze off their goodwill.

Re:Wooohooo!

[nuggetman]

So what, if you do something I didn't ask you to do, and do it for me on your own time, I'm required to be grateful, even if I don't like it?

"What the hell do you mean you dont want the manual shifting car and want your automatic back? it's better man! can't you see that! god you're so ungrateful!"

Re:Wooohooo!

[chris_mahan]

Yes.

You should at least thank me for spending the time and caring enough.

If you're not, you can bet that was the last thing I tried to help you with.

Re:Wooohooo!

[DrCode]

Yes, OS/2 was good, and I was also a big fan back in the day. But I think a lot of people avoided it because they didn't trust IBM to own the desktop (although I never understand why they trusted MS).

Linux gives everyone a level playing field, and that's a big part of the reason more companies and analysts are willing to accept it.

Re:Wooohooo!

[NanoGator]

" i tried installing linux on some of my friend's computer because all they do is surf the Internet and talk on IM clienets they still wanted there windows back because they didn't like the look of linux ( i have no idea what that means )"

If their experience was anything like mine, it means that Linux isn't all that intuitive to navigate around. I used to think that the reason I've struggled with Linux (KDE?) was because I was too familiar with Windows. My mind changed when I found myself sporadic access to a couple of Macs. (One OSX, the other OS9.) True, they were unfamiliar, and true I actually used Linux/KDE more than I used any generation of Mac, but I was able to actually get around on either of the Macs better than I ever did with a Linux box.

Maybe your friends didn't like whatever desktop theme you were using, but frankly, I suspect it had more to do with frustration at not being able to easily do what they want to do. Man I wish Apple would design a UI for Linux.

Re:Wooohooo!

[NanoGator]

"Bye bye Windows XP Media Center Edition!!! Honestly, are people going to wait for all that crap to load or get something much sooner, with Linux?"

Bye bye Windows XP Media Center Edition? What, is this thing going to make your laptop into a TiVo as well? No? Okay then, we agree, it's neat for some situations, but XP's Media Center isn't going anywhere yet.

Re:Wooohooo!

[st1d]

Well, MCE isn't going much of anywhere, either. For example, Tivo run Linux, and as more of these asian companies move in Linux's direction, MS is being moved out. No doubt MS will offer an "upgrade" to "help" users remove "and inferior player". I'd also expect a few updates that crash the player to come out soon after these ship.

Re:Wooohooo!

[NanoGator]

" Tivo run Linux"

Hmm I think I made my previous post confusing. I wasn't talking about TiVo specifically, I meant that XP Media Center edition has TiVo-esque features. I was trying to point out that XP is not a replacement for this Linux player, nor is it true the other way around.

Either way, I reread the article and realize I made an error. They didn't list the TiVo-esque features on the laptops, but apparently IsntantOn does support it. Oops. Sorry.

"No doubt MS will offer an "upgrade" to "help" users remove "and inferior player"."

If you mean "They'll try to make a better product", I agree.

Re:Wooohooo!

[Deviate_X]

OS/2 Warp Required 8mb of ram minimum to run.

Win95 Required 4mb.

That extra 4mb cost $300 10 years ago.

10 years ago spending $300 extra was alot more painful then than it is now.

I know about this because it was one of the products i used to sell. It didn't. I did hear however that OS/2 was pretty popular in germany.

Re:Wooohooo!

[cheekyboy]

Yeah, ironicaly windows ran in 4meg, but if you wanted to push it to do usefull things, it wasnt that happy, so at the end of the day, probably the same as OS2 once pushed.

They should have optimized it to hell to work in 4megs, i mean look what amiga did in 512kb, (with less than 120kb used on boot, yes i know it has 512k ROMS, but still 90% of the OS was on disk)

So technically, amiga ran rings around everything, partly due to the nice cpu which was the greatest instruction set in the 90s.

Sometimes I wonder why some of todays code is soooo bloated and slow, perhaps its shoddy coding in C++ with people that have no clue how CPUs/ram is used and treat the language like java.

Re:Wooohooo!

[Jason1729]

Just because MS says it can run in 4 meg doesn't make it so. Win95 in 4 meg was agonizingly slow. According to microsoft.com, windows XP professional will run in 64 meg of ram.

Also, 10 years ago, a low to midrange system was $2000, an extra $300 to double your memory wasn't that much in the grand scheme of things.

Re:Wooohooo!

[CUGWMUI]

Umm. I wouldn't quite praise OS/2 warp so easily. I was running 3.0 and 4.0 (and tried Warp Connect too).. and I can honestly say that it sucked in terms of stability.
I used it for several months, and I shut it down only once. Reason : It crashed every other time.

So while I respect IBM for working on OS/2 Warp and providing a worthy competitor to Windows, it certainly wasn't better than Windows.

Re:Wooohooo!

[Deviate_X]

You right of course. win95 wasn't very useful with the minimum 4mb.

But os2 was not very usable with 8mb either.

The recommendation was 16 mb, which just happened to be the same requirement for Windows NT 3.51.

Re:Wooohooo!

[Deviate_X]

Heh! I had a server, a Windows 2000 Server which we _had_ to run in 64Mb. It was a old machine and one of the chips failed. It ran for 4 months like that until someone remembered that it needed sorting.

Re:Wooohooo!

[BenjiPenguin]

Yes, but there is open source software out there that does just that, all it takes is a little thought and a lot of development, and a Linux embedded media center could quickly overtake MCE... But I guess we'll see :)

Re:Wooohooo!

[merlin_jim]

Yes, but there is open source software out there that does just that, all it takes is a little thought and a lot of development, and a Linux embedded media center could quickly overtake MCE...

A little thought... a lot of development... and a couple hundred dollars extra hardware.

I think its that last item that makes the difference.

Oh and lets not kid ourselves; MCE is a couple generations ahead of the curve in terms of usability and setup. It'll be a long time before the FOSS community throws enough time at the problem to make a clearly superior product. Of course it doesn't help that there are currently two big FOSS projects to do the same thing, not to mention the dozen or so minor projects.

Microsoft pays programmers money to make MCE usable. Free software developers work on it in their free time, and they have to pick one of two platforms to work on.

Good idea

[StevenHenderson]

Cross-platform software is a great idea in my opinion. The release of iTunes for Windows, I must speculate, has surely won the hearts of many MS fans. Even the smallest sway can help - getting a small amount of added respect for Linux and its software will lead some to try dual-booting or even a total reformat.

This can only help...unless of course the software sucks hardcore. Has anyone used it?

Re:Good idea

[dgagley]

The Intervideo software came with my video card and it works well. There were no problems when I changed versions of os - to XP. I use Quicktime for much of my MP3 ect. and I use my Ipod to transfer music and other data from and my Home PC (Windows XP) and work OS9, OSX. So Win Media Player is there but I rarely us it unless I HAVE to. This will not, however, change the average persons mind. I know many who just want something that is easy to install and easy to use (which is basiclly impossible.) Mabey we need to put Linux on a chip that can be easly swapped out with a new version something like a memory card with a reader in one of the drive ports for the masses. Yes you would have to use a stable base. They could download the extras. Only when they do not need to call their Geeky reletives or friends to help then they will change.

Re:Good idea

[Trelane]

Mabey we need to put Linux on a chip that can be easly swapped out with a new version something like a memory card with a reader in one of the drive ports for the masses.

I've not done this, but, IIRC, you can put Linux on a USB disk-on-a-stick and boot from it.... :)

Re:Good idea

[owlstead]

I'm not so sure. By taking away the reasons to switch from operating system (for most people this is the apps, not the os) you might end up with people putting up with Windows instead.

I mean, I ran the Gimp on my operating system some time ago, and with cygwin a lot of unix utilities run fine. Even worse, there is a steady stream of Open Source packages coming out for Windows nowadays.

For linux on the other hand, there are little or no commercial applications available in the entertainment sector of it. I think this this situation is better for MS than for anybody else.

This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[Jason1729]

What a waste of money to have to buy all that extra crap when the notebook is easily able to do it in software. It's an even bigger waste in a notebook where space for internal peripherals is at a huge premium.

All that so you can watch DVDs or listen to MP3s without waiting to boot? My Powerbook has a 74 day uptime now; I just put it in sleep mode and take it with. It takes it about 1 second to wake up and then it's ready to play movies or music.

Even if a windows machine can't do that, You're still a lot better off buying a standalone portable mp3 player than having to pay to include it in your notebook. You can take an mp3 player a lot of places you can't take a notebook.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[justkarl]

What a waste of money to have to buy all that extra crap when the notebook is easily able to do it in software. It's an even bigger waste in a notebook where space for internal peripherals is at a huge premium.

