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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.
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Maybe Duke Nukem Forever will also be included.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
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! ~~
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.
My blog
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
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.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
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
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
I'm waiting for a machine that turns on before I actually push the power button.
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
"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
But really, how many appliances are truly instant-on besides the fridge and the coffee maker?
Neither one is instant-on. It takes the fridge up to 24 hours to initialize (get cold) before you can store food in it, and coffee takes five to twenty minutes to perk.
The radio is instant on. The light bulb is instant on, unless you get a really cheap CFL.
My generation is weird; befor the transistor nothing was instant-on, after computers were built into everything nothing is instant-on. They shouldn't call us the "boomer generation" (even if some of us did blow stuff up REAL GOOD), they should call us the "instant-on generation".
But an under five second computer boot? That's PDQ!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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.
This is the year of Linux on the... wait, motherboard? Who changed the script?
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
STB means "Set-top box" according to Wikipedia.
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.
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".