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Linux Desktop to Appear On Every Asus Motherboard
An anonymous reader writes "We first heard about Splashtop back in October, when the instant-on Linux desktop was announced. At the time it was a really exciting concept but Asus only rolled out the technology on high-end motherboards. Splashtop just announced that Asus will be expanding the desktop to the P5Q motherboard family and later on to all Asus motherboards. That's embedded Linux shipping over a million motherboards a month! The release also mentioned that the technology will be appearing on notebooks this year as well."
How many people "switch" to Linux every month? I mean, if anyone has such a statistic, I'd be interested in seeing just how much this figure could potentially impact that (I know, chances are 99% of the people using these motherboards will still boot windows, but satisfy my curiosity =P).
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I always bought Asus anyway; they make good boards, and the few times I've had problems they've replaced them...Once I even got a free upgrade because they'd discontinued the board I had.
So it's not going to change my purchasing, but it's still nice.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
...ACME brick has set up a lucrative partnership with Microsoft. As it turns out, Microsoft brick-shitting production has been increasing over the past few years and their surpluses have been able to yield a sustainable production rate. Microsoft has been unavailable for comment on their deal with ACME brick, but an ACME spokesman has been noted as having quested that Microsoft boost its dietary fiber intake in order to boost the quality of their new product.
Maybe more people will get to try linux.
Maybe Duke Nukem Forever will also be included.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
My PC just died; it looks like a power supply failure but I haven't disemboweled it yet to see, most likely the thing's full of cat hair and its fan stopped. If it's the power supply I'll just get a new bare-bones box.
Now I have to research prices. Tha bad news is since I'm not really into PC gaming any more, the lowest of low end boards will do, and iinm asus is pretty high end, isn't it?
Linux on the motherboard will free up disk space as well as booting faster.
I'm intrigued. I guess I better rtfa now!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Not troll questions... seriously...
Why is Microsoft relevant or have I missed them being marginalized to oblivion?
Didn't Microsoft have a special deal with ASUS the other day regarding Windows?
GM not wanting VISTA? (Don't blame them.)
Why would any frugal investor stay with Microsoft these days?
Including an OS on the motherboard makes sense for Asus - at least it is then possible to do basic hardware diagnostics independently of, say, Windows diagnostics.
But, in terms of Linux adoption, it's only exciting if people keep linux once they've finished building the computer, and the precedents here are hardly promising.
And, even if you like Linux (which I do), would you want to keep the version supplied with your m/b? On my first EeePC, I tried to get to like Xandros, I really did, but in the end I wiped it and installed Kubuntu. My Dark Side Brother played with Xandros until he broke it, and then installed XP. And it's going to happen even more with the EeePC 900, since the Linux version has a larger SSD than the Windows version (at least in the UK), so you buy the Linux version in order to install Windows.
Virtually serving coffee
Why not just include an SD card reader on the motherboard and let OEMs/end users integrate a system of their choice? In their approach, the system is not getting any security fixes. Potentially, the built in browser can be owned by simply visiting a web site. There is no way to install even a single extra application. Sounds like this has more to do with marketing than technology.
It's that damned juvenile geek.com, and TFA's not much longer than the summary.
And it ends with "Read the press release" that the submitter should have linked in the first place rather than that incredibly BAD geek.com) "here".
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Somewhere in Washington state, a chair is launched on a direct trajectory towards Asus's offices. Naturally NORAD is confused at first till they calculate the launch location.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Is that like over a million squared, or over 2 million?
Because even though people will now have the option of booting into an instant on linux desktop - 99% will wait 10 minutes to get into vista just to check their email and play on the internet anyway.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Microsoft will remain a player, but they are being marginalized more, day by day. A few years ago, ASUS wouldn't have dared done anything like Splashtop.
Go ahead, fanoys, mod me down because you know I'm right.
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So now PCs can be sold without Windows pre-installed and without all the "the users needs an OS" noise?
Regarding the recent SSL bungle:
I'm not placing blame on anyone, but let us consider for a moment:
How long would it take a member of a rogue organization, a company such as Microsoft, or an intelligence agency to land a spot into such a role as a code monkey at Debian.org, under the guise of a pro-FOSS person? You do know all three examples above are quite savvy when it comes to infiltration, mafias, corporations, and intelligence agencies do this all of the time. So let us suppose this is what happened here, and considering the wide range of impact with this issue, I believe this is exactly what may have happened.
