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Acer Bets Big On Linux
Stony Stevenson writes to tell us IT News is reporting that Acer is betting big on Linux, looking to push Tux on many of their upcoming laptops and netbooks. "The company is already heavily promoting Linux for its low cost ultra-portable netbook range out later this year, but senior staff have said that Acer will also push Linux on its laptops. [...] Acer sees two killer apps with Linux on computers: operation and cost. Its flavour of Linux will boot in 15 seconds compared to minutes for Windows, and the open source operating system can extend battery life from five to seven hours."
Operation and cost are killer apps?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Looks a lot nicer than the Eee.
Its flavour of Linux will boot in 15 seconds compared to minutes for Windows
It's been years since **any** OS has taken minutes to boot up on modern hardware. My Vista notebook, XP x64 desktop, both are up and running in under 30 seconds. My quad-core RHEL box is in the same ballpark.
Having experienced Vista on a $500 Acer laptop (click, wait several minutes, click, repeat ad nauseum.) I can well understand why they are going with Linux. Vista is completely unusable on these machines!
I was looking for a laptop about a year ago (I ended up getting a Thinkpad after a nasty return process).
;D I'm happy now along with my 8-10 hr battery life
I went to the Circuit City cause I had a cc from them and I get points and all. I started looking at the brands offered: Gateway, IBM, Sony, Toshiba, some noname brand I didnt recognize, and acer.
Gateway looked nice but wasnt feature laden for what I wanted (only had 1g ram).
I saw what the current IBM's looked like, but couldnt afford it at the time.. but I wanted it.
Sony: Root-kit fiasco. Hell no.
Toshiba looked nice but was a little too flimsy for my taste. It felt the cowling on the lip of the base was going to pop off.
Nonames: Had little lights in the laptop you could turn on and off in the bios. They were bargain basement cause they had as low as 512MB ram. Pass.
HP. I got suckered in buying a dv9660us because it was sleek, seemed to run nice, and had most of the ports I needed. In the end, the nice sensor bar failed for the second time and I demanded my money back. I used this money to buy a T61 decked out
Acer: Looked decent and clean. There were a lot of switches on the body turning on and off components via ACPI calls (like turn on and off wifi). There was one though... The bluetooth switch. It was on all the models but NONE HAD BLUETOOTH. How shoddy was that? The switch just sort-of glided back and forth like when a mechanical microswitch fails. This thing felt cheaper than the cheapest no-namer.
If their new line is under 300, I'd consider it. Because thats I can afford to lose.
Will this be the year of linux on the UMPC?
Alternate troll:
Is linux ready for the UMPC?
More music, fewer hits
Are killer apps?
I know Microsoft has a stable release of the latter, with good market penetration. Maybe ACER can edge in on the market for the former.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
Acer has stated that it will be pushing Linux aggressively on its laptops and netbooks..
The company is already heavily promoting Linux for its low cost ultra-portable netbook range out later this year, but senior staff have said that Acer will also push Linux on its laptops.
Acer has already started selling Linux in its Media PC business but this should now spread, according to Gianpiero Morbello, vice president of marketing and brand at Acer.
"We have shifted towards Linux because of Microsoft," he said. "Microsoft has a lot of power and it is going to be difficult, but we will be working hard to develop the Linux market."
Acer sees two killer apps with Linux on computers: operation and cost. Its flavour of Linux will boot in 15 seconds compared to minutes for Windows, and the open source operating system can extend battery life from five to seven hours.
At the same time, the company expects that the price differential of Linux will make the offering attractive for consumers at the low-cost end of the market.
"Microsoft's operating system typically costs around £50 per unit," said David Drummond, UK managing director at Acer. "On a £1,000 PC that is peanuts, but on a £200 computer it is a major issue."
I'm glad to see this type of product coming to consumers with a marketing force behind them (Acer, ASUS, Dell etc...)This product is perfect for my parents, grandmother and myself!
Before the M$ bash fest starts let's make this clear. These companies are not using Linux distros because they hate Microsoft or any of that other nonsense. It is purely a financial decision. They can make more money with Linux while at the same time offer the consumers a product that can be judged by its functionality and other merits. Not by a third party having their branding all over it.
