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Huge Linux Desktop Deals Get HP Thinking
An anonymous reader notes an article in CRN about HP recently cutting deals for multi-thousands of Linux desktops. With all the talk about whether Dell will offer pre-installed desktop Linux any time soon, in the end HP may beat them to that particular punch.
Well its about time someone did it on a large scale. There is a market, so whats holding it back? Dare I say back room Microsoft deals?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Is there a link here between waning interest in Vista and Office 2K7 and rising interest in desktop Linux? For all the hassle of "upgrading" the MS products, it may be easier in many respects to take the plunge and switch to another OS and office suite.
That was the puzzle piece the Linux commnity needed.
I'm wondering if Hp figured out how to preinstall AOL, and all the rest of that junk for advertising like the Windows machines come pre-installed with to supplement income. It occurred to me that windows machines might actually be cheaper, not because of the windows deals with MS, but because of the paid to be installed junk. If so, that may not be nearly as nice as it first appears.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
HP also figured in the Who Wrote, and Paid For, 2.6.20 research discussed here last week as a significant contributor to Linux. You'd guess they'd be planning on getting their money's worth.
as a former employee I can say Linux is quite big within HP itself... they have a large business unit (including R&D for drivers and several F/OSS applications) purely for Linux. They also have great management tools for providing applications and patches/updates to all desktop users, including Linux desktops. This is probably tested well enough to consider rolling it out to customers now. Within HP you can choose whether you want to run Linux or Windows, although they will only support certain distros (forgot which ones, I suspect they were SuSE and Fedora, although there is strong (user)support for Debian as well) with their managment tool.
HP's stock is up--take a look at their chart (HPQ). They have a market capitalization of $109 billion, they have surpassed Dell as a supplier of desktops, and they have new stable management (post-Fiorella) in place.
It takes clout to stand up to Microsoft. Smaller companies have little choice but to toe the Microsoft line and act as Windows pimps for their Redmond masters, but the huge players--IBM, HP, and Dell (if Dell had any backbone) can push back a bit, even though they still have to continue to sit at Microsoft's table.
Microsoft stumbled with Vista; they have insisted on replacing XP on all new machines. I couldn't even buy a Dell laptop with XP a couple of weeks ago--have some specialized software that still doesn't run on Vista--had to find one from HP. Vista is late and has problems and Linux is looking better and better.
In the end, it is a combination of market demand, linux readiness, and corporate clout that will break the Microsoft hold on the PC market.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
The downside to an explosion of Linux installations?
Linux Geeks getting called out when friends and neighbors can't get their Linux Desktops working.
Remember - this was all your idea.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
PC World's posted yesterday iSuppli's market share report for the fourth quarter of 2006; the headline is "HP Beats Dell in PC Sales". It looks to me like HP is responding to what customers are asking for, while Dell is clinging to Microsoft's subsidies. The top 5 vendors look like this:
1. HP - 17.4%
2. Dell - 14.5%
3. Lenovo - 7.1%
4. Acer - 6.6%
5. Toshiba - 3.7%
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
What linux needs is more users willing to get off their asses and not only introduce new users to it but also act as their support for a while. too many linux users are either outright lazy or apathetic about other users. I founded a LUG for 3 years and left it because outside the core 5 people the rest of them were almost hostile to helping the newbies that came into the group. All they wanted to do was show off how bads their new gentoo install was or give a newbie crap for choosing mandriva before he started attending the LUG and found linux on his own.
Honestly, it wont change until the typical Linux user quits being an asshole to everyone else. and Yes they outnumber those of us that want to help 10 to 1. It wont matter if Dell or HP ships with ubuntu or some other newbie friendly Linux install, when these people go online or to a LUG to find help they will run up against the "cloud of smug" and get turned off instantly.
I teach a linux for new users at the local community college for free once a year. The real "professors" there still call linux a fad and say that no real companies use it, so they are useless and creating a nice uphill battle that I have to fight without making the instructors look like clueless idiots or I'll lose my ability to teach the class that is full every year.
That is what is needed. Linux users to get off their asses and help 1-2 new people through getting up and running in linux. you never EVER can say RTFM! but have to hold their hands. You also need to be out there debunking the lies that professors and other "leaders" are spewing out of their mouths, but have to do it in a way that is tactful as you are just some guy instead of a professor with 31 masters degrees and smells his own farts.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Aren't all the news service sites jumping on stories about big manufacturers possibly providing GNU/Linux? Whilst it would be great to see OEMs pre-installing GNU/Linux it's advisable to not get excited until you can see proof, e.g. the machines are advertised on their respective web sites. As a real alternative to Windows too, not hidden in the depths of the site as a token gesture, so their marketing department can claim that they, 'tried Linux but there was no demand.'
From TFA:
My argument to Mr Small would be that he didn't take a sufficient risk. If they did provide a mass-market GNU/Linux desktop, not many people heard about it. This is why it's important to put any offering on an equal footing with Windows (as difficult as that may be considering their contracts).
The other mistake is with marketing departments making this assumption: 'Linux == Cheap. So people who want Linux, want cheap PC's!' Then they only offer it on some low-end model no discerning geek would ever buy. Had they actually bothered to ask the community they would have found that most want Freedom, not free beer. I believe Wal-Mart and other large US shops rolled-out some rather pitiful offerings recently.
What does this mean exactly? To a layman such as myself it sounds like they are considering doing the same as Dell and getting their hardware certified with some GNU/Linux providers. A step in the right direction, but hardly the Holy-grail of pre-installed GNU/Linux this article is trumpeting.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
Go the HP Learning center at http://h30187.www3.hp.com/ and look for the free Linux courses.
Semper ubi sub ubi
Nope, it doesn't run the same in a VM as it does running natively on the machine. For much of the hardware -- basically anything except USB -- the "hypervisor" (VMWare or what have you) provides fake devices to the virtual machine. Your Ubuntu install sees, for example, a VMware-brand network card (mine sees a "VMware accelrated AMD PCNet Adapter"), a VMWare-brand graphics card ("VMware SVGA II"), etc., and talks to those "devices". The hypervisor intercepts the requests from the guest OS, translates them and hands them off to the host OS, which uses its drivers to talk to the real network and video card.
With VMWare, at least, USB devices are potentially handled differently, and direct access to them can be handed to the guest machine, via a faked USB controller. I say potentially, because if the USB device is a USB implementation of another kind of device, like a network card or a serial port, you can also allow the host machine to control the device, and then export the functionality to the guest as just another network or serial interface.
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