What checks and balances are in place to weed out potential moles? Any? And would you really know what to look for even if such a policy is in place? Perhaps this question is worthy of an "Ask Slashdot" submission?
How many Tor hidden services (.onion) were taken down because of MITM attacks related to this issue? Fucking moles!
I would imagine the main purpose is to fix any broken OS you install afterwards, instead of digging out that old copy of Knoppix you have lying around or whatever.
True, there's a bit of a security risk, but as you said it's burned to a ROM, meaning you can't install any applications, so what IS the risk, really?
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Wow, I was going to go grab a finance report on MSFT to show why investors stay with Microsoft, but really Microsoft stock has been in a roller coaster decline sense 2000.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
This is only useful if I can make my own splashtop image. Then it's useful for ALL KINDS of things, including media centers and most especially THIN CLIENTS. Also if you have... uhh, kexec I think? That lets you load a linux kernel from a linux kernel? Then you could jump from this right into your real distribution without having to re-POST.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
imagine your original os crashes and burns. what to do ? go seek out bootable cds - is the cd drive working anyway ? etc.
no need. go bios, go linux, fix your hd, and install your os. or even, recover it.
i liked that.
Read radical news here
if wireless works out of the box, i'm there
Just because you can not install applications in ROM, doesn't mean you can not infect or format local disks, USB devices or launch an attack on the Intranet which is otherwise behind a corporate firewall.
Right, nice, but when will they include linux drivers for their Sideview implementation, ScreenDUO ? For now, people buying motherboards with this addon tiny screen are left with a non-working gizmo, unless they run Vista or XP.
I have one of the ASUS P35E Deluxe motherboards at home, and one of the reasons I picked it was for Splashtop. It wasn't the main reason, but I figured it was a neat addition. But honestly, Splashtop isn't all that useful.
For one thing, for all that it's "instant on", it still doesn't load all that much faster than XP. Now maybe it's just because I have a hot processor, or a really lean XP installation, but honestly the difference isn't that noticable. Splashtop does load faster, but it's hardly "instant on"; you still need for the OS to boot.
Then, there's the fact that all my info -passwords, bookmarks, etc.- are on my hard-drive and thus not accessible (at least, not by default) to Splashtop. So I'd have to punch all that info into a second OS (and there's no security on Splashtop, so I'd recommend against leaving any passwords in the browser).
I suppose for laptop users Splashtop may be marginally more useful, although even they may prefer to load up the main OS, since it doesn't take that much longer to run and then they get access to all their information.
I do like having a security blanket of having a way to check the web for help just in case XP hoses itself. Boot to Splashtop, surf the web for an answer, and then use that information to fix Windows. But in the end, Splashtop is more of a toy than a genuinely useful feature.
Is it possible to replace their pre-installed distribution with something like Ubuntu instead? Obviously, I am not expecting to fit the whole distro on the chip..
OK, so your READ ONLY boot-up OS is owned ... OMG, what are you going to DO?
I know, REBOOT! 5 seconds later you can browse again, just don't go back to that same site ...
I say with Gmail and the Google apps I would only boot my computer to a full OS if I want to save something on fixed media or play a game.
Fourty-two!
or you're thinking about it entirely wrong.
People get so excitable every time they hear the word "linux". But the fact is, this is not really Linux, not in a form that people would run as an OS.
It's just a way that Asus found to leverage something that is free, in order to avoid having to write their own own code for motherboard diagnostics and such. No one is going to "switch to linux" because their motherboard has a linux based diagnostic included.
Maybe Asus will put the work "Linux" in bold letters of the mobo box, but this will not do anything. It will not "bring linux to the masses", because anyone who's actually buying a motherboard (as opposed to buying a pre-built computer), already knows what Linux is and will either run it, or not.
This seems like a really bad idea. Microsoft is immediately going to feel the need to compete with this (irrational as that may be). Soon enough we'll have Windows APIs embedded in the ROMS of major motherboards, and we'll pay more for these "Microsoft certified" motherboards because the added loading speed is a "feature".
