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Centrino-based Linux Laptops
sebFlyte writes "Intel has lifted its ban on Linux-based laptops carrying its Centrino brand... It obviously makes very little difference technically what name is on the outside of the box, but does this represent a major philosophical shift for the chipmaker, or are they just leaping upon the nearest bandwagon in pursuit of a few extra bucks?"
Now that Intel ceased banning Linux on Laptops then I should be able to call Dell or HP and say I want a laptop that runs Linux out of the box right? Then why hasn't AMD captured the Linux laptop market? Oh yeah the vendors don't see a market. I imagine that it is time for a small time vendor to start making 100% Linux compatible laptops and if they survive and make money then great - this is similar on how Dell started in the desktop market. If the market is big enough than the small vendor took a big risk but it would pay off; if the market doesn't support the small vendor then the big name vendors will avoid Linux like the plague and say to share holders 'see I told you so - Linux is ready for primetime'. Either way works out best as I just want a Linux latop.
To them it does, as they've been interested in projecting a particular value of the Centrino brand, being low power consumption.
but does this represent a major philosophical shift for the chipmaker,
Obviously not, did you actually RTFA?
or are they just leaping upon the nearest bandwagon in pursuit of a few extra bucks?
Most likely they have been promoting Linux, but not at the expense of their own brand of stuff. After all their marketing (possibly preceded by some actual innovation, but that's usually optional for any company) they want to ensure their brand lives up to their beliefs. If you were selling a line of Linux Laptops which didn't conserve power and ran the batteries down and some guy in an airport, surrounded by dozens of pairs of ears (some not connected to iPods) and started carrying on about what a piece of shit your Centrino laptop was because it drained the battery before you even got on your flight, well, that's the kind of damage lots of $ of advertising and spin can't undo.
I do have reservations about a company like Intel telling people what they can and can't do with their product, but if it's meet some specification to earn the right to logo the boxen, I think that's within the realm of acceptable business practice.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I think this is one of the steps in Intel's strategy to curb anymore inroads that AMD might be making into it's market share. AMD has had several good months at Intel's expense and it wouldn't be suprising if Intel was rolling out an aggressive plan to take it back.
:)
One of those ideas might be aquiring the linux laptop market. As a person with a laptop with a centrino let me tell you it's a great chip, with it's best feature being the fan control and power consumption. To have chip the draws both the MS and Linux crowd would be a business oppurtunity to big to miss.
It's about time too. Been waiting to get rid of XP off this latop
-Teiresias
Does this mean that Intel will be releasing GNU/Linux drivers for their wireless chipsets (among other things)?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
I think that the reason Intel initially had the ban, was that the wireless chipset in the centrino laptops had no Linux drivers for a long time. (Am writing this on a machine with a Centrino "Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG" wireless chipset.
;-)
But now the drivers are mature enough for most use, so there is really no need to have a ban anymore.
Btw. in order for a computer to bear the centrino mark, it needs to use Intels own chipset for wireless etc. Really clever: Use a lot of money on comercials for centrino technology and then require that everything within the box is made by your company.
-- look sir droids...
~/kernel/stable # grep -i "@intel.com" MAINTAINERS | wc -l
11
Intel has a couple of programmers taking care of ACPI, they've merged their own GPL drivers for their network cards, they've published specs of SATA hardware or documentation of mainboard chipsets, drivers for their graphics chipsets, there're intel guys at the kernel mailing list...I buy Intel just for how good linux support is having lately. No cookie for you, amd:
grep -i "@amd.com" MAINTAINERS | wc -l
0
I'm surprised that they haven't done this sooner. Microsoft has basically shown Intel that they have no loyalties to the chipmaker anymore... I don't see why Intel would restrict their potential market by limiting which OSs their chips are allowed to run. A one-sided loyalty is baaaad business.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
I sure hope major computer companies like Compaq, HP, Dell, etc..etc.., realize the true potential of Linux and what it can really do for their computers..
it would be interesting if these big companies just made their own individual distros of linux.. that way you could really judge the computer by how it runs with an operating system specifically designed and customized for the hardware that makes up the computer.. they could appeal to so many customers.. and they wouldn't have to sell the same computer, with the same grassy hill background, to every freakin person in the world..
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
Now that is just an unfair spin -- after Slashdot ran a story about Intel's reluctance to support Centrino for BSD, this just appears to be a case of advocacy working. The story was a couple months back on the BSD's and their effort to get Centrino support. There was even a some information on how to bother Intel to get the support. I personally sent an email to at least ten of the Intel people on the subject. So instead of trying to spin this as Intel trying to make an extra buck, we should be celebrating a win for the open source community.
On a side note -- of course they did this to earn a buck. Why else would they do it -- just out of the goodness of their heart. They are a hardware vendor and do what is in the best interest of earning money. But the cynical light in which the comment was given is inappropraite. Because we like free software so much, we are in a different paradigm of economic thought. We think economically in terms of value while Intel thinks in terms of money. Intel gains very little by giving software and ideas away; IBM gains a lot since they offer support for the product. So the only thing that we have that Intel wants is our money. And that is generally true for every corparation. So whether or not this is a philisophical shift is moot -- we vote with our dollars and if the philisophy of the consumer is X and is willing to vote for X with the dollar, then the producer is going to adopt X if it produces the money it wants. Those of us in the open source community, users and developers alike need to be understanding of our philisophical positions and what it means for companies. Just because we don't think that software should have a cost, doesn't mean that we should be cynical jerks about some company filling our demand for a product.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Ditto here.
I gave an honest shot to get WI-FI working on my HP PAvillion z220 w/pcmcia card and failed. I even dloaded the latest orinoco wi-fi drivers which activate my card all right but the traffic is dropped/ignored.
Plus R.H 9.0 apmd (advance power management ) couldn't figure out the bios to administer battery power. Basically I was pulled back to windows.
WI-FI and Linux is reminiscent of soundcards and Linux in most of the 90's. I bought the HP Pavillion explicitly to run RH 9.0 and now Im back to XP battling patches and spyware.
My advise to those who want to run unix-like OS on
a laptop...by a Mac.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
We use Linux to do engineering work and Windows to do administrative work (outlook email, excel, powerpoint etc...).
:) to VNC into the various linux workstations.
Linux is far superior for engineering work for obvious reasons.
The typical usage model is the use a windows laptop (thinkpads - the best notebooks on the planet