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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.
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.'"
Since all packages have been signed off by someone we'd know exactly who had done it. It's not exactly like all packages and code can't be traced every step of the way.
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.
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.
> And, even if you like Linux (which I do), would you want to keep
> the version supplied with your m/b?
You would probably keep Splashtop because it is in flash, probably in a larger BIOS chip. It isn't intended to be your primary OS. ASUS fully expects 99% of these motherboards to end up with Vista on a normal hard drive before it is delivered to the end user.
The right question is how many of those end users will try Splashtop and find it handy for quick excursions into the net. If that number is large Splashtop will prosper and begin to add more and more features. Five years from now will be interesting if that happens.
Democrat delenda est
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
I think it would be really interesting to boot my computer into "energy conservation mode" which doesn't even power up the hard disks but allows me to browse the web and send e-mail with near-instant on capability. Then, if I needed more 'stuff', I could switch to "normal" mode and get to all the rest of my stuff if need be. Having spent some time using things like feather linux, the responsiveness of using a RAM disk would make almost ANY average user wet themselves with glee.
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Now if ASUS which is a darling of the hardware enthusiast community says that linux is a powerful tool I expect some of those perceptions will be changed.
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The place where this will likely cause the biggest problem for MS is when Joe Sixpack has problems with their Windows install. Whether it is from a virus, malware, or just the natural degradation of Windows, eventually most people end up with some kind of problem on their Windows System. Right now, most of them take the system to someone to fix the problem, just live with what they know is a problem, or chuck the whole computer and buy a new one. With a Linux desktop installed in the BIOS, many will learn the key combination that lets them boot to Linux. They don't care what OS they are using. They just want to access their MySpace page. Once they have spent a year using Linux because it worked well enough to keep them from spending the money on repairs or replacement, the idea of using Linux will not seem so strange.