What are you talking about? This is software, blockhead. It's just committing resources at startup to another os(Linux)so less resources can be used to play media. It's not hardware at all. Except that it's on a laptop.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[garcia]

Have you seen the number of portable MP3 players and portable DVD players in use on planes, in cars, and whereever?

I have. It's astonishing. I just had a friend fly in from Cleveland. He could not believe that a good number of those around him (including himself) had a DVD player going. Even more had iPods (and their variants).

Personally I take enough shit around with me when I fly (GPS, Camera, books, music, phone/PDA, and media) do I really want to carry around a DVD player too? What happens if I already carried a laptop? Wouldn't I want that to be able to do MP3s and DVDs without having to waste the time booting after leveling out at 10,000 feet for the 35 minutes before descent?

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[Jason1729]

I agree with you. One of the reasons I bought my notebook in the first place was as portable DVD player. I really don't understand why people those stand-alone units that are half the price of a notebook.

My point is that it's stupid to add another whole OS, especially an embedded OS to avoid waiting for the system to boot. Doesn't windows have a decent sleep mode? Isn't putting the machine to sleep a better solution than adding another whole OS?

You still have to wait for the machine to boot to do anything else, so a quickboot DVD player and mp3 player seems pretty useless (and about 50% of what I do with my notebook is run the DVD player, so my opinion is hardly biased by having no use for the feature).

I think the only reason you're arguing with me is because I made the heretical implication that linux is not the ultimate solution to every possible problem.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[garcia]

My point is that it's stupid to add another whole OS, especially an embedded OS to avoid waiting for the system to boot. Doesn't windows have a decent sleep mode? Isn't putting the machine to sleep a better solution than adding another whole OS?

What does it take? A single board, perhaps even a single chip, to run a DVD player/MP3 player? Most of the portables are large because of the screen/drive size. I think the embedded part would be a non-issue.

You still have to wait for the machine to boot to do anything else, so a quickboot DVD player and mp3 player seems pretty useless (and about 50% of what I do with my notebook is run the DVD player, so my opinion is hardly biased by having no use for the feature).

What the fuck are you talking about? I think that the rest of us are talking about using the laptop to play DVDs/MP3s without booting the OS. I wasn't aware that we were talking about booting the machine to do anything else. Just because YOU don't use the machine to play DVDs all that much doesn't mean that other people don't see the cost benefits that you mention above (laptop price compared to portable DVD price).

I think the only reason you're arguing with me is because I made the heretical implication that linux is not the ultimate solution to every possible problem.

You don't know me very well then. I am basically against Linux in everything except the server market. This has little or nothing to do w/Linux anyway. I don't care what the hell the computer uses to load a DVD w/an OS as long as it does and it does well.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[Kiryat Malachi]

Power usage.

A hardwired DVD player is going to consume less CPU time than a DVD player on full OS. If it gets 10% more time out of the battery, it might be a wash, but if it gets 25% time that's a pretty decent feature for a couple extra bucks (extra firmware chip, pay for the license, probably $5 max extra cost).

(And no, Windows really doesn't have a very good sleep mode - standby is fine, but the true low-power sleeps are not exactly stable, I've more than a few times had my Windows machine fail to come back up. No such problems on my Powerbook.)

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[merlin_jim]

First off, it's just a chip. Probably a small one. Maybe a daughterboard. It's not a ton of hardware in any case.

My windows machine wakes up from hibernate in 30 seconds. Sleep in 10. That's not counting time to take it out of lock and load the app.

The key here isn't that this is just another way to watch DVDs. It's a way to turn a complicated and error prone computing device into an appliance, with the stability that entails.

Also, I'm sure that booting into this mode saves battery life on processing power and boot up time. All of a sudden the battery can last longer than the DVD! (certainly not the case with my Thinkpad T30)

And finally, sure I could buy a portable mp3 player... and a portable DVD player... but they don't make portable DVD players with 14 inch screens. A low end 7 inch screen you can get for $200. I think the high quality 10 inch screens will run you upwards of $600. And as for the mp3 player... to get as much music on that as you can carry on a laptop, you'll have to shell out $200+ for a hard drive based player.

And when I'm travelling on business... that's three devices to carry instead of one. That makes a huge difference, especially if flying (three devices means extra luggage means extra inconvenience)

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[stratjakt]

Hibernate works fine on most modern laptop hardware. It screws up on desktops, generally because of driver or hardware incompatibilities.

My laptop hibernates when I shut the lid. It pops right back up when I open it. I watch DVDs, etc. It's all good. It works like the OP says it should.

My laptop, however, is too big to get out and sit on one of those fold-down trays in an airplane. It'd be cool to be able to just reach into the back, plug in headphones, and have it work like an iPod (no mouse/keyboard/screen) needed. No power is being wasted on the display, because the lids shut and it's not in use.

If it came with a remote, I could plug it into the TV in a hotel, and use it like a standalone, without having to get out of bed to FF/RW.

All of this could be done with software, though.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[Jason1729]

Did you even read what you were reply to? I said waking up from sleep mode takes about 1 second - not a couple of minutes like booting, and I DO use my machine to play DVDs A LOT. Therefore if this were a good idea, it would be a great feature for me, but it's a stupid idea.

I also have a 12" notebook since portability is my main criteria. There isn't even room for a PC card slot; it's a tiny machine, and it's packed solidly; there isn't room to add a single board or single chip.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[Jason1729]

If it came with a remote, I could plug it into the TV in a hotel, and use it like a standalone, without having to get out of bed to FF/RW.

You might want to try the ATI Remote Wonder. On the Mac, it doesn't integrate properly with the DVD software, so I'm stuck using the cursor keys to control the mouse pointer which is more trouble than it's worth. On a PC, you might have better luck with it.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[thdexter]

Uh, it's not seperate (not separate) hardware for DVDs and MP3s. It's probably a half-gig partition, if that, with a Linux installation that can play DVDs and MP3s from the main, Windows partition.

Dumbass. RTFM.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[thdexter]

Why would you need flash memory when you have a hard drive in the computer? How much does a BIOS chip cost? I don't think it's anywhere near the $400 my dad paid for his portable DVD player.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[CvD]

Levelling out at 10,000ft eh? What airline is this? Does the FAA know?

Perhaps you meant 30,000ft. :-)

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[Kiryat Malachi]

I have a P3 laptop from Dell. Hibernate works fine... usually. Except when it doesn't and it just fails to hibernate, instead simply restarting when I bring it back up. That's what I meant. It isn't an ancient laptop, maybe 1.5-2 years old max.

But yeah, having it work screenless would be great for MP3s; the screen sucks up a large proportion of the power in a modern laptop IIRC, so that might make your average laptop battery capable of delivering better-than-ipod battery life.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[Mister Skippy]

My laptop hibernates when I shut the lid. It pops right back up when I open it. I watch DVDs, etc. It's all good. It works like the OP says it should.

By your description the hibernation mode on my laptop must not be working right then. When I tell it to hibernate, it goes into an alternate version of a shutdown, storing all the memory states to the HD, while stating that it's preparing to hibernate for nearly 1 minute. (Certinaly not a quick sleep mode.)

To wake it up again is a lot like booting, except that it puts me back where I was when I told it to hibernate. (Certainly does not pop right back up.)

Honestly, what I think you are describing above isn't Hibernatemode but Stand-by mode.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[FlyingOrca]

Uh, it's not seperate (not separate) hardware

Uh, it's a bad idea to correct someone's proper spelling with your own incorrect one. The word is indeed spelt "separate".

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[The Conductor]

If playing DVD's is the main use for your portable, then adding a chip or two for hardware MPEG decoding will make your machine smaller. The power savings will permit a smaller battery. Of course battery life in regular-computer mode will suffer.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[toddestan]

I really don't understand why people those stand-alone units that are half the price of a notebook.

I've seen those portable DVD players going for $200-$300 now - the prices have come down a lot from a few years ago. However, for $400-$600 you can buy a used PIII notebook with a DVD drive, so I suppose your point still stands.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[Cyno]

But your Powerbook doesn't run Windows, so its irrelevant.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[SillyNickName4me]

> You need the bios to be customized to support the feature (instantOn is its own BIOS) and you need memory (flash?) to store it. It will raise the price at least as much as a cheap portable player.

Now, lets see...

