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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."
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1.17 million
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
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.'"
they make good boards
I have to agree. I've made some forays into MSI (a relationship that was abruptly and permanently terminated when I discovered I had to have XP to upgrade the BIOS), EPoX and AOpen.
But after that MSI foray I'll be sticking to ASUS for the foreseeable future; I have yet to purchase an ASUS board that I haven't been perfectly happy with throughout its lifecycle (well, I had one or two die of the bad capacitor issue a few years ago, but that was only 30% of my ASUS boards while 100% of the other branded boards died from it).
> This will not happen until the Linux Kernel has native support
..where by I can double click on a single file and have it install a
> for an install mechanism...
By writing this you reveal yourself to be clueless. The kernel would never do anything so complex, that is what userspace is for. But anyway, assuming you really mean a Linux distro....
>
> whole program including notifying and automatically installing
> programs it is dependent upon.
And just where have you been the last five years? Most RH/RPM based distros will do just that. Click on an RPM package and it will ask if you want to install it. But nobody smart does it like that. At most you would use the click to install bit to install a REPO and then just use the same package manager you use to install the distro supplied packages.
Why limit yourself to the old painful way Microsoft and Apple do things when technology is being innovated over here in Linux/UNIX land? What could be more convienent than adding a repository once and then making that 3rd party software collection a seamless part of the system. You get automatic notifications through the update widget, exactly the same as if it were included from the original OS vendor.
Democrat delenda est
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 switch to linux every month or so.
But I get fed up.
Then I promptly switch back to whatever OS I feel like installing.
Then I get fed up again.
And I think 'Oh, someone on slashdot said that this is the time to switch to linux! I should try it AGAIN!'...
then I switch to linux.
Until I get fed up...
The fact is it still takes a very informed choice to switch to Linux. This type of thing could go a long way towards solving that ("what, an operating system already onboard?!"), but at the same time this is only one manufacturer and its the kind of thing only people building their own PCs are going to see, anyway.
The general market still has so much to learn about other options besides Windows. Mac is gaining popularity because of cool-factor and crossover conversions, none of which Linux has. Honestly, it won't be until you can fool someone into using Linux before they figure out its not Windows that you will see a change in general market trends. Either that or some unforeseen landmark change in the computer landscape is going to have to take place.
In this regard, the comparison between open source solutions and alternative energy options makes sense here, except that the open source industry has had _superior_, WORKING solutions for the past decade, and the alternative energies industry hasn't. Its kind of like people choosing to stick with their internal combustion engine technology and refusing to try out a hydrogen car because "no body else does." But really, its because there's been no mass awakening to it, and unlike the energy crisis, there isn't likely to be unless someone brings it about.
Still, this is the extreme value of Linux to me: it's portability. Not *mobility*--we'll have to wait for Andriod for that--but its ability to fit on almost any system in any way. Scaleability and flexibility also apply here. I'd love to have a trusted operating system living at the hardware level of my comptuter. It seems to make sense in a way, even: the logical extension of CMOS in a way. Honestly, you're telling me motherboard hardware has improved for the past 10-15 years but we still have no better built in soft/firmware?
I'm doing more brainstoming than actual technical analysis here, but these are the kinds of things that get me excited like that: speculating, hypothesizing, dreaming about a more open and inherently good future.
Technorant, out.
I switch to Widnows every month or so.
But I get fed up.
Then I promptly switch back to whatever Linux I feel like installing.
Then I get fed up again.
And I think 'All the marketing says that Windows is better than Linux! I should try it AGAIN!'...
then I switch to Windows.
Until I get fed up...
vi +
It's one thing to have your OS die and you've got to reboot. It's another if your motherboard dies and you've got to buy another.
I don't think they're misunderstanding, they just disagree. I'll put it this way: I just switched to Linux this past January and I'm extremely happy with it. With the exception of the wireless in my laptop (Broadcom), it was incredibly easy to get Ubuntu (and a few other distros I was messing around with) up and running, and be able to play around with it.
I was completely illiterate with regard to command line stuff, but I've figured out a great deal along the way. Even when I first began, installing packages was probably the single easiest thing to do in the OS. Installing a package from Synaptic is ridiculously easy, and it grabs all the dependencies an application needs. Anyone with so little knowledge of how computers work that they can't figure out a package manager is someone who wouldn't be doing anything like installing their own programs in Windows, so that's really not a fair comparison.
This is how it is implemented. I have the P5E3 PREMIUM. The Linux boot is called Express Gate. It boots in about 5 seconds and gives the option to go into bios, the installed OS, or the express gate. You can use email, web browser, skype, and use flash drives (I believe this was first implemented to help update the bios more easily). Uses Splashtop desktop. Here's some quick info on it.
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!"There's probably no mention of it running windows because of the defining amount of jokes that would be made about your car crashing...
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I found that Puppy seems to be the best mix of size and usefulness,especially on former Win9X machines. I just think it is a shame how many functioning machines end up in the dumpster when they could be given a good home. Hell,my first gaming rig,which was a Pentium 100Mhz with a whopping 32Mb of RAM is still in use at a local lumbar company running DOS 3 as a ISA controller for an ancient lathe they have making custom columns. So the thought that folks will throw out a good running computer still just strikes me a wasteful to the extreme. But that is my 02c,YMMV.
Oh,and as a disclaimer-I have actually thrown out a running machine in the past. I had a girl bring in her old computer to see if I could upgrade it for her in class. This poor girl had actually been doing her schoolwork on a 30Mhz with 12Mb of Simm RAM running Win 3.11. I took one look at that ancient thing and told her to leave it and I'd see what I could do. When the girl left the teacher asked "you aren't actually going to try to UPGRADE that thing,are you?" I told him HELL no! And when she showed up the next day I presented her with a 550Mhz that one of my SOHO clients had donated. Last I heard her kid was still doing his reports on his "new" machine,just as happy as a clam. I tried for a week to find a use for that 30Mhz,but damned if I could find a use for it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Truly, 2008 is the year of Linux on the Set Top.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!