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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.
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!
Ubuntu takes ~1.75 minutes to boot on my laptop and Vista a little longer.
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.
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
I just witnessed a brand-new Toshiba laptop/luggable with full Vista take over 10 minutes to boot. I suspect crapware. I wonder if Linux will ever fall to that plague?
I beg to differ. I have a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz (I still consider that modern hardware) and it takes me over five minutes from I turn the computer on 'till everything is up and running in XP, and I'm not a typical user. I've disabled many bloated services and my taskbar do not have the 20+ icons you usually see novice users having. In comparison, I'm dual booting and it takes less than a minute for me to boot Ubuntu (not that I'm trying to troll here but it was mentioned in the topic).
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.
My HP desktop takes 30 seconds just to get through the BIOS startup.
I wish it was only 30 seconds on my machine. My work laptop is a couple year old Dell D610 (Pentium M, 1.83 Ghz with two gigs of ram) and it takes 4 - 5 minutes for it to boot up to a state where I can lanuch an app. Personally, I blame all the shit that Global IT has running on startup (Symantic protection agent, norton antivirus, asset management, etc.)
You forget that we are talking about low-end notebooks: the article specifically mentions the perceived market advantage Acer will incur in the $200 price range, since a Windows license adds about $50, which is a large percentage of that cost.
Since the notebooks are low-end, we expect them to have relatively poorer specs. So, Windows (and everything) will take longer to boot--a minute seems reasonable. They are arguing that because they custom-tailored Linux to the hardware specifications, and because of inherent advantages in the Linux model, it boots more quickly. Sounds fine to me!
Since you didn't mention it, based on your account, I'm guessing that are running with with 512MB of RAM (or less.) or you have Spyware loading up somewhere.
My AthlonXP 3200 2.2Ghz w/ 1GB of ram boots XP in a little over 1 minute, from a cold boot.
Do not read this
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Exactly. Of course, most of that seems like the fault of the 5000 other programs that feel they need to run at startup. Antivirus stuff seems like the worst offender, but hey, its Windows so you can't boot without it!
looking to push Tux on many of their upcoming laptops and netbooks.
That's GNU/Tux to you, freedom hater!
E pluribus unum
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.
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?
Absolutely - I can typically get to the Windows desktop far quicker than a Linux one. I believe that the desktop environment is one of the last things Linux loads, after all the background processes - by the time I'm in K (or Gnome, or Ice or whatever else I'm using at the time) everything seems ready to go. Contrast this to Windows, where it can be anything from 30 seconds to a few minutes after the desktop appears before it is usable, depending on the number of background processes still to load. (And allow me to preempt any 'it's not usable, even then' jokes.)
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.
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 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.
There is something wrong with your computer then. I have an HP desktop with a P4 2.8ghz chip running XP and it takes about a minute or two to boot up.
Don't forget avidemux.
I recently went looking for "better" avi manipulation tools
on Windows and all I ended up with lots of crap that makes
the lesser Linux tools look brilliant and avidemux.
It seems that the work being done with Linux Multimedia is
bleeding back into Windows.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
you don't need to tweak the code to get a boost, just the kernel's .config
a simple reconfiguration of the standard kernel shipped with ubuntu to remove all the unneccessary drivers, schedulers and other shit reduced the time from GRUB menu to the KDM login screen from 1.5 min to less than a minute.
What ? Me, worry ?
The Aspire One is similar in spec to the Eee 900, and costs less than the Eee 701. SOLD.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
It may not be something you would like to do to your servers at work, but I installed coreboot (formerly LinuxBIOS) on my server at home, and it takes 6 seconds to hand over to the operating system (the bootloader is in ROM).
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!