Needed for DVD/MP3 playback:
1 flash memory for OS and player
2 small change to bios code
3 media reader hardware

Now, 1 and 2 can be combined on the same chip, and last time I checked flash memory was not extremely expensive.
The 3rd item from the list you already needed anyway, so that makes the total cost of this the cost for a slightly larger bit of flash memory if there isn't space available in the installed module already, and the cost of a small bios change.

I do not know how much flash memory costs at your place, but here I can buy a lot more then the few mb required for this for the price of a portable DVD player.

Re:This thing has separate hardware for DVD/MP3s?

[Jason1729]

My battery lasts 6 hours doing general things (word processing, etc) with the WiFi off and about 5 with it on.

For DVD playback with the WiFi off, it's good for 3.5-4 hours.

I use it for DVDs about half the time. That doesn't mean I want it specialized towards playing DVDs. A smaller battery is not acceptable because of the shorter life in regular-computer mode. I also think I lose so much time playing DVDs because of the HD access, not the extra processing power needed.

I don't object to a specialized DVD chip anyway, just this idea is incredibly stupid. The extra hardware in this machine doesn't include a DVD playback chip; it still does all the work in software. The idea here is booting the machine into an instantOn linux with media player applications to compensate for the machine not having a proper standby mode. How about fixing the standby mode instead? If a lowly apple can go into a deep sleep mode and wake up in 1 second, why can't a powerful PC? :)

which player?

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Is it M player? http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/

I use it on my main windows box and it's hassle free, plays 99% of files and I wouldn't change it for the world :)

Re:which player?

[Otter]

If it is, for added entertainment they should redirect all their tech support questions to the ever helpful MPlayer developers.

Actually, it would be even more fun if they did that and they're not using MPlayer...

Re:which player?

[n0spamus]

It is running InterVideo's LinDVD player:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 94567

No.

[RAMMS EIN]

``"Maybe this is the real way Windows will be made irrelevant, not by a Linux desktop, but by Linux embedded software. LinuxDevices has an article stating 'NEC is the latest vendor to announce a laptop with a built-in embedded Linux based media player option. The NEC Versa S3000 will use InterVideo's InstantOn technology to enable users to listen to music, watch DVDs, and more without having to wait for Windows to load.'''

I think this will merely prompt MS to "innovate" and provide a similar technology. It's good to see that FOSS is ahead of them in this area.

Re:No.

[md65536]

I think Microsoft must be looking at Linux wondering when they can take it and make it their own. I won't say that they've probably stolen code already or at least looked at it for ways they can "innovate" on their own. But I think one day Microsoft will suddenly stop trying to convince people that Linux ruins everybody's life in every way possible, and will start convincing everyone that Microsoft software is great because it has the power of Linux behind it. They will embrace it and release their modifications under the GPL, because it can be used to make their software better and to sell billions of dollars worth of it.

Now... to get slightly back on topic... this may never happen because so far admitting that Linux is good is bad for MS marketting. But if it does happen, it will happen when average dum people accept the idea that Linux makes Windows systems better. This might be the start of that. Perhaps Linux won't make Windows irrelevant. Perhaps it will save it from stagnancy. Whatever MS can do to make its software seem the best choice, even if it means eventually riding on the rising general opinion of Linux, they will consider.

Re:No.

[RAMMS EIN]

Microsoft doesn't have to use any code from Linux. BSD code does a similar job and is often cleaner, and available under less restrictive licensing terms. ReiserFS obviously isn't, but they can license that. For other things, they can just look at how Linux does things and then copy the behaviour without copying the actual code.

Come to think of it, this is probably what software patents try to remedy.

This is the way Slashdot will be made irrelevant

[Donny Smith]

>Maybe this is the real way Windows will be made irrelevant

Phew! "Irrelevant"!

And straight to the point - it's not about a nice (cost-effective, elegant, etc.) way to meet user requirement, it's about the demise of Windows, right in the first sentence.

Give me a break and learn to write articles without trolling!

The only thing that will be made irrelevant is Slashdot.org, thanks to highly insightful articles like this.

go all the way

[Anonymous Coward]

just sell Linux powered laptops, forget windows completely, and the sooner the better

Others use this?

[Jerph]

Averatec's 6200 series has a similar instant dvd/mp3 function. If this is the same chip, it seems to be cheap and in pretty widespread use - this company has a relatively small US sales base and is offering the system for $1250.

Embedded, as in BIOS

[macz]

This will let you have a low power, low overhead MP3/DVD player, post BIOS, pre Boot. I will bet you money you can't use it when Windows is in charge.

Re:Embedded, as in BIOS

[westlake]

This will let you have a low power, low overhead MP3/DVD player, post BIOS, pre Boot

and what is the power consumption of the DVD drive, the LCD screen and the on-board audio?

Re:Fluff.

[RAMMS EIN]

``Unless Windows Media Player is *not* included as the default player, i don't think this bundling will actually help much.''

Which is exactly what is happening in Europe.

Legal DVD on Linux?

[chrispyman]

So does this imply that that there is finally a legal way to play a DVD on Linux? Granted it's not open source, but isn't something better than nothing?

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[IoN_PuLse]

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/10/144 7201&tid=165&tid=97 There is a linux version of PowerDVD. It's been reported on Slashdot too...

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[merlin_jim]

InterVideo has for a while now offered licensed DVD player software for Linux.

It's just not free, which is why you've never heard of it.

I don't know why everything on Linux has to be free and open source. Whether you like it or not, it's proprietary technology. They have a right to keep it closed. They have a right to charge you whatever they want for it.

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually InterVideo doesn't offer any Linux DVD software to the public yet. You have to be an embedded developer to get it. See here

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[jsebrech]

InterVideo has for a while now offered licensed DVD player software for Linux.

No they haven't. Just surf to intervideo's site and try to buy the lindvd player. You can't, because it's not available for sale to end-users. Well, ok, so technically they've offered it to "selected partners", but frankly, that's not the meaning I associate with the word "offered".

The license intervideo has for selling dvd players on linux has been used as an excuse by the media industry for years, and there's still not a single legal dvd player I can buy and install on my linux machines.

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[Blakey Rat]

So stop yer whining, go buy a license, and make one!

Isn't that what Linux users are always saying when someone else points out a missing feature in their program? "Well, grab the source and do it your damn self!"

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[Ziviyr]

They have a right to keep it closed.

The can is open, the worms are everywhere.

They have a right to stick their fingers in their ears and hum very loudly, as long as they don't violate any noise ordinances in the process.

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[Cyno]

I think they should charge $150 per copy per CPU. I know its worth a lot more than that considering developement and licensing costs.

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[kavau]

Whether you like it or not, it's proprietary technology. They have a right to keep it closed. They have a right to charge you whatever they want for it.

Just because something is "legal" doesn't mean it's "good". Yes, the corporations have a right to licence their technology in any way they want, but this money-grubbing is still morally despicable. DVD decoders can be written without infringing anybody's copyright, and it makes absolutely no sense to make DVD decoding illegal, unless all you care about is lining your own pockets.

Therefore I think we have a right (both legally and morally) to complain about it.

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[foobar01]

"Free software" has nothing to do with price. It has everything to do with freedom to do what you want with the software you own. You can charge money for free software. That's what companies like Red Hat do. I'm not sure if the DVD video format is in fact proprietary technology. However, I don't think you're really paying for DVD technology when you pay for InterVideo's DVD player. You're paying for software that uses the technology. If some company does in fact own the rights to the DVD video format, someone please correct me on this.

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[jsebrech]

So stop yer whining, go buy a license, and make one!

A license costs 10.000 usd. Do you have that kind of money lying around? I sure don't.

Isn't that what Linux users are always saying when someone else points out a missing feature in their program? "Well, grab the source and do it your damn self!"

The source is out there, there are tons of highly capable dvd players for linux. They just happen to all be illegal.

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[merlin_jim]

it makes absolutely no sense to make DVD decoding illegal, unless all you care about is lining your own pockets.

Do you honestly believe that all these companies invested so much in DVD-Video out of the goodness of their hearts?

Of course not! They put money into developing the media, the protocol, the copy protection... to make more money!

And now that they want to cash in on their investment, you decide that's morally wrong? Of course all they care about is lining their own pockets! And you would too if you were in their shoes!

I wrote some custom laser light show software last year. I suppose you feel you have a right to steal that too?

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[merlin_jim]

If some company does in fact own the rights to the DVD video format, someone please correct me on this.

Let's apply a little logic here:

1. CSS is proprietary. Their right to keep it proprietary has been upheld in a court of law.

2. CSS is used in DVD-Video.

Therefore DVD-Video is proprietary.