If these companies could make more money using M$ operating systems, they would in a hearbeat.
Ok... now that we are clear, The Ubuntu fan boi in me wants say. Sweet it's finally the year of the Linux DeskTo... Lapto... NetBook?
Our bugs are smarter than your test scripts.
"Microsoft's operating system typically costs around £50 per unit," said David Drummond, UK managing director at Acer. "On a £1,000 PC that is peanuts, but on a £200 computer it is a major issue."
that is until MS reduces the price of windows (OPLC) send in the big guns (Ballmer, Gates) or tries a underhand tactic like target the large corporate buyers. with a sack full of cash and a lot to use expect them to utilise every dirty drink in the book.
though, on balance, I think the winds are turning on this issue, and frankly - its about bloody time.
disclaimer? me & linux - eight years and counting.
"... the open source operating system can extend battery life from five to seven hours"
Does this mean that it can extend the life of the battery between five and seven hours LONGER than normal, or does it mean that it can extend the life of a battery that otherwise would last five hours to seven?
The former is really good to hear. The latter has me wondering... which laptops normally can get 5 hours of use from a battery? I'm lucky if I get 2 on mine.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm all for the Linux option but I think the extended battery life has more to do w/ the solid state storage for the Linux systems (as opposed to the mechanical HD for Windows systems) than the operating system itself.
2008 is truly the year of Linux on the desktop^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlaptop
That would be a major selling point for me.
Acer is going to ruin Linux's reputation with their crappy hardware! Only one company is clever enough to think of a scheme as devious as this one.
Microsoft!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I'm willing to guess, however, that it's not an acer. You're not likely to see quad-core on them, and last time I played with a brand-new acer (abouy 7 months ago) it came with Vista, the full Norton suite, and a whopping 512MB of RAM.
Trust me... boot-time was not pretty on that machine.
Acer is likely shooting for the upper-low-end consumer (those that want a semi-fast CPU, more than say an "eeePC", but still skimp on many details), and their machines as they come simply don't run well with bulky operating systems.
Having run Ubuntu on a few of these, I'd say it does handle better than Vista though, but part of that I can attribute to the lack of Norton and all the other crapware as well.
looking to push Tux on many of their upcoming laptops and netbooks.
That's GNU/Tux to you, freedom hater!
E pluribus unum
06/06/08. I hereby declare the end of the M$ hegemony. M$ is dead. Long live M$. Goodbye Bill.
A man spends the first half of his life accumulating stuff, the second trying to get rid of it all.
Linux is VERY customizable and can be trimmed down to a very small kernel. The number of utilities installed can be reduced as well. OS features not used, need not run.
On a laptop, Linux makes sense because if it has nothing to do, it sleeps. Windows, like rust, never sleeps. CPUs really do run cooler on Linux with a lower load.
Linux is free. It can be adjusted to fit your hardware. OpenOffice.org has ODF and it is an undisputed ISO standard. Linux plays nice on almost all networks.
Why WOULDN'T a company put this OS on a laptop?
Looks like GNU/Linux sort of has monopoly atleast on the low end laptop market. I would soon go in for my first laptop that runs LINUX. Still thinking which brand to go for though..
I am wondering if they are comparing apples to apples on that one. If they took their fresh, clean, off the shell acer laptop and compared it to a fresh, clean, off the shell toshiba laptop, its not a fair comparison.
the toshiba will be filled with crapware that bogs down startup. if its a fresh windows install, this wouldnt be the case.
No sense being beholden to an American Company. This way, there is little dependancies or money flowing to USA. Once Linux takes off, then it will be on to Software, while American firms stay stuck in Windows in the same fashion that many were in Dos when MS came out with Windows.
Never got the sleep function to work in any laptop from the Toshibas, to the Dells, to the Clevos. Can't believe anyone would try to sustain a business of Linux portables unless they were intended for desktop replacements.
