The Economist Suggests Linux For Netbooks

Trepidity writes "In its roundup of how to choose a netbook, The Economist suggests that users 'avoid the temptation' to go for a Windows-based netbook, and in particular to treat them as mini laptops on which you'll install a range of apps. In their view, by the time you add the specs needed to run Windows and Windows apps effectively, you might as well have just bought a smallish laptop. Instead, they suggest the sweet spot is ultra-lite, Linux-based netbooks, with a focus on pre-installed software that caters to common tasks. They particularly like OpenOffice, which they rate as easier to use than MS Word and having 'no compatibility problems,' as well as various photo-management software." Besides which, does Windows offer spinning cubes for coffee-shop demos?

Comments

No compatibility problems?

[TheKidWho]

Nonsense, OpenOffice Word has a ton of problems with mathematical formulas, also I've had problems with images that open fine on msword but don't under OpenOffice. Otherwise it works well, I've moved from Word to OpenOffice.

Re:No compatibility problems?

[forkazoo]

Nonsense, OpenOffice Word has a ton of problems with mathematical formulas, also I've had problems with images that open fine on msword but don't under OpenOffice. Otherwise it works well, I've moved from Word to OpenOffice.

In my experience, OpenOffice certainly does open some documents in a way that looks strange. In the vast majority of those cases, those documents also look strange when moving between different versions of Word. So, compatibility isn't absolutely 100% perfect with a specific version of word, but it is damn near 100% compatibility if you consider "Word" as a whole, rather than "Word" as the exact specific version of Word you happen to have installed on the specific system you use most.

And, most of those documents are indeed stuff like formulae which aren't widely used, and for which Word is sometimes not really the best tool for the job. When I worked in academia IT, I had the insane good fortune to work in a department where everybody was comfortable with the idea of using latex for their papers. I think I had to deal with fewer than half a dozen issues related to latex in the whole time I worked there. OTOH, when I was in Windows support, I'd call half a dozen MS Word issues a light week!

Re:No compatibility problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you're an expert on the capabilities of the program whose name you don't even know.

Re:No compatibility problems?

[Registered Coward v2]

Nonsense, OpenOffice Word has a ton of problems with mathematical formulas, also I've had problems with images that open fine on msword but don't under OpenOffice. Otherwise it works well, I've moved from Word to OpenOffice.

That's been my experience as well. I use NeoOffice on my Mac; and while it is generally compatible I occasionally get some strange artifacts when opening PowerPoint files. Overall, however, NO/OO is compatible enough to be a viable alternative; you just need to verify the files will open properly if it is a "mission critical" file; such as one you are planning to have printed, or will be use as a presentation, from a machine that may not be running NO/OO.

Re:No compatibility problems?

[xwizbt]

But why would you need to convert from OpenOffice to Word? If Word can't handle the output from an open source program, then all the user has to do is install OpenOffice - it costs nothing.

I appreciate that you might be trying to fit into a Windows-centric office space, but really, there's no problem. Spool it to a PDF if they're having that much trouble.

Re:No compatibility problems?

[Nosbig]

I absolutely beg to differ...

Office Open XML is as from being open as we are from getting into another galaxy.

First, the bad news. Office Open XML has several thousand pages of documentation for the file format, some of which refers to proprietary ways older Microsoft products operated (e.g. implement feature X of Office 97) without giving code or direct examples. Second, Microsoft ended up attempting to go through ECMA to race against ODF to be the first to be an industry-standard. During this process, Microsoft was accused of encouraging certain voting irregularities. Based upon their past history including their case with the DOJ, some credence might be lent to that train of thought.

Second, the good news... ODF has been ratified as the ISO 26300 standard, in 2006. The documentation was on the order of several hundred pages long. In addition, very little resistance was present during the adoption process, as the OpenDocument folks went through the proper channels and made sure that all involved parties were aware of their steps.

Do you honestly think that a standard controlled by a company who has historically focused on proprietary products is more open than one which was built from a grassroots effort and industry coalition?

Re:No compatibility problems?

[corsec67]

Yeah, my complaint with Ubuntu is that they have too much of this "scan everything on the hard drive, taking up a ton of CPU for something you might not use"

I resorted to "chmod a-x /usr/bin/nasty_program", to keep it off.

How about not starting those scanning things unless I actually use the service?

Re:No compatibility problems?

[Brandybuck]

The vast majority of people using mini-notebooks aren't going to be concerned about math formulas. Really, they aren't.

Re:No compatibility problems?

[zippthorne]

Try LyX for a week and then tell us what you think of OO.org's equation editor.

Re:No compatibility problems?

[Angostura]

Because 95+% of my friends/colleagues have Office and saying "Download this application" to correctly read this file does not make you popular. There are right and wrong ways to be an evangelist. Forcing OO downloads is the wrong way.

Re:No compatibility problems?

