Shifting Apps To ARM Chips Could Save Laptop Batteries

An anonymous reader writes "When is an Intel PC not an Intel PC? When it moves applications such as Internet browsing and email on to an ARM processor because it can get longer battery life. And according to a story at EE Times, this hybrid Intel-ARM processor approach is being taken by PC makers as prominent as Dell. The problem for Intel: Why would you switch out of 'all-day' mode and use the Intel processor? The problem for ARM: lacking support from Microsoft for Windows; the applications it runs for the PC have to do so under Linux."

Comments

And this is how Linux will win.

[B5_geek]

And this is how Linux will win. Not with a bang but a whimper. Embedded appliances, dedicated purpose applications, and multi-platform compatibility.

Firefox, Thunderbird, and (hopefully) soon KDE.

MS users who don't know any better, will win this for us.

Geeks like us have already dominated the server-side of the Linux equation, now fools will win the desktop for us.

Re:Not a problem

[ByOhTek]

Not really even a problem for Windows, at least a long term one.

There have been some instances (PPC Mac I think?) where they ran a lightweight QEMU + Wine to get wine working on a non-Intel platform.

They may start a standard application layer that will determine if the binary is x86 or ARM, and shuffle it to the correct processor, they applications will only need to make ARM based variants. Either that or use something related to dynamic recompiling to put stuff on the ARM processor on the fly.

Now, the question is, do they want to spend the effort.

ARM notebook

[ChristTrekker]

Funny...I read the story and was going to ask on this thread, "Where could I get an ARM-based laptop to run Linux on?" All day on a battery would be fantastic.

Re:Options

[painehope]

Out of curiousity, not hostility, can I ask why?

I work as a systems architect/administrator (whatever you want to call it) for UNIX/Linux-based large datacenters, but also use Linux personally and for non-technical tasks (e.g. Word, Excel, and assorted other files), without any difficulty. And I've been using Linux for almost 10 years now - back when things were difficult for users that weren't highly technical.

The only things I ever find myself using Windows for is to run Visio (if someone could recommend a F/OSS replacement for it, it would be greatly appreciated, but I have yet to find one as full-featured - or even close) or to play games (which I do rarely, I prefer other forms of entertainment). And Flash rarely works to my satisfaction, but I don't really consider that a great loss either.

I just don't understand it when people say that they can't switch over to Linux. Or at least dual-boot. Not to insult your intelligence, but most modern distributions are simple to install and productively work in. Maybe it's my background, maybe it's your choice of distributions, but I fail to see what the fuss is about. Especially when there are distributions (Ubuntu, for example) that are specifically geared towards non-technical users. While I personally find Ubuntu to be over-simplified and (as of my last use, about 3 years ago) not secure enough, I don't see why it wouldn't be easy to use as well as a vast improvement over Windows.