Sure, Linux will let you use less powerful hardware, but I don't understand why running a different OS on the same hardware would appreciably effect battery life. Can somebody explain this to me?
Two Scenarios
1. Acer will stay the course, and refuse incentives from MS.
2. MS will give Acer such a good deal that they will announce "it turns out that Linux was a bad fit for most of our product line".
We will now see what kink of company Acer is.
If not, why bother with yet another piece of crap? It seems companies are really struggling to find ways to compete with the juggernaut that is Apple. Windoze clearly doesn't cut the mustard, and now they are attempting to use Lin-sux to fill in the gaps. Unfortunately for them, Apple owns the laptop market and will soon dominate the desktop market as well as the handheld market and every other market where a GOOD computer is desireable. The reason for this is simple: OS X is a better OS than anything else on the market in every conceivable way. It's faster, stabler, more secure, more scalable, easier to use, easier to program, more open, more standards compliant, and is built and maintained by high quality professional American programmers. Nothing else compares, and nothing else ever will compare. Smart people use Apple products. Even Linus Torvalds uses a Mac for his "real work", he admitted as much years ago. Bill Gates has never admitted it, but he probably has a fleet of Mac's in his home office.
Why WOULDN'T a company put this OS on a laptop?
..... their customers not wanting it.
It might have something to do with
Who seriously uses CMYK anymore? the color space on CONSUMER printers is greater than the CMYK model these days. All my printers except the cheap color laser exceed the range and produce better output from RGB (the driver/colorsync does the color space conversion.)
RAW and 16bit TIFF...High Dynamic Range would be nice.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
> It won't work today because Vista is a flop.
God yes, we all heard you the first, second, third and 734th time. With this and all your other sockpuppet accounts.
It might have something to do with ..... their customers not wanting it.
I haven't seen any credible study or statistic that indicates that people want windows.
People may be used to it, but they don't *choose* it, per se' People *choose* Macintosh, but since Microsoft has a monopoly, one can only view a windows purchase as acceptance of the default.
When we have real competition in the market place, we can start studying what people really want.
I bought a $550 Acer Extensa 5420 at Best Buy a few months ago. It came with a soft-load of Vista. I wiped that and loaded PCLinuxOS-2007. Most everything works fine including the web-cam. The only trouble I have now is getting sound from the headphone jack, and using the built in microphone. The mic jack works fine, and the built-in speakers work fine. Two quirks that are easy for me to overlook given all the benefits. It appears that Acer hardware tends to be mostly Linux compatible when new for whatever reason. I know that in the past I have had issues with Dell and Linux when the Dell is less than 1 year old.
Your right, it is huge.
Acer's largest rival is probubly ASUS. I wonder if the sweetheart relationship that ASUS has with MS is driving this announcement.
I predict that ASUS will keep the price of the Linux UMPC's higher than the MS ones. This will be part of the agreement with MS that saved them a ton of cash.(my speculation)
This would provide Acer an opportunity to make shure ASUS does not grab volume at the low end.
Acer is smart! They've made cheap notebooks for years, and very good ones too. I've been using countless numbers of these laptops basically because they're really cheap and the support is good.
Now they're making a huge bet on Linux, very very smart move! This is the time where Ubuntu works near perfectly on almost every pc around due to huge concentrated effort on the OS communitys part.
I've been running linux alongside windows for over 10 years, the 3 last years I've been using Linux exclusively because it really gets the job done - safely! I've noticed that my peers also switch to linux simply because it's easier to use, easier to make backups with, easier to restore - and generally way easier to upgrade without issues.
It takes even less patience than with windows, but it didn't use to be like this 10 years ago.
Kudos for the effort OS-community!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
"there is nothing like Photoshop, and no killer video capture and editing software, and for some, games are important too"
..