The rest of the technology it's based on is open or semi-open (the physical DVD spec and MPEG2)... but CSS is the key. And the lawsuits target improper use of licensed CSS technology.

And don't lie to yourself; "free software" has everything to do with price. Sure you can charge money for it. That doesn't mean its the free-as-in-speech people value. I consider myself to be a pretty savvy computer user (many professional certifications, writing multi-platform enterprise software, that sort of thing)... and I still wouldn't ever use Linux if it wasn't free-as-in-beer.

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[kavau]

Do you honestly believe that all these companies invested so much in DVD-Video out of the goodness of their hearts?

No.

And now that they want to cash in on their investment, you decide that's morally wrong?

No.

I wrote some custom laser light show software last year. I suppose you feel you have a right to steal that too?

No.

If you just take a look at the topic of this thread, you would realize that we are talking here about watching DVDs under Linux, not about copyright infringement. DVDs are encrypted, supposedly to protect their content and make it harder to produce illegal copies. As the law stands right now, it is perfectly legal for me to copy the encrypted content of a DVD to my hard drive under Linux, and then burn a backup copy to another DVD. That's simply fair use, and is your right. What is illegal, however, thanks to the DMCA, is to decrypt the content in order to actually watch the movie on my computer. Now please explain to me how this is supposed to prevent copyright infringement.

The developers of DVD technology can make their money by licencing their technology to the makers of DVD players, and to DVD manufacturers. As a user of their technology, I therefore have paid my dues to the developers, since I have paid money for DVD player and DVDs, part of which goes to the developers. Why should I have to pay extra licence fees to decrypt the content? Encryption is not some revolutionary technology that was invented by these people.

What the DMCA and this law is all about is content protection. And don't get me wrong - I think the copyright holders have a valid right to prevent people from making and distributing illegal copies. But as I said before, this law does nothing to prevent copyright infringement. All it does is to force me to buy some proprietary, closed-source software for something that free, open-source tools can do as well. And the money I'm paying for this goes into the wrong pockets. I should not have to pay for making fair-use copies.

I hope you realize that defending our fair-use rights is not the same as defending copyright infringement. Until quite recently commercial DVD players were not even available for Linux (but many free ones were), so I would have been forced to shell out a few hundred bucks to watch DVDs on my computer. This is what I'm saying is wrong - forcing me to pay for software that's only doing what free software can do equally well and better.

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[MrNemesis]

Personally, I wouldn't mind paying for it. I already have about 9 copies of PowerDVD and WinDVD for windows that come bundled with every £20 DVD drive I buy (yes, even the OEM ones!).

Can I go to the website adn buy myself a tarball of this thing? No.

Does the Linux build of WinDVD come with out-of-the-box support for LIRC, ALSA and all the rest of it? What about the ability to ignore region encoding (assuming I have a region 0 drive)?

Until these proprietary players are a) up to the standard of the FOSS equivalents and b) actually available, no-one will use them.

Re:Legal DVD on Linux?

[merlin_jim]

If you just take a look at the topic of this thread, you would realize that we are talking here about watching DVDs under Linux, not about copyright infringement. DVDs are encrypted, supposedly to protect their content and make it harder to produce illegal copies. As the law stands right now, it is perfectly legal for me to copy the encrypted content of a DVD to my hard drive under Linux, and then burn a backup copy to another DVD. That's simply fair use, and is your right. What is illegal, however, thanks to the DMCA, is to decrypt the content in order to actually watch the movie on my computer. Now please explain to me how this is supposed to prevent copyright infringement.

It doesn't matter is my point. Whether you believe it can prevent copyright infringement or not doesn't matter one sot. What matters is that they own the information; they spent money to create it and, pursuant with the law of the land, took steps to claim ownership of it, and now they don't want you using it in certain ways.

Sure it sucks. And its shortsighted. Don't like it? Get a laserdisc reader... which does have linux drivers, BTW :)

WinDVD

[ksc]

Why can't someone please release a commercial DVD player for Linux? I'm sick & Tired of messing with libraries & compiles & more missing libraries just wo watch a damn movie on one of my fav OS'es...

Re:Waiting for Windows to load?

[kfg]

If I installed an Accusump in my car it could double the life of my very expensive car engine, but I want to start it now, not in 10 seconds, you insensitive clod.

KFG

Re:This is the way Slashdot will be made irrelevan

[daeley]

Man, did some bully take your Windows 95 disks away when you were a kid?

Take a look at the /. sections in the lefthand column. Do you see a Windows section? Frickin' BSD has a section. If you don't like the attitude, go hang out on MSN groups or something.

Re:Sounds interesting...

[kfg]

If OpenOffice Writer opens .doc files do .doc files become GPL?

KFG

Power Consumption

[Morgahastu]

Since the OS booted to play DVDs and MP3s should be very light weight and minimal, will power consumption be noticably lower in this mode compared to watching DVDs in windows? I believe the media is decoded with hardware too, further optimizing the power usage. This would be great for watching movies on a plane, with wi-fi off of course!

Re:Power Consumption

[srwalter]

There really shouldn't be a big difference in power consumption. If you're watching a DVD, the majority of the CPU time (and therefore power) is being used by the DVD player software, not the OS. In fact, it's conceivable that power consumption would be /worse/ if Linux weren't configured to take advantage of ACPI power management (frequency scaling, CPU idling, that sort of goodness).

Re:Power Consumption

[stratjakt]

That's the idea. The CPU barely does anything, and can be throttled back.

How well it works in RL, we'll see.

There's more to power usage than just the CPU. Consider watching a DVD - you've got the dvd-rom spinning and its motors grinding away reading the disc, that sucks power (a device I normally don't use on a laptop).

Chances are, if you're on a plane, you've got the backlight jacked all the way up, and the volume on full through the headphone jack.

And all that dedicated hardware still sucks 'it down, especially if it's doing fancy post-processing jibber jabber. Bob and weave and all that.

It'll surely be more convenient to watch a movie or listen to a CD, since it would function like a standalone unit. As for the power savings, someone else can beta test that while I wait for the results.

Re:Sounds interesting...

[BarryNorton]

Yeah, shame I ran XviD in WMP, though...

Decentralizing

[mfh]

Sounds like a great idea. NOT.
Sure, *your* idea sounds bad. But your idea lacks vision. I'm talking about decentralizing the classic OS, and decentralizing Microsoft's monopoly. Linus has been doing it for years, but by more or less following the classic design of an OS. I'm suggesting a shift into a more dynamic model. What's wrong with that?

Re:Decentralizing

[sean23007]

I think the problem with your idea is that you don't seem to have thought it through completely, and you certainly haven't explained it thoroughly. What the other responders are saying is that what you describe is pretty much how things used to be. It's how things currently are in consoles. PCs are more versatile than consoles, and a large part of that (and one of the main advances in operating system technology over the years) is multi-tasking. As in, the ability to run multiple programs at once. Your idea seems to go back to the days when that is impossible. However, assuming that's not what you meant, and you want several programs running concurrently, each with their own operating system, you will soon discover that there are all of a sudden 5 or 6 or more operating systems running on your machine. And the running code ... well, there seem to be 5 or 6 or more identical copies. So why not roll that identical code into one process or set of processes, which would dramatically increase efficiency? Well, if we did that, we'd have something I like to call a general purpose "operating system." Basically, you're proposing a step backward that is unnecessary. If you still disagree, please explain.

Re:Decentralizing

[cosmol]

This decentralizition (wow, what a nice buzz-word) you speak of sounds just like MSDOS, a point which you must have chose to ignore from the grandparent post. There's a little thing called multitasking that is quite useful. It's hard to do that when you have to boot into each program you use

It is worth noting that Linus started writing the linux kernel as part of a bootable stand-alone text editor. I sure am glad that it does more than that these days.

Re:Decentralizing

[bogado]

This is true, and I agree 100% with you. But this could be a good thing for certain kind of applications. Movies, games, heck even music. All of those could have a os embeded in the boot sector that would boot directly into the application, movie or whatever.

All those application have one thing in common they require full atention of the user, and usually they would benefit if they had full atention from the CPU and memory also. Since they usually are used by themselves no lost in booting directly into them. With a clever structure it could be played troght a traditional OS also, for those who don't like the idea of rebooting their computers.

Re:Decentralizing

[swatthatfly]

I guess this is where a formal education (i.e. university degree in comp. sci.) would kick in and tell you that the O/S is there to eliminate duplicated code and enable multitasking.

Re:Decentralizing

[hc00jw]

It's how things currently are in consoles.