[theaveng]

>>>MS Word users have used hard returns and a bunch of spaces on the beginning of the next line because they're too stupid to figure out how to do an indented paragraph.

Shouldn't OpenOffice be able to handle that very easily? If it can't properly decode that simple formatting, then something wrong's IMHO.

Re:No compatibility problems?

[rsidd]

Two possible reasons: many academic publishers accept only Word; and many proprietary programs (like Endnote) work only with Word.

I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen

[Trepidity]

The target market for netbooks is generally "normal people", who are more or less by definition not editing Word documents with mathematical formulas in them.

Re:I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen

[Al Dimond]

Odd; I always thought most people would rather have a PDF than a Word doc, unless they were collaborating with you. Certainly, if you're submitting a final, formatted document you'd want to use a format that specifies the rendered output exactly (PDF, Postscript, whatever Microsoft's new-ish one is) instead of one like ODF, Office formats, and TeX input files, which don't.

Re:I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen

[digitig]

Editing formulae is a big concern for me, but my customers demand .doc format, and laTeX to Word conversion just doesn't cut it, unfortunately. For college work I use laTeX, but even that is likely to change as they are moving over to electronic submission and require .doc format too (although to their credit they are promoting OO.o as the way to generate the .doc files).

Re:I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen

[timeOday]

I just render my LaTex equations into png images and insert them into my word document. Sounds crude I know, but entering an equation is enough work that outputting it to an image file isn't a huge amount of overhead, relatively speaking.

Re:I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen

[digitig]

Well, you'll only be in college for 4 years.

Nope. I'm a part-timer, takes a lot longer that way.

Then, welcome to the mathematical community, where you will be laughed at for doing anything in word.

Nope, I'm already in the engineering community (we use equations too) and like I say, customers want Word format documents.

Also (and more importantly) you'll probably get carpel tunnel syndrome from using "equation editor."

Yes, that's why I use laTeX when I can, but the option isn't always open to me. At least my present employer is relaxed about my having it on my work computer -- as far as my previous employer was concerned, it wasn't in list of official company software, so I couldn't have it. Those folks who think people get to choose the software they use clearly have no experience of corporate life.

Re:I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen

[Niten]

As a minor nitpick, TeX input (in conjunction with all images and other source files) does specify the rendered output exactly. Donald Knuth went to great lengths to ensure that a given TeX input will render identically on every machine on which TeX runs, even going so far as to use fixed-decimal numeric representations rather than whatever floating-point formats a given architecture may natively support.

Not that I'd send a TeX/LaTeX input file to someone when a PDF or PostScript file would suffice, of course.

Re:I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen

[jellomizer]

Logistics. It is easier to have all your papers on your computer then a huge package to carry back.

For example I had 2 classes. Human Resource Management, and Topics in Information System. Both required a 14 page paper, One the professor wanted it handed in in paper format the other electronically (you can guess who required what). Needless to say for a class of 30 students average. 30*14 is 420+ pages or papers for the professor to carry to her car bring home. organize, mark up, grade, and bring back to the class and hand them back. Sending them online is a bit easier for some professors as it doesn't require all the moving.

But the advantage is for the student for electronic submission. First once they are done with the paper they can send it in and not worry about having the paper for that class. Next issues such a paper and ink quality don't effect the first impression, I have a lot of budget paper that is a bit more yellow then the expensive high quality paper. I also have High Gloss High white paper for the final projects, and I have a good quality solid ink printer. So for my final projects when I need to hand them in on Paper they look professionally printed. Vs. an InkJet with little white lines of color and looks rather dull. First impression my be the difference between say a B or a B+ Or an A- to an A.

Electronic submission levels the playing field where the InkJet peoples presentation can be just as good at the Solid Ink or Color Laser people.

Secondly if the professor takes the time to Mark up digitally you have a better chance of understanding what the heck they are trying to comment on. For example when I handed in a program via Paper in my undergrad the professor made this comment. "This is the slickest code I have ever seen. Slick not Sick." This was actually a good professor and caught himself on writing a note that may be misread. But other professors will go Red Ink crazy even with complements or good suggestions to help with the learning process but for the life of me I can't read a single sentence.

Third there is an issue of archiving. Professors sometimes like to keep their students previous papers and show them to their new classes so they have a good idea on what is expected of them. Having paper copies could get messy real fast and finding them that much more difficult.

Fourth. Stopping the excuses. Durring normal paper submission and the student said. I couldn't get you the paper because my printer broke. You would need to wait for the next class (depending on your teaching schedule) to get the new version. A digital submission make sure the kid is honest and once whatever excuse has been completed you get the paper before you are ready to do work on it.

Disabled professors. If you are a professor and you are blind a digital copy would be much easier to convert to spoken word or printed out in brail vs. going threw the OCR layer first.