Photoshop under Linux
CINELERRA, the first Linux based real-time editing
For games, buy a PlayStation or Nintendo
davecb5620@gmail.com
You seem knowledgeable, did you ask before you left the store, if it had Bluetooth device installed? What models did they have, did they advertise it as Bluetooth enabled? According to this from Jan 2006, the Aspire 9500 comes equipped with integrated Bluetooth and Firewire port.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Battery Life: Up to 4.5 hours run time
davecb5620@gmail.com
Asus, on the other hand, is already on it's third generation model, the eee 1000, --with a 10" inch screen and now a properly-sized keyboard, the multi-touch pad and the various dumb bugs nicely worked out. (The eee no longer tips over.) --I think they've even got splashtop (instant-on for three key apps) built into the hardware, but that's not confirmed. The eee 1000's projected price is a tad more than the competitors, (around $550), but when compared to the rush-design me-too jobs offered by all the competitors thus far, and an established user community to help with any after-market problems, it might be well worth the extra dough just to know you've got a decent piece of hardware which isn't still dizzy from being ejected into the market place from a cold start four months ago.
(Can you tell I've been watching these things like a hawk?) July is going to be a good month for new toys. I might even go out and buy one of them computer magazines which review all these various devices. Do they still sell computer magazines? You know. The glossy kind with lots of pretty pictures and maybe a disk in a plastic bag? It's been years and years since I cared.
Whatever the case, I can't understand why anybody would want to run anything but the pre-fab linux OS on one of these devices. Specially tuned by the manufacturer to 'just work' means it's about the device and not the OS. I wonder if the user base will be smart enough to recognize that they can have the eee linux os on their desktop if they want it, or if they'll just think of it the same way they think of their cell phone software. --This is where a very simple bit of design could change the course of history. All you need to do is have a little tag on UMPC version of Ubuntu saying, "Ubuntu: For all computers. Free is good." Or something like that.
It's petty, but I'd be happy to see Microsoft become a faded memory. Kinda like Commodore, but with bad mojo.
Hm. Has anybody else noticed that Microsoft and the US military economy have charted almost the exact same course, and are both slipping into destruction? Vista was a giant piece of wishful thinking, as was Bush's war, both total failures which have left their perpetrators sputtering in denial and disbelief. And notice how Asia is rising? Also that both Shuttlesworth and Barak are black guys. Lots of juicy metaphor to be plumbed there, I think! (Hardware = the country, OS = the politics.) Want more? Barak is selling open dialogue rather than centrist thinking, and the UMPC's are entirely designed to expand our communication abilities. UMPC's feature power-saving processors, and the new presidency will feature environmentalist responsibility. Neat-o. I could go on, but I will defer to reason because I'm damned tired right now and all my synapses are doing that lateral fire thing they are apt to do when there's this much old coffee coursing in my veins. I will close with this: Life is a dream and as such, EVERYTHING in the physical world is metaphoric in nature.
Have a nice evening!
-FL
"Good News Everyone, 3008 will finally be the year of Linux on the Desktop"
Hubert J. Farnsworth
Microsoft Word has DOC, and it is an undisputed industry standard. And that is one of the main reasons why a lot of people, and therefore a lot of computer manufacturers stick to Windows. An ISO standard is nothing if it is not followed by the industry.
People are waking up to the fact that "their" documents need to be under "their" control, not that of a pay to play monopoly. A lot of business and governments are understandably worried that documents created as recently as 10 to 15 years ago are in a format that is both undocumented and unsupported.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Does anybody really car? I mean they are the Packard Bell of the new millennium.
I swear I didn't know it was loaded...
Photoshop.
Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, InDesign. AutoCAD, Revit, Maya, 3d Studio MAX.
Yeah, the "typical" "office" machine is Office and a web browser, and linux is fine for that - but for users in the "creative" fields, 'choice' is still a matter of how much ram you can jam into a laptop that's going to be running XP, Vista, or OS X for its entire service life.
Unlike your grammar checker (7 apostrophes, only the first was correct)!
This is true, but how much time do you think it will take ? My guess is it will take another 10-15 years, and it is going to take a lot more than being an ISO standard. Personnally, i never received an ODF document by email. The fact that what I say is not pleasant does not make it less true...
Integration and standardisation annihilates the last Linux hurdle: Hardware vendors slowpoking around and not playing along.