It's interesting that all the next gen consoles are rumoured to run on IBM processors. So what's to stop the running of a Revolution game on a NextBox, a NextBox game on a PS3, or a PS3 game on a Revolution? Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft of course.

That's not to say that this is a parallel, because you can still play your DVD's anywhere, but it's this sort of device lock-in that allows the vendors to do anything with the embedded DVD player on your machine. How do you think the Microsoft supported equivalent is going to behave? They will probably play Microsoft technology music and movies. And what then happens to the Mac market (as an example) which doesn't have access to this embedded player, and can't play the aforementioned CD / DVD content?

How will this make Windows irrelevant, exactly?

[zymurgyboy]

This is a really good idea for certain functions that require a lot of RAM and processing power that might otherwise adversly affect the Windows XPerience(tm), but how will this make Windows irrelevant? It isn't replacing windows.

At the risk of getting flamed, I'd say if anything, it sounds more like an admission that Windows can't be beat on the desktop. So, avoid the confrontation by "competing" with embedded tech where Windows is know to suck.

Re:How will this make Windows irrelevant, exactly?

[TeknoHog]

At the risk of getting flamed, I'd say if anything, it sounds more like an admission that Windows can't be beat on the desktop.

To me it sounds like an admission that Windows is slow to boot, and Linux is fast.

Re:How will this make Windows irrelevant, exactly?

[zymurgyboy]

That's another way of looking at it, for certain. But why, then, would you bolt the faster, embedded-Linux device to the notebook? Why the hell would anyone want to have to carry a laptop around to do the same thing they've been doing since the 80's with a Walkman. Or something they're presently doing today with an iPod/Rio/etc. that uses embedded technology to perform the same function but weighs ounces instead of pounds.

People who already own MP3 players probably aren't the target market here, but wouldn't someone who doesn't presently own an MP3 player and doesn't plan on getting one who is buying a new computer be just as, if not more, likely to buy something cheaper and use WinAmp or WMP on it? I'd think this hypothetical person, if s/he cared about music enough would probably just buy an MP3 player anyway.

These laptops are destined for the Island of Misfit Toys if ever anything was.

Re:How will this make Windows irrelevant, exactly?

[jayhawk88]

I'm sure that if Billy G. and the boys really wanted to make a Windows OS kernel that did nothing but play DVD's, they could make it shit-hot fast too.

Re:How will this make Windows irrelevant, exactly?

[zymurgyboy]

...And that folks is really the correct rebuttal. And I'm now overrated for suggesting Linux might never dominate Windows on the desktop. Thank you and goodnight!

Re:How will this make Windows irrelevant, exactly?

[parksie]

My Linux box takes a fair while to start up, a lot of that is the BIOS stuff, common to Linux and Windows.

To be honest, they're about the same time, and it's not like people turn on their PC and then *sit there waiting* for it to show them the login prompt. You do something else... multitask!

Re:Which Media Player?

[molarmass192]

I'm not 100% sure on the size, however, I use MPlayer and the frame buffer to watch DVDs on my laptop in combination with init 1, powersaved, hdparm -Y, and ALSA ... all via a script of course. The image doesn't cover the entire screen but I can watch a 2 1/2 hour DVD with juice to spare when it's done.

Re:Fluff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read the fucking article? Do you have any idea what you are talking about? The answer is No. A very obvious no.

Re:Fluff.

[merlin_jim]

Windows Media Player does not include a DVD player; it can play DVDs, but you need to install a codec. WinDVD installs the codec for it to use.

Re:This is the way Slashdot will be made irrelevan

[avandesande]

In this aspect I disagree... Microsoft has turned windows media player into the worst piece of crap I have ever used and deserves a black eye.

"innovate"

[Ucklak]

I wonder how XP embeded would compete.

MS is always behind in technology and will continue to follow. They bang their drum louder to draw attention to themselves and "WOW", the public buys their rhetoric hook, line, and sinker.

Whatever Long(wait)horn is, it will be behind graphically what Apple's Tiger will be and whatever Sun is doing on the desktop.

Re:"innovate"

[RAMMS EIN]

``MS is always behind in technology and will continue to follow.''

Yet they make the leading word processor, spread sheet, developer environment, desktop operating system, and media player, the open source world is trying hard to clone them, and ease of use is measured with respect to the standard they set.

Re:"innovate"

[SillyNickName4me]

> Yet they make the leading word processor, spread sheet, developer environment, desktop operating system, and media player

Last time I looked, those are 'leading' in marketshare, not in technology. Now, the post you replied to was talking about leading in technology.

> the open source world is trying hard to clone them, and ease of use is measured with respect to the standard they set.

Clone as in look and feel? yes.

But let em tell you something, the leading OSS office package, OpenOFfice is based on the much older StarOffice. Now, StarOffice was around a decade ago as well, and has been leading MS in usefull features and integration for quite some time.

You are somewhat right in one thing: MS does set the standard for the interface with which people operate their computer, but even that one is a ripoff (no, not talking about windows beign a ripoff of the ancient mac or looking back to Xerox times, just that the concept and metafor behind the Windws 9x/2k/2k3/xp desktops comes from the Workplace Shell that was used by OS/2, and was there quite some time before MS got to market with their variation)

In other words, the parent you replied to is entirely right, MS is not leading and has never been technically, and except for detail enhancements, their products are functional ripoffs of pre-existing competitive products or at times competitors they bought out. Oh, and as a nice sidenote, MS didn't write Word or Excel, they bought it.

So.. you are only somewhat right with regards to the cosmetics side of the thing.

Re:Sounds interesting...

[RdsArts]

No, but the code to decode it (ie. the .doc format's codec) does.

Re:The all too common

[Stevyn]

Good point. As much as I like linux and use it daily, Microsoft is a huge multibillion corporation. I don't see how linux is going to knock it off it's mountain any time soon. At most, it's marketshare will increase to that of Apple. That would still be a huge accomplishment, but it's unrealistic to hope it's going to topple microsoft. And even if it did, Microsoft could just focus all of it's efforts on Office to compete with open office and still make money. I've read that Office is microsoft's bread and butter anyway so it wouldn't make much of a difference.

If some day the operating system becomes completely transparent and people can run any software on any machine, then the money will be made in the applications.

Linux still needs it's desktop standards "enforced" better I think. The handful of distros are still competing against each other too much. RPMs should be killed. We need standards like connecting a printer will automatically set it up. Sharing over home networks works out of the box. When you plug a USB drive in, it's contents pops up on the screen. Same thing with digital cameras and mp3 players. Mass broadband adoption helps things because manufacturers can centralize their driver databases, or even just the distros can do this.

The devil is in the details and linux still requires too much knowledge that geeks take for granted. I like how KDE is starting to take over on some of this and in a sense making operations standard across distros, but this needs to happen more often.

It's been my experience that distros differ little for the end user. Window managers differ in their features between basic WMs to desktop environments like KDE and GNOME.

Flame and bitch me out all you want and call me stupid for thinking operating linux requires knowledge and experience, but I bet someone can setup and share a printer and a directory faster on windows than linux if they had no background experience to begin with. We don't need to dumb everything down to a wizard, but making initial configuration easier is where standards have to be initiated.

Oh, and before anyone thinks they should list a dozen apps that will do what I said above, if they're not turned on by default or at least given the obvious option when I install linux, then they're too difficult for the average user. And I'm sure I've either heard or currently use any package you want to inform me about, but that meant I already had to search them out, something most people aren't going to do.

Instant-on

[polecat_redux]

I'm surprised that in most cases it still takes a considerable amount of time to load an OS. What about the following:

Let's say that after installing the OS and configuring all of the devices, you have an option to create a file on your hard drive that is a map of everything in memory (a la Hibernate, but minus any running apps - essentially a fresh boot of the OS). Add the option to boot from the image to your bootloader, and after a quick poll for changes in hardware, you're in business. Even better would be if the image was stored on its own partition so that it would be less prone to fragmentation.

Re:This is the way Slashdot will be made irrelevan

[zymurgyboy]

Spot on, my friend. I was thinking the same but for some reason couldn't bring myself to say it.

I guess I just don't want it to prove true.

How many posts do you predict before the "but does it support OGG, no?, then I'm not buyin'" crew to show up? Damn, too late already (I predict).

i haven't tried this player but...

[m2bord]

as long as it doesn't try to force feed you updates everytime you start it on ala musicmatch, attempt to take over your system, like real, come bundled with the os, like you know who, and just plain works...i'll love it.

now if you really want to have a media player...find one that'll cook french fries and keep beer cold.