Hardware should never be tied to an operating system. I'm a Mac user, and even I believe in that sacred tenet. The consumer needs to be able to choose whatever components they want, and tose components should work together to the best of their ability.
Because it's free, Linux on Asus boards may not impede my consumer choice at the moment. But it sets a precedent which could greatly damage the environment of choice we currently enjoy.
i would imagine Asus has this set up so you can update the embedded Linux on the motherboard much like updating the firmware on any other piece of hardware or like the BIOS or router firmware...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Rock on... I'd like some integrated malware instead of this 'operating system' bullsh*t.
... and pretend I've got friends ...
I might even be able to steal some myspace passwords with it
Make sure you're factoring out the background (the fact that the whole market has been in a roller coaster decline since 2000). I'd expect MS to be down relative to the market, but not yet down too much. Yet.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
Also, the vast majority of those 1 million motherboards per month are sold to OEM's who may or may not enable the Linux functionality on their finished product. How much do you want to bet that MS will quietly put pressure on said OEM's to disable it?
ASUS has great overclocking options in their BIOS too...until OEM's get a hold of them and put their customer BIOS in place that leaves out all the good stuff. This will be the same.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a Linux-ite through and through, but this automatic bundling business is one of the huge anti-competitive issues with Microsoft. And again, don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to see Linux (in any flavour) being adopted more widely throughout the world, but isn't one of the basic principles of GNU/Linux/FOSS/etc freedom and choice? What if you don't want this feature on your motherboard? What if you want a different flavour of Linux? Yes, you're right, ASUStek is NOT a GNU company/organization. Yes, you're right, you CAN choose not to buy an ASUS board (just like you can choose not to buy a HP or Dell preloaded with Windows). But if bundling is wrong for one, how can it be right for another? Just because you don't have the majority of the consumer market, doesn't make the practice any more justifiable.
49 20 61 72 65 20 6E 65 72 64 2E
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the Apple forum is that way --->
Microsoft and their sympathizers have claimed that the main reason it's the big victim of malware is that it is the big target, and that if other OSes were as widely deployed they'd be as riddled. Linux, BSD, Firefox, Apache, and other FOSS projects claim that it mainly Microsoft's poor security, not just the monoculture providing a big target.
Now we have million motherboards a month shipping with an identical OS - including a network stack and a browser - in the BIOS. Heavily used in this mode by the purchasers. If this is successfully suborned by malware it can romp all over the hard drive, even if the main system install isn't booted.
Seems to me this is a showdown between the Microsoft and FOSS sides' claims. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Regardless of the OS, does this really count as desktop ?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
a Beowulf cluster of these mobos!
One man, one word.
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the details of this software. Does this SplashVM provide hard disk access (since it obviously provides sound access for Skype)? If so, think VMware or Xen built straight into the image or early parts of boot... virtualization and absolute rollbacks for the masses.
As an eeepc user, I am very much applauding Asus for their use of Linux to provide further value to their products. Ubiquitous Linux in this fashion can't be wrong!
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
Microsoft stock has been in a roller coaster decline sense 2000.
For those who like graphs.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
In practice though users have had trouble updating BIOS or any other kind of firmware. The driver to update the firmware may not be there on the user's installation of desktop Linux, Vista 64 bit or virgin XP. Power failure at the wrong time can make the motherboard unbootable. Burn a CD or worse create a floppy schemes may leave out users who don't have the necessary hardware or media handy.
People have better luck with USB sticks and SD cards. At least there in an option of bringing the card to a store or a knowledgeable friend and have them fix it properly.
"Don't get me wrong, I'm a Linux-ite through and through, but .."
:)
Is there ever anyone who posts here who isn't a 'Linux-ite'
"if bundling is wrong for one, how can it be right for another? Just because you don't have the majority of the consumer market, doesn't make the practice any more justifiable"
Because Asus doesn't hold a virtual monopoly on the OS, the Applications and the server protocols. And it isn't as if they are forcing you to use it.
"Within seconds of turning on the P5E3 Deluxe motherboard, you can boot into this Linux environment"
And unlike MS and BeOS, they won't force you to boot from a floppy to access Windows.
davecb5620@gmail.com
It's almost like some sort of bubble popped around 2000.