Coming to think of it, HW vendors never actually had an interest in Linux gaining traction, as it was MS who would get them the sales via bloated and slow OSes. Thus the HW industry struck a deal with MS. We use your neat stickers on our hardware and you see to it that end-users need new hardware with each OS iteration.
However, that doesn't work in 70% of the world. Asia has tons of relatively poor people who can barely afford comodity hardware. And note that it was the underdogs AMD and Via with integrated universal standard chipsets and peripherals that opened up the market for zero-fuss linux - 1st party Linux drivers be damned.
We are seeing Linux fully adapted to commodity standard x86 hardware and gaining traction. To be honest, before now it never really occured to me that it would happen this way. But I think now is the time we will see Linux finally gaining critical mass. A few years later than I had hoped and expected - but I sure do hope it does finally happen. Let's hope so.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
People may be used to it, but they don't *choose* it, per se' People *choose* Macintosh, but since Microsoft has a monopoly, one can only view a windows purchase as acceptance of the default.
They don't have a monopoly. Certainly atleast people can get a mac, so there goes the whole monopoly thing. Even on the PC's, many people know about linux and have tried it, but guess what? it really offers no completive advantages over windows for most people. So why switch? There's really not much of a reason to deal with the pain of isntalling a new OS and dealing with drivers. ANd you can, and have been able to buy PCs without windows.
When we have real competition in the market place, we can start studying what people really want.
We do have real competition. Right now. It's just there's still no great reason to use linux. It's a slow process though.
Might be an effective strategy!
Learn about Programming (C++ ASM) and Web Design and Development (PHP, CSS, Photoshop) from InfernoDevelopment.com
They don't have a monopoly.
Sorry, delusional denial does not count for reason. Microsoft *has* a monopoly.
A *monopoly* in legal terms has never meant 100%, it has always been about having such a large share of a market that a company can exercise control of the market beyond normal capitalistic forces.
We do have real competition. Right now.
Oh! cool, I'll go to a store and buy a laptop with BeOS or Linux. But I can't. I have no choice.
It's like buying a TV that only gets HBO. Why does the TV HAVE to come with HBO?
Microsoft has been found, in multiple legal venues, of illegally maintaining their monopoly on commodity personal computer systems. That fact is not up for debate.
For your information, Maya is available for Linux...
Might have something to do that apparently many studios choose IRIX -> Linux migration path...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Oh! cool, I'll go to a store and buy a laptop with BeOS or Linux. But I can't. I have no choice.
You can go to a store and buy a mac. I'm pretty sure you can find a store that will sell you linux computers. Walmart did(still does?). Dell does and has for quite a while. And there's plenty of other places you can buy a PC with linux on it.
It's like buying a TV that only gets HBO. Why does the TV HAVE to come with HBO?
That's a really bad comparision. You can do whatever the heck you want with a PC, including installing other OSes.
I don't care that they've been legally found guilty of being a monopoly. They aren't. They would love to be, then they would never have had to release XP. Then they wouldn't have to try and improve office. and ect.
Microsoft has such a large share because of mostly inertia and lack of anything better. Their attempts at being a monopoly have pretty well failed.
Where I live, I've been waiting for Eee to arrive to local market, but since they're just realeasing the first gen (7" screen) Eee almost the same time Acer will have Aspire One for the same price...
Asus: Learn from this - 8 Months waiting for a laptop to be available in local market is not the way to go.
Why not on corporate networks: Two words, Active Directory. Getting this integrated is a pain in linux becuase basicly it's foreign and almost nothing in the linux world is designed with it in mind. I've got my Suse servers working fine as domain members, and I use domain accounts for ssh and vnc login, but no way to centrally manage the root accounts and passwords, sudo files etc. Still has to be done on each server (simplified for us as we deploy from VMWare templates, but harder to change later. On desktops, how would we provision the same tools the users get now on Windows, how do you publish bookmarks and desktop settings to KDE/Gnome, Konqueror, Mozilla/Firefox and Opera all at the same time. How do you automatically provision printers for 1000 users? I love Gnu/Linux at home, but would never function on the desktops in our corporate the way we want without a lot of customisation. Well beyond our 6 person teams ability in terms of time and skill.
