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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."
I wouldn't just count the time it takes to get a login prompt in vista. After you enter your login and password I'd say it takes at least another 30s before the hard drive stops rattling and you can get firefox up and running.
Well, perhaps these notebooks won't have hardware powerful enough to boot Vista in less than a few minutes.
Besides, Linux can be tweaked. Acer may tweak both the kernel and the userland to optimize it just for their hardware; they would not be able to do that with Windows of any flavor.
Ignore this signature. By order.
The 'news' value is that a huge, major OEM of Windows is drifting towards Linux support, which means that driver availability, support, integration, and application components get a new protagonist, and a powerful one at that.
Ideological reasons aside, it's a major deal for such a huge OEM of Microsoft to have committed to the 'enemy' camp. And as Acer is very influential in Asia, it also means that others will likely follow suit in a 'herd' effect.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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.
The thing I notice about Windows is that it *looks* like it is up and running, but it takes another minute or two before it actually does anything.
Agreed. Unless something better comes along, I'll definitely be rewarding them with my business the next time I need a laptop -- even if I planned to reinstall a different distro. At the very least, it lets you know that there's going to be good hardware support and shows that there's a market. Ooh, I hope they make some models with solid state drives...
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"