OMFG STOCK PRICE FROM 2000 DROPED, MS IS NOT RELEVANT ANYMORE! IT'S THE YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP AT LAST!
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Sorry to burst your bubble, but my new Vista machine boots up to the desktop about 15 seconds faster than my girlfriend's new Macbook boots up to the desktop in Leopard. And it is a fair comparison as both were bought the same month and have very similar memory and CPU amounts/speeds.
(Haven't checked it so not quite certain what it is :-/ ).
Andy
most if my systems run on linux 5 linux 1 windows.
It's the year of Linux on the (Desktop) Motherboard!
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
1) No it hasn't, it's been pretty steady once they were past the bubble burst.
2) The only big fall is there because you cherry-picked a timeframe that included the last-gasp of the tech bubble, thereby ensuring it'll show a huge drop. Any other tech company's stock price graph will look the exact same way. Bump your graph forward to 2001, and suddenly it looks... pretty steady.
Cherry-picking values to show what you want to see != "roller coaster decline."
Comment of the year
Someone has grossly misinformed you about the nature of my bubbles sir.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
So.......apt? ;-)
Get with the times
This is the year of Linux on the... wait, motherboard? Who changed the script?
And my experience is completely the opposite. 6 month old Dell - 6 month old MacBookPro - really the same computers spec wise. Vista is sluggish as hell - boots like crap. Both have been reinstalled cleanly about 3 months ago.
Bundling?
rs232 makes a very good point above...
Because Asus doesn't hold a virtual monopoly on the OS, the Applications and the server protocols. And it isn't as if they are forcing you to use it.
rs232 is quite correct.
Go back 10 years... You simply could not buy a piece of (retail) hardware without getting a bunch of "goodies" on the driver and utility disks. Many major vendors that no one had ever heard of, got to be well known using this kind of marketing. Give it away for free, or include a trial version, as name recognition, even without monetization, can only be good for a company.
Unfortunately, some of the goodies were crap. Second rate antivirus software, CD virtualization tools, and "backup" software were very common. Even so, you weren't FORCED into installing them. They were optional. That is VERY different than overtly or covertly installing a piece of sub-standard, or insecure software WITH the OS. (To me, the quality of the software isn't the big issue with bundling, though it plays a big part in how happy or unhappy I am when falling victim to the "bundling" problem.)
Personally, I am very excited about this, and cannot wait to get one of my own....me and about a million other geeks, nerds, and
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
"pretty steady" As in, "Just barely not going down." or if you want optimistically, "Perhaps someday it will make money."
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
The man do have a clue! :)
I love, love, love the idea of a RO OS!!!
Currently if I go to my banking site, I have no idea whether my system is currently owned, and some keystroke logger is busy sending off my bank passcode to somebody who is going to empty my account.
With a RO OS, I can reboot, and I'm much more likely to be able to complete the transaction without it being subverted.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"What do you bet M$ will make sure it can't handle NTFS?
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
There is no doubt their fanbois can't handle a few simple truths or plausible suppositions at least. Mod back up and slap these punks on metamod.
If you can figure out the answer to that, you should be able to figure out the answer to your own question.
Actually, I think it is bundling. But that doesn't matter, because, despite what the original post claimed, there's nothing wrong with bundling per-se. Bundling happened to be one of the mechanism MS used to illegally maintain and leverage their monopoly, but that doesn't mean that bundling is inherently wrong. Kicking a ball into a goal may win you praise; kicking an infant into a goal is likely to get you arrested. The problem is not the kicking, it's the circumstances and the target.
That's not what (s)he said.
The assertion was that being uninformed implies buying Windows, which seems perfectly reasonable.
You twisted this into 'buying Windows implies being uninformed', which does not follow from the original statement.
The correct re-phrasing would be Not buying Windows implies being informed, again pretty hard to argue with in the current consumer marketplace.
Your final statement also implies that, as Linux lacks nothing that I require, I am not an everyday person. In this you are quite correct, as I find myself unable to manage it more than two or three times a week these days.