IT, Support and Acer make me worry. I dread trying to have to use the Acer webpage for support as it is hard to find drivers, sometimes those drivers are only for their US market machines, not Asia/Pacific, sometimes the downloads are just corrupted. The power supplies in out Acer desktops fail with regullarity, and I've also had to have the power supply on my personal 20" Ferrari screen replaced twice. So nice gear when working but I think they definitely have "cheapness" written all over them. I wish a High value vendor would put Linux on their gear as an option. Come on HP! Give me linux as an option on my $3000 laptop! Fix your damn ACPI crap in your BIOS on all your gear (I still have to remove/reinsert the battery before booting to get the power levels to register and full speed on the CPU scaling on my HP TC4400. (This is fixed in some of the other HP laptops of the same vintage, but not the TC4400.)
Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
I don't care that they've been legally found guilty of being a monopoly. They aren't.
It is not a useful use of anyone's time to debate an issue long decided with a person who does not accept facts.
Is this a joke? I read some ads here in Indonesia about Acer's linux notebook, when I ran to their shop, they can't provide one, and mind you it's written Linux Basic edition. After doing some research online, the distro is Linpus, with only Bash shell, and no working desktop out of the box, remind me one of acer's campaign on OOBE (Out Of the Box Experience) in 90s.
Finally I settle with HP-Compaq, with DOS and re-install it with Ubuntu. So, if now they're pushing "aggresively" I believe it's only to get more discount from microsoft
Work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt, and dance like you do when nobody's watching
I know they're making XP available on the new models (something that is hilarious in itself given Microsoft's obvious desire to push Vista), but they're still releasing them with Linux and they're still cheaper with Linux (afaik).
Yeah and while Avid now finally supports Vista, it is painful because Vista is till the worst suited OS for any content creation thanks to bone headed digital restrictions management. So the choice really is Linux or OSX.
I don't therefore I'm not.
What a month! You wouldn't believe some of the other crazy stuff I've been making whack errors regarding. It tends to go like this during a Mercury Retrograde; posting anywhere during a period like this is like getting on a broken roller coaster. I actually kind of enjoy it; it's like having your internal hard drive de-fragged and all the errors pointed out so you can fix them. The period only goes on for three or four weeks, (ends June 19th), and since everybody else is going through the same thing, you don't have to feel quite so embarrassed. It's like being drunk at a drinking party. --It IS annoying as hell if you need to meet deadlines or build anything or get your ideas across clearly, so it's best just to kick back and take it easy and not do anything important if you can afford to. And watching the news is fun. --Last period like this was when all those undersea cables got cut.
-FL
I have not written a reply to your post.
for going to Linux is customer support.
Why would companies invest heavily in customer support for a $200 laptop?
Yes I am a total dork... I am using Windows Xp on an old Thinkpad X40. I regularly get 7 hours of battery life and I only reboot every couple of months. It takes much less than 15 seconds for this thing to resume from hibernation.
I haven't had a system crash since I installed the OS last year.
What am I doing wrong? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I am a Windows system administrator...
If you are not a computer professional you should run neither windows or linux. If you want a trouble free computing experience buy a mac.
They can start with removing that This site is best viewed with Microsoft I.E. 6.0 from their web site and start eating their on dogfood by run linux on their web servers.
so much for betting big on linux...
Oh good, perhaps they might extend their look at some of their higher end laptops, and start supporting things like the pci ENE sd card reader in the 9500 series that Ive never managed to get to work and ENE refused to release any information for...
I was a very early adopter of the 9503, and wrote one of the linux installation pages for it that was widely quoted on the net. Acer didn't even bother to reply to emails. And everything proprietory *shudder*, even down to the extra keys on the kb having their own chip and handler...
Leopard spots changed? Ill wait and see...
I have seen the version of Xandros linux on the ASUS eeePCs and it's excellent. Usable? It makes WinAnything look hard. Plus that system comes with a built-in video camera and wireless that actually work. Skype is fully functional - audio and video. If you have WiFi, this thing IS your mobile video phone. I hope the Acer model is at least as good.