Re:Which Media Player?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the image isn't covering the whole screen, and your framebuffer is (for example) 800x600, add these lines to ~/.mplayer/config

vop=scale
zoom=yes
xy=800

Re:This is the way Slashdot will be made irrelevan

[superpulpsicle]

There aren't too many other players that can adjust brightness and contrast. Resize and adjust a number of other features. The problem with the player is the media support. Can't play quicktime files etc.

If someone can name a real strong windows media player alternative PLEASE SPEAK!!

Re:Fluff.

[ViolentGreen]

Did you even read the summary or just the deceptive title?

Your system isn't normal yet.

[r00t]

Windows is supposed to take ages to load.
I suggest using IE to visit some porn sites.
Click OK on all the dialog boxes you see.
Be sure to install Kazaa and lots of free
screensavers.

Soon you'll have a normal Windows install,
and you'll see why putting Linux in ROM for
playing DVDs is a very good idea.

Re:Your system isn't normal yet.

[TrancePhreak]

Those wont slow down standby / hibernation....

Re:Your system isn't normal yet.

[SillyNickName4me]

> Those wont slow down standby / hibernation....

Cool, so I can put (popup) hell in standby or even hibernate mode?

Re:Fluff.

[Samhaine]

RTA. This is an embedded player that sits OUTSIDE OF THE INSTALLED OS.

Linux is great for non-desktop

[EmbeddedJanitor]

OK, it is great for desktop too, but not for everybody... but the main place where Linux progresses the fastest is in the space with less user interaction ie. the embedded and server space where the user does not care what OS is in use.

Keeping MS out of the embedded market

[artemis67]

Desktop operating systems probably turn a nice profit for MS, but there's much bigger money that could have been made in the embedded market if they could get a foothold. I think that that's why they designed Windows CE and Windows Media Player. However, it looks like Linux is just going to devestate them in the embedded market. When it comes to licensing costs, "free" is tough to beat.

That doesn't quite translate to success on the desktop, but it does get a lot more Linux devices out there. And the more popular Linux is, the more developers it'll have, and the more potential polished, commercial applications that will be available. That's what draws the desktop market, and what keeps Gates and Ballmer up at night.

Re:This is the way Slashdot will be made irrelevan

[Brandybuck]

I agree with the grandparent. If you read only Slashdot you would think that the sole purpose of Linux is to get rid of Windows. This article is a case in point. Instead of being satisfied with a positive story about Linux, the blurbist had to kick Windows in the nuts in the very same sentence.

I'm going back to my "Frickin' BSD" section...

Yep!

[bach37]

I think it does! lol

Re:This is the way Slashdot will be made irrelevan

[avandesande]

Using the interface is more painful than sticking a hot pin in my eye.

Re:The all too common

[Azureflare]

You know what.

I don't really want linux to be as popular as microsoft windows.

I just want it to get some respect, and get some support from hardware vendors.

I'm not a developer. I'm a user of linux. And I just want it to work.

It works fine for me now, with the hardware I have, so it's not that I have a problem with linux; I have a problem with vendors who think windows and mac is the only game in town.

Luckily things are much better now than they used to be, so perhaps I could just say this:

I just want linux to get some respect. That is all.

I could give a rat's ass about toppling Microsoft, they simply don't matter to me right now.

Re:This is the way Slashdot will be made irrelevan

[Sidicas]

If someone can name a real strong windows media player alternative PLEASE SPEAK!!

I too am looking for alternatives. btw, many people don't realize how slow Windows Media Player runs. In Linux, my 600 Mhz Athlon plays DVDs at barely 50% CPU usage. The latest XVid formats at extreme quality sometimes use a bit more CPU at around 80%. In Windows, playing a DVD sucks up so much CPU (90-100%), simply clicking the start button causes it to skip even if you set it to real-time priority. Some of the new Anime stuff up on BitTorrent use the new version of Xvid encoded at extreme quality and they run unplayably slow only in Windows. Don't even get me started on the lack of out-of-the-box codec support. The Microsoft Codec server that WMP automatically connects to if you're missing a codec is actually a really awesome idea. Too bad it doesn't actually serve anything.

Irrelevant?

[GoatEnigma]

"Maybe this is the real way Windows will be made irrelevant"

Sorry to point this out, but Windows will never be made irrelevant. Fact is, its been running 90% of the world's desktop PC's for a decade, and brought computers to the home market in a way never seen before. Its already made its place in history, and will never be regarded as "irrelevant".

Perhaps the word you really meant to use was "obsolete", but ... well, the comment I was going to make has been made many, many time before so I'll leave it at that.

Re:Irrelevant?

[Ziviyr]

and brought computers to the home market in a way never seen before.

Yeah, it brought them to the market broken!

Re:The all too common

[TomorrowPlusX]

I agree with you 100%, but I want to point out recent experiences at my office, where I'm a graphic designer, and I periodically go between windows, KDE/linux and the other 99% of the time Mac OS X.

When I need to print, and if I need to select and configure a printer, OS X wins, hands down. I can find a printer on the network and get it configured in less than a minute. Peachy.

on linux, a little trouble. I had to format an url to give to cups. Took about 5 minutes, but once I did it it worked.

On windows... well... it generally takes me about 10 minutes to figure out how get the god-damned wizard to navigate to a listing where I can pick a printer from. usually takes a few back-n-forths, and sometimes it hangs as it searches the network. Generally, it takes me calling the IT people and getting them to set it up.

My point here is that people assume windows has a better gui, just because people are used to it, and accustomed to it's failures (I'm not talking about blue-screens, those are GONE).

My old room mate was an IT guy for a defense contactor -- a windows-only type of shop. he always snickered at my powerbook and at my thinkpad running linux. I didn't mind him laughing at linux as user-unfriendly, but he'd get on my mac and say "where's the start-menu?" "Where's windows-feature-x?" He's a smart guy, but he only knows windows, and to him, anything that deviates from windows is user-unfriendly.

Media player clasic

[genner]

Media player classic has non of the bloat and supports both quicktime and real player.

Here's the link

Wait...I want to add to this

[Stevyn]

After I posted this I had to run an errand and while driving (where all real thinking is done) I had an idea. Maybe it's redundant or overreaching, but I'll try and relate it in words anyway.

A set of standards called "Desktop Linux". From a PHB and marketting viewpoint, it makes sense. Nothing to do with servers or emebeded systems or that old 486 dhcp server sitting in someone's basement. It's just a concept that represents the computer that sits in people's homes and cubicals.

So the idea I'm kicking around is a set of standards. As far as the end user is concerned, the heart of this is a GUI interface similar to what distros include in their base install. The Mandrake control center comes to mind, but I hear YaST and Yum (I may be wrong on that one) are similar to this. I'm proposing a common "control center" where all the hardware that the user is concerned with such as scanners, cameras, mice, printers, graphics card, monitor, USB drives, Firewire drives, etc can be controlled and configured from. Hardware other than that like IDE controllers, USB controllers, internal hard drives, and other devices people generally don't have to worry about that are either hidden or not existant in this at all. This control center is independent of window mangers so gnome, kde, and icewm for example would not have to worry about it directly, just interfacing with it.

The goal is to be able to walk into a store like best buy, see a little sticker on the box of a printer that says "Desktop Linux Compliant" and to purchase it knowing it's promised to work with their computer. So they take it home, out of the box, plug it in and something in the background like hotplug detects it first. It passes that information along to the control center. The control center informs the user of it's detection and either downloads the driver or asks for the CD the manufacture included.

I know that sounds too good to be true, but let's pretend it's still possible.

The manufacturer doesn't have to worry about supporting all linux distros and platforms, just the "Desktop Linux" standard. Their drivers are just modules in this control center. Printer modules can then connect up to something like cups to do the rest of the work.

What makes this special is that as long as distros and manufacturers are compliant with these standards, everything should work properly. Drivers can be compiled for i386 or some other low common denominator or just delivered as source for simplicity.

Same idea for a usb flash drive. It's inserted and the control center mounts it and opens up a konqueror window and displays it's contents. It's up to KDE to provide that part. The control center just gets the information from hotplug, mounts it, and tells the window manager to open a window.

This whole concept is where open source should try to be. Central and enforced standards. The control center is probably just a bunch of interfaces for the distro, hardware maker, kernel, and window manager. But the goal is to bring them all together in one central location that's easy to use.

I'm not suggesting to rewrite hotplug, cups, samba, or sane, but just to agree on a simple yet powerful interface for the user to trust. Hardware makers could develop modules for the control center that would be standard across all platforms and window managers.