[ ]Half Empty [ ]Half Full [x]Twice as big as it needs to be
How nice that the article "New Antivirus Tests Show Rootkits Hard to Kill" is right above an article about a company hard coding an OS into all of their motherboards. So we're supposed to trust that no rootkit will somehow end up on some of these boards when the consumer won't have the ability to see or make changes to the OS? Also, who in their right mind would use an OS that can't be updated? Have we learned nothing about the importance of security in this day and age?
This splashtop stuff looks like a cute toy, and more linux is always nice; but I'm a bit nervous about the tivoization potential. The software image being used is mostly FOSS(skype and flash excepted, as usual) and they seem to have released the relevant source; but I've not been able to find anything about how open the environment is, can you replace the image, install your own stuff on it, etc.
If the system is an open one, it could be quite useful, and great fun to play with, I'd want several. If this is just another tivo, then it is pretty unexciting and disappointing.
I want that Rickroll videoclip integrated in my motherboard, plus change that 'windows' button on keyboard to Rickroll button, so when i press it that videoclip instantly starts fullscreen!
The right question for me is how fast will it boot Knoppix from an iso image. And what kind of bizarre boot scenarios can it deal with it terms of USB or ethernet boots. I would assume it can handle pretty much all the typical stuff but I wonder if it adds any new possibilities. Perhaps something like booting a selection of isos off of a dual layer DVD filled an assortment would be cool. And what about virtualization?
One possible answer to this is to use a Knoppix CD. If you trust Knoppix...
That's wonderful. And I can find the source code where?? Anybody have a link?
Yeah, but see this is where it's getting fun because they can play that game but they're not holding all of the cards any more. In the low-end of the market, it's a bit of a toss up already. If an OEM decides to go with these boards in a low-end machine they can just do Linux. Wal Mart and Dell are both selling Linux machines nowadays.
This is the same problem with MS reversing themselves on XP in the sub-notebook category. They came to Taiwan's OEMs and said OK, now you can still get XP licenses on these lightweight notebooks but you have to follow these restrictions like small screens and limited RAM. But they're playing a tricky game there because they no longer run the only game in town. What the OEMs are faced with is using XP on the crappy ones with small screens and less RAM and Linux on the sweet next generation ones with the full sized screens and 2Gigs of RAM. This is a situation being created by Microsoft's ham handed attempts to pretend they remain in control when they no longer have the control. Playing the restrictions game no longer puts them in the drivers seat. Quite to the contrary, they're insisting on being left out of the action completely.
Example: I'm using a mATX K7 board from MSI right now (one of the few mATX K7 boards with onboard SATA), coupled with a mobile Athlon XP2800+. The BIOS has zero support for this chip, it reports 'unknown CPU' at bootup and sets it at 6x multiplier (800 MHz) by default. Did a bridgemod on it to make default multiplier equal to nominal one, and a pinmod to obtain the correct voltage. And voila: rocksolid ever since, even software multiplier switching works fine. And why wouldn't it? It's basically a low-voltage Athlon XP. But why the hell aren't these settings in the BIOS, where a similar (fullsize) ATX board would include such settings? Is it less useful to run a mobile CPU on a mATX board, or what?
P.S. I don't recommend bridge-modding any CPU. It's a pain, and you have a decent chance to render the part useless. I just did it because I preferred taking the chance, rather than having to buy even more parts.
STB means "Set-top box" according to Wikipedia.
Asus motherboards have this annoying auto overclocking "feature" which can make the machine stick at a bios prompt before booting. Really annoying when it happens to servers. I mostly notice it when theres a power loss. Very nannoying. On the other side, MSI have gone out of their way to replace boards and even one time a copper videocard heatsync, with little to no trouble.
I sware by MSI hardware. So I guess my anecdote counters out yours eh...
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Sure, it looks like it's booted to the desktop...but have you tried doing anything?
Windows has been progressively delay-loading more and more, so while the upfront cost is cheaper, and it seems to be quicker, the time until you can actually do something of use hasn't really improved.
I'm surprised they didn't have a DVD player app as a default. I would think that would be an essential feature of an instant on app.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced that a new version of Windows Mobile including Pocket Internet Explorer and Pocket Windows Media Player will be available for motherboard manufacturers in the third quarter. "The initial release will be limited to a 320x240 screen resolution and controlled by tapping the "reset" and "power" buttons to simulate mobile phone controls, but we think people will find this a big improvement over those messy mice and keypads".