Only boring people are ever bored.
I bought a $600 Acer Aspire 5520-5912 from Wal-Mart for $600 back just after Christmas. It came with 2GB of RAM, an AMD Turion X2 1.9 GHz processor,
and Nvidia integrated graphics.
The thing ran ok, but was definitely not even close to fast. Also, the power adapter (for the wall) seems too small and gets insanely hot when
gaming (believe it or not, more below); in fact, I replaced it once already because it was making lots of noise and I was afraid it was going to fail
and either catch fire and/or send a full 120V charge through to the laptop itself. Oh, and yes, the keyboard is definitely shoddy.
So after all this time, the last couple of weeks I finally decided to bite the bullet and install Linux on it. It's not that I'm new to Linux, I
run it on all my machines, but being a new laptop and after some research, it made me a little hesitant, especially with the wireless it has on board
(Atheros AR5007EG).
Cut to tonight: I have SlamD64 (64 bit Slackware with 32 bit compatibility) running perfectly on it. The Atheros radio is fully supported under the
latest MadWiFi snapshot, though I previously downloaded the HAL direct from Sam Leffler's personal website when its existence became public. All the
important stuff work with only minor bells and whistles either known not to work (network LED) or untested but should work (card reader and webcam).
I'm running the latest stable kernel (2.6.25.4) and NVidia's latest stable driver on X.
But here's the kicker: under 64 bit Linux this laptop SCREAMS! "Night and Day" doesn't remotely describe the difference between the old 32 bit Vista
it came with then versus now. I mentioned gaming above: Urban Terror 4.1 with a 64 bit build runs far faster here than on Vista. Before, I had to
cut everything down to get a decent frame rate; now I can get 50-60 fps with good settings, even at the LCD panel's native resolution (1280X800)!
The kernel compiles in 5-10 minutes (haven't actually timed it, more like go to the bathroom and come back to see it done).
I'm not sure I buy that Acer has suddenly changed its mind, though. The ACER-WMI project specifically states that everything they've done has been
by reverse engineering and neither Acer nor Wistron has ever tried to help them--and this project is needed to get the extra buttons and LEDs working.
I bought this because I needed a full-blown laptop and this was the cheapest thing I could find, even with the M$ Tax. Maybe if they really are
changing their tune they'd be willing to refund that tax. But considering that ACER-WMI hasn't had any help and I just saw another article saying
that Acer won't sell Linux laptops in the UK, I think this is just a publicity stunt and won't be holding my breath.
Now that I'm able to save some money, if I buy another laptop, I'll be able to spend more (!) for no M$ Tax (just wrong) and hopefully a product of
higher quality than Acer/Wistron.
Mike
What chipset/driver do you have?
My Aspire 3680 has an Atheros AR5005g with Madwifi (compiled from SVN because the regular module with Ubuntu crashes on WPA-EAP) and the switch works but the orange LED doesn't turn off.
Unicode in Slashdot
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"Is this your first time here?"
No, but I grow tired of this tactic that has seemed to be perfected that last several years. Never ending debate is a useful tool for slowing or completely halting progress especially when the status quo needs to be corrected. We need to be able to make decisions and move on to action, not eternally debate them and do nothing.
There is no real debate that Microsoft has monopoly control over the commodity PC OS and "office" application market. However, to do anything about it, means that someone is going to try to force the WHOLE debate be reiterated for each and every proposed correction. It is a great way for the criminals to continue what they are doing while the agencies who would do something about it get bogged down in policy.
Will it run Half Life 2, Planetside and MS Office? Will it use my video card? My sound card? Will it run without me having to learn how to compile? When the answer to all of those questions is yes, i'll make the switch. Until then, linux is a nerd novelty wRt the desktop/laptop market.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Why is Dell selling PCs with Ubuntu preinstalled. Please explain why they were "whacked" then and not "whacked" now. More importantly, please explain what version/distro of "GNU/Linux" (you mean Linux, correct?) Dell would have installed on a computer in 2000?