This still preserves one of the initial goals of linux to be customizable and compact. If someone doesn't want "Desktop Linux" then they don't have to install it. But distros would like this idea so they don't have to repeat the work SuSE and Mandrake did to get a scanner working. It also allows people to use lighter window managers because the hardware controlling ability in KDE is a reason I use it.

So that's the idea I'm kicking around. Comment as you wish. I'll admit I don't know the techinical difficulties this might entail, but distributing it across hardware, distros, and window managers could make it feasable.

Re:Which Media Player?

[molarmass192]

Cool but this looks like it's a tradeoff ... the scaling brings the CPU up pretty significantly. This is a good setting for plugged-in mode, but it would shorted the battery life by a good bit disconnected. Thanks for the info.

Instant On

[JollyTX]

I bought a Toshiba laptop in Japan a few months ago. It has the ability to view TV, DVD and play music CD's without loading an OS. I've used that feature... let's see... yeah, _once_. To see what the menus looked like.

I'm not sure if I'm representative of all laptop buyers, but this seems, to me, definitely like a gimmick that has no real value. (That said, it is a very nice laptop.)

Re: already beyond Apple

[Stevyn]

I'm talking about linux on the desktop. I'm sure linux is kicking ass for servers. Does this statistic include servers?

Re:The all too common

[pinkocommie]

First off, that was not a typical experience, I've had a deskjet up and running in under a minute on Windows XP, plug it in, ding ding hardware found, printer found, hardware installed , worst case it asks me to choose which printer driver (deskjet 720 vs 722), increasing the time to 2 minutes tops. Same goes for a couple of other printers, the only printer it took me longer then 2 minutes to install was an HP Jetdirect Color Laser. And i'm not slamming linux, i use it love and advocate its use not to mention i've never really setup printing on Linux (workplace = Windows, rarely print from home). Bottom line your comparison is inaccurate.
Also about the comparison about your friend, thats the way it always is if you want to switch people over from anything, you make it similar or provide a ton of tips and help to make the switch easier, anyone remember the early versions of word and their 'help for wordperfect users' option?
If you want to get people to switch the learning curve must be minimized radically (a la XPde) , and again i'm not saying that getting people to switch is of paramount importance , but if thats your goal....

Re:This is the way Slashdot will be made irrelevan

[parksie]

As regards Linux software...

That I've seen, nothing from XviD is used while playing in MPlayer. If it's MPEG-4, it goes through ffmpeg by default. Under Windows, I believe the XviD codec handles it instead. Perhaps the XviD codec prefers quality and ffmpeg prefers speed?

Not sure how useful it'll be, but for video, bsplayer under Windows used to work quite well for me.

Re:This is the way Slashdot will be made irrelevan

[parksie]

Since you asked so nicely...

That I can see, I'd prefer Ogg Media support just because then I can have my *text* subtitles (i.e., rendered by the player) inside the file, rather than needing a separate .srt file for the player to pick up.

Several Cube PC's Already Ship With This

[Cylix]

If you check out Toms Hardware you can see a small chunk of cube pc's which already feature this.

Not a bad option if you are like me and looking for a portable everything box with an alternate plan of being a PVR in its spare time.

However, after looking over the prices I decided I would rather have a mini-itx solution.

A nice C3 board with tv out and a PCI slot for capture ended up being my pick. Thankfully, I alraady have most of the components to slap into this little beast. The final product should measure about 7 x 2 x 10 (w x h x l).

Yeah, it won't have instant on dvd support, but I'm not going to nit pick when my savings was in the 300+ range.

Re:Several Cube PC's Already Ship With This

[Cylix]

Although, it's mentioned in the article and horribly obvious upon inspection.

A good chunk of those cube pc's with instant on DVD and audio CD support have front shuttle controls.

I can't believe I failed to mention that and I also don't understand why I mispelled already.

Embedded Linux Media Center?

[kavau]

I am planning to build a homebrew Tivo-like media center for myself some time soon (yes, I know, I'm not gonna be able to beat Tivo's price, but I love the tinkering...). All this talk about "Instant On" technology and Embedded Linux makes me think that Embedded Linux might be the operating system of choice for a PVR system. And "Instant On" is certainly desirable for a media center, unless you want to keep it running 24/7.

If Embedded Linux can run a movie player, there is no reason why it shouldn't be able to run the other components of a media center, methinks. The only problem is, that I know virtually nothing about Embedded Linux. Is there some good documentation available on how to get Embedded Linux running on a generic PC? Please share your experiences!

Re:This is the way Slashdot will be made irrelevan

[SillyNickName4me]

> There aren't too many other players that can adjust brightness and contrast. Resize and adjust a number of other features. The problem with the player is the media support. Can't play quicktime files etc.

> If someone can name a real strong windows media player alternative PLEASE SPEAK!!

To answer both questions at once, take a peek at mplayer (mentioned repeatedly throughout the discussion already), there is a win32 version as well.

I have never used the windows version myself, but the unix (hello people, mplayer is NOT Linux specific in any way) version does all that you ask for, can use hardware for scaling in quite a few cases and given that you have the codecs, will play about any media you throw at it (it does play anything from realmedia to quicktime to wmv to mpeg4 to whatever..)

Insightful

[mfh]

Very insightful comments, so I am compelled to respond.

> I think the problem with your idea is that you don't seem to have thought it through completely, and you certainly haven't explained it thoroughly.

Yes, you are correct, so I will elaborate. I think it would be interesting to create a decentralized system of programs that handle the OS components individually, without trying to link with generics. Every program would respond better if they could have their own controls over the computer hardware that runs the show. They wouldn't load in a zillion unused apps because it would impact their own program benchmarks negatively. Computers would be more stable, like consoles. Do you know why consoles are becoming the status quo for gamers? Because the games are written for one specific system and it just works. No patches. People are sick of all the patches for computer software these days.

When you transfer the control of main systems to a program, it makes upgrades much more difficult -- unless you have infrastructure to handle it. Companies could specialize in OS components for software packages they support, or they could do batch replacements on OS components for profit. Instead of having one company in control of it all, this method would decentralize Microsoft's role (because they would no doubt fight this and not adopt it).

> PCs are more versatile than consoles, and a large part of that (and one of the main advances in operating system technology over the years) is multi-tasking.

Who says you can't have a program running that launches other programs and multitasks them? Why do we depend on unfriendly OSes that take full control of our systems, when our software could do the same and operate independantly?

> Your idea seems to go back to the days when that is impossible.

Maybe it seems that way, but let me put this into perspecitve for you. What was missing when DOS was in its heyday? The internet. Today computing has come lightyears from where we were back when DOS was the OS of choice. Today we could revisit the model and build on the problems from it, and learn from the mistakes that Mac, MS and Linux made by centralizing control of software. Space was a problem then, as memory and hard drives were expensive. Today memory and hard drives are cheap and they are only getting faster and cheaper!

> you will soon discover that there are all of a sudden 5 or 6 or more operating systems running on your machine.

Okay, maybe today that's a problem. But when you look at the size of OSes for only specific programs, I think you see a dramatic savings. Take a browser for example. What if you never print with your browser? You could disable that from the beginning and leave it out. The options are limitless in this kind of model and the memory savings would also create benefits.

Running a video game like Doom 3 would be ideal in this kind of model because you know damn well that John Carmack would streamline the functionality of the game to make maximum use of the system.

Let's face it, there are apps you want to multitask and there are apps you don't. You could have the ability to multitask if you wanted your session that way, or if you just want to focus on one app you could.

Plus software designers may want to support addons to their products in the form of plugins that let you multitask through them. For example, if you find yourself working on a website, you could use a program that lets you utilize photoshop, a text editor, FTP prog and a browser all in one nice little package. That would be totally cool, IMHO. Think of all the open source remedies for software that could exist in this kind of system!!

Okay, so I think you get my point: shift away from an OS model, to a software controlled environment would be useful and interesting. There are many instances when I would rather only load one program than a few, but if I wanted to, plugins could exist that would let me do other things.

Re:Insightful

[Fnord]

You don't really seem to understand how an operating system works. I don't mean the gui/desktop/environment that has become part of the OS, I mean the kernel (which in computer science terms IS the operating system). You can't just have programs just multitask because they're on the same computer. They're competing for resources! There's only one (ok maybe two) proccessor. Only one video card. Only one sound card. Only a single memory address space. Something has to mediate, hand out these resources to the programs that need them, and stop those programs that don't. This, is the operatings system. You don't actually have 5 or 6 programs running on your processor at the same time, you have an operating system that interupts each program when its allocated time slot is up and hands it over. It also divides up memory, protects regions of memory from other programs, allows multiple programs to draw to screen at once, allows multiple programs to send internet traffic, all because these programs make requests of it and it passes the requests on to hardware.