Search and replace. Ok you are bit of a gammer or spelling nazi. And the student spelt one important vocabulary word wrong but did it consistently except for having it bug you every time you see it like that just do a replace with the correct spelling (if you take points off such things it makes sure you don't take points off for repeating the same mistake) Also if you are reading threw these paper quickly there is often a lot of fluff in these papers, students need to make sure they are not coping other peoples work who often write the idea so much clearly and directly it is difficult to make it in your own words (and then reference the idea) without getting a bit fluffy in content. Having papers full of fluff sometimes you may want to search for some text or key points for a faster grading process.

Re:It's right for you. Will you be allowed to buy

[Ckwop]

I'm not quite as cynical as you in that I don't think Microsoft can stop this revolution.

In order to make money they have to charge something for their software. Linux will always be cheaper than a Windows machine.

Apple were smart in positioning themselves as the luxury computer brand.

Linux has made inroads in cheap ultra-portables. Windows has no-where to go. It's too slow for ultra-portables, it's too low quality for a luxury product.

Ultra-portables are probably the future of computing. We're getting to the point where mobile contracts are being sold with a free ultra-portable.

To me, it's much like what happened when the RIAA got in bed with Walmart. The RIAA stabbed record stores in the back by dealing with Walmart.

The record stores had their interests aligned with the RIAA. The more music they sold, the more money they made and the more money the RIAA made.

However, Walmart was a different animal. To Walmart, music was just something that took up shelf space. Suddenly the RIAA was competing with every other product.

The RIAA found that it couldn't dictate the terms any more because Walmart had no qualms about dropping their product if they couldn't get a good deal. The RIAA, owing a good chunk of its revenue to Walmart, suddenly found itself to be Oliver saying: "Please sir, can I have some more?"

In the past Micrsoft could bully system builders because they are like the record stores used to be . They have a vested interest in selling units which is mutually beneficial for both the system builder and Microsoft.

However, computers are now becoming so cheap that they're being given away as a part of other deals. The people crafting these deals don't give a crap if it's Microsoft or not. They can't be bullied because their main line of business has little to do with Microsoft.

Economics is a force more powerful than any individual company. Microsoft is not above this. Vista, to me, just confirmed that Microsoft is just another company. They don't need to make too many more mistakes before it starts to hurt really badly.

I think we're beginning to see the end of the Microsoft monoculture.

1998 called. It wants its issues back.

[fm6]

You talk as if this is something MS might try, when we all know that they've been doing it routinely all along. But this kind of tactic doesn't seem to be working with netbooks. Companies seem to have no trouble making and selling simple Linux netbooks.

The sad thing is that this is not entirely a win for Linux. Yes, it means increased market share. But it only succeeds because there's a basic set of Internet tools that everybody uses and that can be implemented on any widely-used OS. That being the case, vendors might as well use an OS that doesn't come with license fees.

But that means nobody will be able to make a living writing applications for these netbooks — they already have all the software their users need. Most desktop applications will continue to be coded against Microsoft's convoluted, inconsistent, and buggy APIs and platforms.

Re:1998 called. It wants its issues back.

[MtHuurne]

It means more people will view the web through a browser that is not IE. More people will use an office suite that supports ODF. More people will want music and videos without DRM. Even if not a single extra Linux app will be written (which I doubt), Linux as a platform will be supported better.

Re:1998 called. It wants its issues back.

[Bruce Perens]

People can make a living writing applications that have depth, like PhotoShop, or are timely, like TurboTax for the specific tax year, or that have tremendous liability and accuracy issues, like TurboTax, or that, again like TurboTax, aren't written for love, and aren't written by programmers at all but by accountants.

If your software doesn't have depth, or timeliness, etc., it's too late to make money from it. This isn't particularly an Open Source issue.

That leaves us with games, and netbooks aren't game machines, and all of the content you vend via web sites, which is probably where any money to be made will come from.

Re:1998 called. It wants its issues back.

[jbolden]

Are you sure about that? When I see the demographics: kids, college students, train commuters it seems like form factor is what is driving netbooks. But yes I would assume people who are spending little won't spend as much on software....

And I'm not talking about serious applications. Serious applications don't do well on cell phones but complex alarm clocks, mini games and expense report mangers do.

Re:1998 called. It wants its issues back.

[fm6]

I'm the sort of person who's always getting asked to help people with their computers. (I guess all geeks have this experience, but I think I do it more than most, because I'm good at explaining things, which is also what I do for a living.) My experience with this is that most people who use computers outside their jobs use them three things, and three things only: web surfing, email, word processing. Unless they become interested in the technology for its own sake and are in danger of turning into computer geeks (and that's certainly a growing demographic!), they're not interested in expanding their skill set much past this point. Indeed, they tend to resist getting in deeper than they actually have to.

