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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 know a few folks who work at Intel (some are CPU designers). If you ask any of them, they will repeat the mantra: Intel sells chips. They don't care to who or for what purpose (this was before 9/11). If it is to someone who is going to run Linux or to someone who will run Windows, it doesn't matter because they sold that person some chips.
How did Intel enforce it's "Linux on Centrino" ban? Isn't that unfair competition? It stinks of Microsoft collusion...
--
make install -not war
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
Support for the wireless networking, the new a/b/g thing, is coming whithin 30 days. This is according to the news.com report here http://news.com.com/Intel+lets+Linux+into+Centrino +camp/2100-7344_3-5542514.html
A disgruntled economist
You should ask "Will we also see Sonoma based, Linux laptops?"
My guess would be "No, we won't." Centrino is now the old technology, isn't it?
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
Before you get all up in arms about Intel "banning linux" and being all evil and monopoly, blah blah, realize that Intel is a member of OSDL - Intel pays Linus to write linux.
This was all about not having their brand and logo associated with something that didn't work. This is a pat on the back for the kernel hackers who managed to get good solid support for the various Centrino components into the kernel.
So just take it for what it is. You can now say that linux officially works on Centrino laptops.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Who cares? Isn't leaping onto a bandwagon a show of support? If they think they can make money off of it, that generally means they believe it's A Good Thing(tm).
You mean for the 2100 and 2200 chipsets?
Before the Slashdot anti-Microsoft-bashing forces chime in, it's necessary to add:
Microsoft deserves to participate in the market. They deserve the opportunity to sell their products and compete with other software makers. So do Novell, IBM, Lotus, RedHat, Oracle, etc.
Microsoft is not "entitled" to its strangle-hold on the market. Nor are Novell, IBM, Lotus, RedHat, Oracle, etc.
For that matter, Intel deserves the right to compete in the chip market, as do AMD and Via, but none of them deserve a strangle-hold, either.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
If this were the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, and instead of Linux, it were Tide with Bleach Alternative, you wouldn't be up in arms about Good Housekeeping holding out for a lower percentage of phosphorous.
Let go of the baggage every once in a while. You'd be surprised at how much less stress you have when you stop going around being pissed off.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
This is isn't flamebait... just someone who uses linux occasionally (prefers Mac OS X).
No mater what system I use, I've really never had a simple time getting WiFi working. Always several steps... always ugly.
IMHO Linux would have a bit better marketing if it focused on being as close to 0Config as possible. There's a ton of potential.
The best experience I've had is with Knoppix. And even that wasn't perfect.
I already have a Centrino laptop running linux. All this announcement means, I guess, is that now manufacturers can sell centrino laptops with linux pre-installed. But since most linux users just buy the laptop they want, and then put the OS they want on it, I don't see what difference this announcement makes.
Funny, I have purchased three laptops this year and they all of them worked just fine with recent XFree builds. Then again I'm a fairly serious computer user, I [GASP] googled the laptops for their linux compatability before I purchased them! If you don't know how to google, you can always just pop in a recent Knoppix CD if you can find the exact model at a local B&M store.
Come to think of it, of all the linux users I know, I don't know even one who has needed a commercial X server in years.
apt-get install redhat please god - Me (take it easy, I love Debian)
~/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.
For some time now, linux drivers for the ipw2200 and older ipw2200 wlan chipsets have been usable. ipw2200 is now moving towards 1.0, beginning with a feature freeze.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
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.
It wouldn't have been particularly smart to permit Centrino + linux marketing when one of the cornerstones of the platform wasn't supported and the reason was Intel's own tardyness in getting the driver up to speed and their firmware license sorted out.
Greetings,
After having worked at Intel, and participating in one of the big Intel / Linux strategy sessions, I really don't see this as a major change / depoarture from their strategies for the last few years.
Intel's reason for asking that laptop manufacturers not to bundle Linux has simply been due to a limitation in the Linux Kernel. Prior to 2.6.8, Linux's support for the Centrino's capabilities has been somewhat sparse and a bit unreliable.
Due to this, Intel, rather than fight through a couple million support calls, decided to ask OEM's to simply not bundle Linux until someone had a chance to get the needed changes into place.
Now, that the linux kernel has this ability, Intel is more than happy to begin recommending Linux on Centrino's. Currently, there are around 35 OEM's who already produce and sell fully Linux compatible Centrino laptops, in fact, I am using one right now to write this.
Contrary to what many might believe, Intel doesn't want to remain tied exclusively to Micro$oft, and has instead been a huge benefactor of the Open Source community. While I was at Intel, they were actively recruiting people to create, manage, and participate in Open Source projects, and would even go so far as to release these people to "quietly" move huge chunks of Intel code into Open Source projects. OpenGL, GCC, PostgresSQL, MySQL to name a few.
For those of you are are using GCC 3.4+, you may have noticed a huge performance increase when running on Intel processors, this comes from, in large part, to Intel working with the GCC group to move large chunks of ICC into GCC.
Will say it again... Strange, I don't see the big deal
"Individuals are smart, people are stupid" -- Tommy Lee Jones as "K" from Men In Black