Please, prove this.
Someone must be connecting all these boxes of Vista you say are not being sold to the internet, then?
Bwahahaha. I'm all for PC manufacturers selling things other than Windows, but please keep the bullshit down.
By the way, how many sockpuppets do you have now? I've been away for about five days, I think. How many? 12? 15? Sorry, but I lose track. Could you make a list and put it in your journal for reference? Right next to your lame "failure log" so everyone can check it when they're not sure if some weird post is actually you or someone else.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
well the courts also aquitted OJ.
regardless, i don't care if they legally are a monopoly or not. There have been legitmate compitetors to MS (both office and windows) forever. And there was nothing MS could do to prevent people from using these compitetors.
Which goes back to what you originally said.
I haven't seen any credible study or statistic that indicates that people want windows.
The study you're looking for is the amount of money MS made off windows. Granted maybe you could flip want/need around.
well the courts also aquitted OJ.
A Jury acquitted O.J. not the court or the judge.
regardless, i don't care if they legally are a monopoly or not.
This is the fundamental core of the discussion and to disregard it means that no amount of reason will be accepted. The matter is settled, Microsoft has a monopoly and it there is an excessively high barrier for competitors.
There can be no reasonable debate if the facts are ignored. I am sick of endlessly debating established facts, its a waste of time and a distraction from a real discussion.
For the last two years, I've dual booted Linux and XP on it (my wife can't give up Windows).
Hardware-wise, it's been suprisingly good. I had a couple problems (the touchpad buttons got a little wonky) before the warranty was up, so I got those fixed.
Since then, it's really been rock solid. The wifi is a mega pain in the butt to get working in Ubuntu (although PCLinuxOS, or rather the variant I'm using, TinyFlux, picked it up right away). I have to build ndiswrapper each time (for incomprehensible reasons, installing it via apt-get doesn't work). And let's not talk about the built-in modem. Or trying Compiz.
In any case, overall, it's been a pretty good experience. I've been afraid that the screen was going to give out or the keyboard go to crap or wahtever else happens to cheap laptops, but so far (knock on wood), I haven't had a problem.
I'd love to see what a Acer-tuned Linux laptop looks like. My experience hasn't been half bad.
People don't want windows, they get supplied with it, and as a result most people never even question the idea that windows is the greatest operating system in the universe. Most people don't know what OS their cellphone uses either they just accept the software as bundled.
With windows, people assume "that's how it is" because "all those clever computer people" must know what's best and that they would never be influenced by money in order to promote a certain product at the expense of the many other options that exist...
HLT ...Are you seriously claiming that Windows doesn't use HLT? Don't be ridiculous. What on earth do you think NT's System Idle Process process is for, if not to issue HLT instructions when the ocmputer's idle?
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
What turns me off about windows (win2k up to vista) is the aging process that they go through. The longer it's installed on your PC, the longer it takes to boot. And as it boots, the hard drive just goes nut. People has coined the term Windows sclerosis to describe this behaviour. No one has bee able to satisfactorily provide an explanation or a cure. Conspiracy theories abound about what this behviour is about.
So, I am running Fedora 8 on my Acer laptop. It's not love at first sight with Linux but it's better having a homey wife who doesn't develop sclerosis than to have Paris H..ton (what an apt analogy).
There can be no reasonable debate if the facts are ignored. I am sick of endlessly debating established facts, its a waste of time and a distraction from a real discussion.
ok so everything the government/courts say is always correct right? (which was my point with OJ.)
The barrier is to make a product that can compete with and beat MS. That's the barrier. these other barriers you think exist, would disappear if that would happen.
I've been using linux and open source software for a bloody decade now, and I can say without a doubt the quality has always been, in the end, inferior for an end user, though it's always been progressing.
ok so everything the government/courts say is always correct right?
NO, there has been a LONG debate and a LONG history. The issues have long been settled in multiple legal venues under multiple judges with different counsel, as well as by independent parties.
They only one, it seems, that does not think Microsoft is a monopoly, is, of course, Microsoft.
Face it, you have failed.
Well said.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it