Now, I could be mistaken, but it's my perception that these are the people who are driving the growing popularity of Linux-based netbooks. It's hard to see who else could be driving it — previous attempt to get people to adopt Linux as an alternative to Windows have failed miserably. We all know why: there's too much application lockin on this platform. But if the only applications you're running are the three I just mentioned, application lockin ceases to be an issue.

Maybe I'm wrong, and it is all about the form factor and battery life. But I don't think so.

Re:Spinning cubes?

[MichaelSmith]

No, just flying chairs

There really should be a screen saver for that.

Re:It's right for you. Will you be allowed to buy

[MichaelSmith]

The big problem here is whether you'll be allowed to buy a mini notebook with 1GB and a 120-160 MB hard disk without Windows. Microsoft certainly does not want notebook vendors selling them that way, and has effective strategies to induce them not to do so.

I expect they start with legal bribes, price structures effecting both the vendors larger systems and the smaller ones, and if that doesn't work the patent portfolio comes out and they discuss whether you'd like to cross-license on their terms or be sued.

That won't mean anything to a chinese company willing to sell a netbook online for a hundred bucks.

latex

[jonaskoelker]

LaTeX
Typesetting system well-suited for typesetting math

This is a package you can install on ubuntu to add support for typesetting math-rich documents. Havee you tried this?

Linux is unusable for Businessuse

[hemanman]

Problem is, most Netbooks are bought by companies, that use them for transport and showing PowerPoint presentations at meetings, so for that purpose, you need Windows.

Also, 3G mobile modems are almost impossible to get to work under Linux, and most business have neither the time or the knowledge to get it working. With windows, you just plug it in the USB port and the driver installs itself.

So basically, for business use, you just need Windows XP.

Sad, but very much true.

-H

Re:From an Economist reader

[spazdor]

True, but it's not like he's wrong.

As long as the software you want is in the package manager you're probably OK, but keep in mind that for normal people, they're already in the tangled undergrowth by the time they've gotten to "dependencies".

Re:It's right for you. Will you be allowed to buy

[BUL2294]

Linux has made inroads in cheap ultra-portables. Windows has no-where to go. It's too slow for ultra-portables, it's too low quality for a luxury product.

Since when is a $300-400 netbook PC a "luxury product"? When Toshiba Librettos were the only such product on the market in '96-'99, they were $2000--in "10+ years ago money". Now that's a "luxury product". Plus, a netbook with 512MB RAM and a 1.6GHz Atom processor (which, BTW, has hyper-threading) is easily 15x the minimum requirements for XP Home, and can run that 7-year-old OS quite admirably... So no, it's not "too slow for ultra-portables."

I Disagree With Their OpenOffice Judgment

[LordAlced]

The only reason why I dual boot on my MSI Wind is that MS Office is still better than OpenOffice when it comes to the image-heavy documents I manipulate/edit/create. Other than that, yes, Linux is a must on any netbook.

You misunderstood

[SuperKendall]

Since when is a $300-400 netbook PC a "luxury product"?

It's not - he's defining the more expensive laptops that way. He's saying people will either want a very cheap ultra-portable, or decide to splurge on a higher end laptop such as Apple offers.

Plus, a netbook with 512MB RAM and a 1.6GHz Atom processor (which, BTW, has hyper-threading) is easily 15x the minimum requirements for XP Home

Indeed, what a shame Microsoft has no interest in further sales of XP Home. And I would argue that Linux desktops on really constrained devices are probably still better.

Screw you

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

People who think that netbooks are some special kind of device don't get it. Netbooks succeed where devices like the N810 fail because they *are* real notebooks.

I have an EEE 900HA, which I upgraded to a 100GB 7200 RPM Hitachi HDD (taken from my ThinkPad after I upgraded it to 250GB Seagate) and 2GB of memory. I run Ubuntu 8.10 and Vista on it.

It's a full laptop. It's not a limited, special-purpose device.

I can load Eclipse on it. Or VS2008. Or Word. Or Firefox. Or iTunes.

People who say, "Why not just buy a small laptop" don't get it. I did buy a small laptop. It just happens to be a cheap, low-power, small laptop.

Re:Hardware compatibility, or keyboard compatibili

[TheKidWho]

I had something similar to that occur when I first started using Linux. Mind you, this was in 1999 on what was a decent desktop pc. The problem was the modem, it was one of those damned soft modems that required special drivers to run. I spent a long time trying to get it to work and waiting for open source drivers to be developed. Eventually I gave up trying to get internet to work, however it was a pain in the butt using Linux without net access. That problem was fixed when I built my next computer and made sure not to buy components that I knew would work in both windows and Linux.

Similarly, next time you buy a computer, make sure you buy one without odd hardware. Get one with a good popular chip set and video card. As long as you use what a majority of people use, say sticking to Intel Wireless/USB chipsets with Nvidia/ATI video cards, then you won't have any problems.