Yeah but will it run Linu... Oh crap
That is about as bad as when Microsoft claimed the win 95 user numbers as so many PC's came preloaded as a requirement.
It doesn't mean they kept it on there. I personally know of *several* thousand that were reformatted and 3.11 was put on.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You can use virtualization to do this without too much trouble. qemu has a readonly option: the "-snapshot" option makes it only write to the image when you tell it to. I assume other virtualization software has similar options.
Centralization breaks the internet.
> So, about 2012 with global warming....
Ok, it was funny. But Global Warming is quickly being debunked as a hoax. In another couple of years I'd predict it will join Piltdown Man in the Science Hoax wing of natural history. Of course if Cap & Trade is running by then I'll also go out on a limb adn predict it will somehow survive liek any other government boondoggle that outlives it's purpose.
It ain't us, it's Mr. Sun being cranky and it is looking more and more like cold weather is in our future. Hit Spaceweather and have a look around. Note that Cycle 24 still hasn't kicked off. Look at the historical trends of solar activity. Compare and contrast to weather trends, including the fact "Global Warming" pretty much stopped around 1997-1998. Add in the PDO has officially ended it's warm phase and gone cool.
Democrat delenda est
Out of curiosity, who appointed you the End User Advocate again? Just wondering.
I figure I'll let users figure things out for themselves and raise their complaints. Places like the Ubuntu forums are a good place for people, including new users, to air their complaints about the usability of the OS. I've helped a few of my friends through minor obstacles with Ubuntu, once they grasp the new way of doing old tasks, it's usually smooth sailing.
No, the point is that you may have some difficulties learning to do things a little differently, and you're projecting your lack of confidence onto Joe Sixpack. Most package management systems are fairly intuitive, and I haven't encountered many end users who struggled with them. It's different for you, you're a Windows power user. You're probably overwhelmed and don't know how to do all those things under a Linux-based OS yet. You're probably picturing trying to support so many different ways of doing things too and don't know where to begin on how to walk someone through, if that's your support mindset. Trust me, the learning curve is far quicker for folks who use only the basic applications than it is for the folks who have to re-learn how to do a good number of advanced tasks.
For what it's worth, I support in the neighborhood of 450 Windows workstations and servers at work. I run Linux at home. I help several acquaintances and family members out with their occasional Kubuntu questions. Most of them are utterly tech clueless, and I got tired of helping them clean-up malware-riddled Windows. They adapted well...
> Any other tech company's stock price graph will look the exact same way.
Not exactly. Yahoo's new Flash based charting is currently busted.... but find another one (foxbusiness has a Java based one that currently works) and overlay MSFT and the Nasdaq average on a five year chart. Both show big ups and down reflecting general market trends. But money put in Microsoft five years ago would only show a 16% return while throwing your money into the more broad (tech heavy) NASDAQ average would have returned 60%. Betting the S&P500 would have made you almost 50% and the DOW30 48%.
Gone are the days when people who know nothing about Microsoft other than "it goes up" are buying the stock.
Democrat delenda est
All motherboards? And if we want one with a cheaper, normal-sized BIOS?
I haven't followed this much, but I doubt it's going to cram into 256k? Linux may be free, but I don't want to pay for the hardware to support a feature if I'm not using it, and there must be some licensing fees?
Everything Asus?
Ah well, the last couple I bought had nasty deal breaking flaws anyway and I've stopped buying them so I guess it doesn't affect me, but I am a bit surprised they'd do it so unilaterally.
Cherry-picking values to show what you want to see != "roller coaster decline."
Ahhh, you were thinking of a big rollercoaster at a major amusement park. He was thinking of the little one at his local county fair.
There's a problem with that solution. If your host OS has been infected with keylogging malware, your keystrokes to the virtual OS are being intercepted anyway.
"SplashTop works within the motherboards BIOS and can be REMOTLY updated so that as the development community starts to work on applications the functionality of the OS will improve." hope some 'restore defaults' jumper is planed.