Now considering your previous direction, you're probably going to say each program can just be good and give up control of the processor when it doesn't need it, or just be good enough not to go outside of its bounds in ram. What you would have described, in this case is Windows 3.1 or MacOS Classic. Both of these systems are horribly crash prone, and low performing because they don't keep sloppy programs from doing bad things, hogging proccessor time, straying in memory, accessing the sound card when another is using it. Hell, even if you have well written programs, a cooperative multitask system isn't going to perform as well. The way you split up processor and memory is highly dependant on what is going on in the system as a whole. A single program can't make the proper judgement call on how much processor time to take. Only a program that's monitoring the whole system and who's sole purpose is dividing up resources can make that call. That program again is the operating system.

And you say you don't want to multitask. Well what if some of the other tasks are things being handled by the os? Each program shouldn't contain an entire TCPIP stack. That's a massively complex piece of software. That lives in the operating system. Or it could be in a separate program that you communicate to but that's just describing a microkernel system with a tcpip server. Just another form of operating system.

And lastly, even if you don't need services like tcpip and you don't need to multitask, and you just want a program to have access to hardware, you have to deal with the fact that hardware is different! Doom3 written directly to the radeon X800 wouldn't work on the geforce 6800, or other radeons for that matter. You need something to abstract the hardware, a driver. And guess what, drivers are just a plugin to your operating system. They OS needs to present the hardware as a generic abstract device, with the implementation details handled by the driver.

Consoles get around this by having consistent hardware. Carmack can write directly to the hardware because he knows what it is. And things like tcpip are implemented in the developer kit which is kind of like a very stripped down OS.

God I ramble....someone needs to shut me up.

Re:Insightful

[GlassHeart]

Computers would be more stable, like consoles. Do you know why consoles are becoming the status quo for gamers? Because the games are written for one specific system and it just works.

One, computers are stable. My Windows 2000 and XP installations basically don't crash. My Mac doesn't crash, either. The ones that do crash are almost always the applications!

Two, the distinguishing characteristic of the Wintel PC market is the abundance of hardware choices. There is no "specific system" to "just work" on. I love Macs, but people are not abandoning Wintel en masse because of "just works".

Three, as with Linux, hardware device manufacturers either refuse to or cannot afford to support anything except the monopoly operating system. That's unlikely to change with your hundred little operating systems dream.

Four, vendors will still not tailor each application to maximize the system. They already don't do that today at the price point you're willing to pay. Whether you like it or not, the OS platform saves developers a lot of time and money.

Who says you can't have a program running that launches other programs and multitasks them? Why do we depend on unfriendly OSes that take full control of our systems, when our software could do the same and operate independantly?

The hardware says you can't. An ethernet card cannot physically send two packets from two different applications at the same time. One must go first. Video cards, particularly ones with 3-D support, are generally stateful and cannot deal with two or more simultaneous clients. In all such cases, software serializes access to them.

Even sharable resources must have an owner. For example, if you don't know or care who "owns" the RAM when you write to it, you can clobber another application. Software must allocate RAM to those who ask for it to avoid this.

It is simply impossible for software to operate independently and share system resources at the same time.

Let's face it, there are apps you want to multitask and there are apps you don't. You could have the ability to multitask if you wanted your session that way, or if you just want to focus on one app you could.

You are solving an imaginary problem. You should cite some examples where idle or background multitasking actually impacts the performance of a single application appreciably. Bring up a process monitor in your favorite OS, and you'll see that the cost of idling is so low that it's generally not worth the cost of optimizing it away.

Multitasking doesn't mean that the OS distributes CPU time to each running task evenly. What you're arguing is that the 95% or 99% devoted to the foreground task is not enough and worth optimizing for. The first one is less meaningful each day thanks to Moore's Law, and the second one is pretty questionable even today.

In extreme cases (think Pixar's render farm or Google's servers), it's worthwhile to hire dedicated programmers to tune each bit of your computer system to get the best performance possible. However, neither Pixar nor Google had the inclination to write their own OS from scratch. The theoretical savings of a single-tasking system simply aren't worth it.

Re:Insightful

[Fnord]

Yeah I was thinking that halfway through the post. But I was bored at work so I thought I'd just keep going.

Re:Insightful

[sean23007]

I think I should point out that it seems you have replied to the wrong post. I understand very thoroughly how an operating system works, and my post was about how a central operating system is necessary. Because without the operating system consolidating the complicated and widely used processes (like TCP/IP, etc) and running the multitasking show, the system would be largely unusable.

Your post would have been better served in response to the one I responded to, because it is he that doesn't seeme to understand operating systems, and it was his post that even contains the problems you describe.

Re:Insightful

[sean23007]

Disregard my other post. Apparently it was I who responded to the wrong post. Oops. Considering what you were actually responding to ... all good points. Carry on.

Re:Insightful

[nzhavok]

I don't think you got trolled, I think you made good points and the parent genuinely doesn't understand the problems. BTW, in case you didn't realise, you are replying to a user who purchased their ID on ebay.

Re:Insightful

[Woy]

I take issue with the moderation issued upon my parent comment.

In Hong Kong and China?

[jav1231]

Let's see they either: a) Don't want to market these just yet seriously b) Don't want to fight the MPAA/RIAA which will somehow find a way to be pissed about this c) Don't want to fight M$ who NO DOUBT will be pissed about this d) Just like watching the rest of the world wonder where they can get their hand on one. (See posts regarding all the "great" Linux PDA's that no one west of India or east of the Pacific can buy). ...Lemme guess, they're $3000 too, right?

Conflict with Windows License?

[MM-Industries]

Doesn't the latest Windows EULA forbid a second OS from being installed and run on the same machine?

Re:Conflict with Windows License?

[PatrickThomson]

What? where? muh? That's just stupid.

WinDVD for Linux eh?

[motorsabbath]

The laptop also includes InterVideo's popular WinDVD DVD playing software, which is also available for Linux.

Really? Where?

Won't work

[wetson]

Sure, the idea of not having to wait for Windows to boot up is appealing, but I believe the applications will only be really useful in certain situations (e.g. watching movies on a plane or on the road) simply because most people would rather have the other "features" that they can get in their main OS e.g. IM. Coupled with the fact that Windows doesn't take that long to boot up anymore, I predict this will be a nice add-on feature that won't impact the revenue stream.

opposite for me...

[cheekyboy]

OSX, ok connect to remote printer shared on XP,
Select Add Printer
Select Server
Select Printer
Select Driver
Select Other... ok Choose a file has locked up and cant hit cancel.

Stupid Finder...

Alienware Sentia ships with PowerCinema Linux

[ventivent]

I'm looking into purchasing a 12.1" thin and light laptop, and came across the Uniwill 233II0, which is the same as the new Alienware Sentia. Anyways, the Uniwill can be bought as barebones from a few vendors on the net, and it ships with Power Cinema, which allows you to play audio CDs, mp3 CDs, view photos, watch DVDs without booting up the computer. More details at http://store.ekm.com/12wxcenowiin.html.

Why even turn your laptop off?

[timealterer]

...and more without having to wait for Windows to load...

Am I the only one who never turns my laptop off? Of the 4 years I've had laptops, they've been running or sleeping 99.5% of the time. I do use OS X (which wakes instantly rather than the load-what-was-in-RAM-from-disk behaviour in Windows) but is it really such a pain?

Re:The all too common

[TomorrowPlusX]

I should have specified that I'm talking about connecting to a shared printer on the network. And for what it's worth, my company is mostly windows, so you'd think that it would be smoother.

Frankly, I haven't plugged a printer directly into a computer since... maybe 1997. I can't comment on how well *any* OS handles that.

That could be interesting

[BoogieChile]

I see a world where all the devices are locked down so that the general appliance-buying public doesn't have access to the stuff under the bonnet - ie, it's locked locked up in a myriad of those little embedded devices, all running some version of Linux.

The only people who will still be able to acess them is technical folk like, oh I don't know...Us? Service people, programmers and technicians, probably just about anybody that has access to a command prompt for whatever reason.

At which point, the entertainment industry will suddenly see the signal-to-noise ratio of wild cards and loose cannons doing lord-only-knows-what with all their precious content decrease to such a low level that the problem disappears altogether off their radar screens, declare the "War Against Pirates" to be well and truly won and retire to bask in the adulation of their shareholders forever, leaving the rest of us free to keep doing whatever it is we've been doing with all their precious content all these years.

Well, I can dream, can't I?