Yes, Walter, you're right. There is an unspoken message here. It's "FUCK YOU, LEAVE MY BIOS THE FUCK ALONE!" Yeah, I'll be at practice.
ah, yeah, now I remember... coreboot
ROM is cheap. Why not do it?
SD card readers are removable devices. You don't put them on the motherboard.
If you can insmod, and the kernel is new enough, you can load fuse and ntfs-3g.
It might not do it out of the box but it will be an easy download.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
well ok first of all i use linux and only linux and i almost never turn off my system or reboot so whats faster than moving your mouse and having the screen come alive?
second.. wtf? i dont want to have to use my mouse to decide to start my os when i do actually reboot my pc i want it to just do what its supposed to do and boot up my system.
third, without having a 'real' way of altering this splashtop thing or whatever it is to really suit my needs, its just wasted flash space on my system
i definitely think this is a step in the right direction for hardware manufacturers, but in the video i saw demonstrating this 'os,' there didnt seem to be hardware diagnostic tools. thats not to say it doesnt have them or the potential to have them, i just didnt see them so it looks like a waste of time..
dont forget you sit there and chat to someone and they'll be like "hey check out this ________" and then send you a file. what are you going to do with it? store it where? open it with what? can you listen to your music? even if im only on my system 5 minutes i've usually got some sort of music going.. you end up using this for a few minutes then go wtf i cant do this or that and switch to whatever os you installed and probably never end up going back to this splashtop thing thereby rendering it useless
keep up the good work asus!
so with the asus eeepc, users find its worth sacrificing features for a sweet price right?
well is it worth it to sacrifice almost every good feature of your normal os for a 25sec boot time difference?
seems like it will take longer to load my os if i boot this splash thing first, then realize i need full features and have to log out and then into my real system...
but Bart PE - http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ - quite happily boots off a CD
Price and Security. A ROM image cannot be changed. And it is a lot cheaper.
with this, we wont need to take any of those measures anymore. how many times did you fry your bios ?
Read radical news here
And have not changed the user-agent identifier at all, actually I have never done it, I put my custom or visit where my beliefs are.
Now it is almost impossible to find a site that does not work satisfactorily with Firefox/Linux and the basic plugins (Flash, Java).
I urge everybody to try this, you will be pleasantly surprised while sending a clear messages to dumb designers out there.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Am I the only one who is constantly reminded of IBM's fall from grace, when I look at MS?
Jx
By switching to Linux for desktop computing needs you are left with tons of money (no Office, no Windows, no antivirus, no firewall, etc) that you can use to have a proper gaming machine.
I don't think you are as well informed as you claim, maybe snob and pretentious when it comes to gaming, but not well informed and certainly not financially astute.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And then 5 seconds later the worm du jour will root the box with the exact same vulnerability as last time because, you guessed it, a read only OS cannot be patched.
Granted, this distro won't have any servers running on it, but you'll have skype, firefox, IM, all running the exact same widely distributed version. You can bet exploit writers will target those versions very hard.
So, yeah, trust it for banking, but only for about a month after they are released. After that, install a desktop linux and keep it patched.
Since Teh Lunix STILL has less than a 1% marketshare, despite 15 years of claiming to be the superior platform... I'd say the rate of new Lunix users is approximately equal to the number of people leaving the platform, with enough of an increase to maintain the flat percentage of an expanding market.
At 0.63% of the market, more people are using Windows 2000 than Teh Lunix, and it's barely even beating out the current installed base of Windows 98. People have also been migrating en masse from Teh Lunix to Windows Server.
Stay the Course!
Like Fake Steve Jobs says, it's not that Microsoft is full of super-geniuses or something, it's that they've always been very fortunate in their choice of enemies.
I boot Puppy linux in less than 10 seconds, faster than splashtop. No rocket science here :-) Go Puppy!
Tralalalalala
I'd rather have a motherboard manufacturer that properly supports www.coreboot.org - then we'd really have the freedom to quick boot linux, or use openfirmware, or jump straight into grub without touching the disk, or ...
Right now, it seems some manufacturers (Tyan, MSI) help out a bit for some types of motherboards, because it might help them sell some clusters. But it would be nice to have the option on the latest/greatest desktop boards too.