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ARM Hopes To Lure Microsoft Away From Intel
Steve Kerrison writes "With the explosion of netbooks now available, the line between PC and mobile phone is becoming much less distinct. ARM, one of the biggest companies behind CPU architectures for mobile phones (and other embedded systems), sees now as an opportunity to break out of mobiles and give Intel a run for its money. HEXUS.channel quizzes Bob Morris, ARM's director of mobile computing, on how it plans to achieve such a herculean task. Right now, ARM's pushing Android as the OS that's synonymous with the mobile Internet. But it's not simply going to ignore Microsoft: 'What if Microsoft offered a full version of Windows (as opposed to Windows Mobile or Windows CE) that used the ARM, rather than X86 (Intel and AMD) instruction set? Then it would be a straight hardware fight with Intel, in which ARM hopes its low power, low price processors will have an advantage.'"
You will kneel before Z80!
Intel has Microsoft by the balls. [maybe not, but i just wanted to say that]
Employing strongARM tactics? Better keep them at ARM's length. (Don't worry, these horrible puns are quite ARMless.)
Given a Microsoft OS, these processors could easily pierce the market as many people would not even notice the difference between an Intel netbook or an ARM netbook. This seems like the best way to enter the market.
But it wouldn't be a straight fight between ARM and Intel. It would be a fight between ARM, StrongARM, Asynchronous ARM (yes, there really is an asynchronous CPU based on the ARM core), and every other ARM variant out there.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Mac users have had to endure 2 processor family changes and finally had to settle for the same one the PC uses. Could you imagine the irony if the PC switched to ARM and the Mac was left using the "outdated" x86 architecture?
We've never been at a point where we could run a full OS in a mobile profile. Yet this could be the bridge we cross over to reach such an awesome concept.
Only five years ago, people would have laughed at the idea of music and video on computers, but today we can use the power of the Internet to access this content with our televisions and stereo systems. It really makes you wonder, if with the decreasing cost and increasing capacity of Compact Flash (CF) technology, not to mention built-in WiFi, we're reaching the level of convergence where it is possible to run the same operating system everywhere.
We can send e-mail with a cellphone, or place phone calls from a computer. Why not play DVDs on a handheld, or browse the Internet with your television? The future is now.
Will I be able to download and run J Random Application and have it execute on my ARM PC? .net might be heading that way, but there is still a hell of a lot of native x86 apps out there.
If the answer is no, then it is simply not going to fly.
Windows on ARM would be as pointless as every other port Microsoft has tried and eventually killed off. And for the same reason, lack of applications.
Microsoft itself has never bothered porting any of their consumer apps such as Office. Remember DEC having to use FX!32 to get Office running via emulation at a fraction of native speed... leading customers to fail to see the advantage of the Alpha. Now we are to expect the hundreds of large and small shops making the Windows apps people associate with "Windows" to all port to a platform where there are no suitable developer workstations available and Windows development tools lack much in the way of cross compiler support.
Compare to Linux on ARM where pretty much the entire Debian/Ubuntu collection is up and running and Adobe has ported the one key closed piece, Flash Player.
Democrat delenda est
Do you remember the last time they tried to introduce a new Windows platform on a non-Intel based architecture?
Yes, it was Windows CE.
The biggest stumbling block was that MS made it look to much like Windows and gave it a confusing name. Users who bought in wondered why none of their favorite apps would work.
If MS went with an ARM architecture, the biggest issue would be everything else. All your apps would have to be specifically compiled to run on one architecture or the other. (Didn't Apple have this problem, and come up with FAT Bits and then carbon?) How many sales would be lost because WoW or game of the day doesn't run on that yet?
Or ARM would have to implement an X86 compatibility layer.
Hmmm. Windows 8 Ultimate Extreme Business Gamer ARM Edition Pro. Sounds like a winning SKU to me.
But will in run on a Mac or in VMWare?
Does it Freeze, lock up, blue screen, crash & reboot like a full windows OS too?
Or more importantly... Can it run Linux?
You're so cute. Who saw that coming?
If Windows runs on ARM, you still have to convince hardware manufacturers to make drivers for your platform. And don't forget you also need to get software houses to compile for your platform as well. good luck with that.
Don't even bother trying to make a deal with the devil. The rotting corpses of the scores of companies screwed over through their dealings with Microsoft line the landscape of the past decades tech industry. Instead, make them come to you and don't make any deals with them either. If ARM based netbooks start becoming a huge commodity, Microsoft is going to have to port a version of Windows to run on ARM processors or they'll end up missing out on sales.
It would probably make a great deal of sense for Microsoft to work on this as well as it would most certainly help out their ailing phone technologies as well. They'd probably rather that ARM-based netbooks not take off in the market, but if they were to do so, Microsoft wouldn't be able to ignore them. I wouldn't bother making any plans with them at this point; they'd only find some way to fuck you over.
Intel and Microsoft do have the same interests and earn a lot of money because of their relationship. What has ARM to offer against that? Mobile phones? Who wants Windows on his phone anyway? Or Linux? Nokia with Symbian still do have lead there simply because they deliver what the customer wants.
why wait for vaporware when you got already available today linux on systems like, android, moblin, ubuntu remix, maemo etc? not to mention the future googleOS, which is based...right...linux!
ARM can't run x86 software, so would be nothing other than a GUI and name recognition, due to the lack of app support. Same issue Windows NT on MIPS and PowerPC had back in the day.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
The article is nothing but FUD. They base the relationship of Microsoft and Intel cooling on a comment an Intel employee made at a trade show that some Microsoft employees in the next booth overheard and said "Hey, we're listening."
This is just another crappy article that is spread over a bazillion pages when one when would do so they can push their advertisers.
"What if Microsoft switched to ARM?"
"What if Count Chocula and the Cookie Monster teamed up kidnapped the Keibler Elves? What if monkey's flew out of Cowboy Neil's butt? What is Megan Fox showed up naked at my front door with Natalie Portman covered in grits?"
Its about the same comparison.
I honestly hope this works, ARM always seems to use a more stable and generally applicable architecture, besides, at this point it the game we can get speed and cores and performance no problem, but in the long run it will always boil down to performance/watt. This might apply more to servers, but I think it is still a good idea for all tiers of computing. Might finally get people to accept a reasonable standard so we can stop splitting the compiler developer community. *pieinthesky*
Which means that an ARM market gets into the same chicken/egg problem that a shift to Linux does.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
nt;
Microsoft was once king on the Intel platform and then came Linux which was much less expensive, followed by Mac OS X which was more user friendly.
So that would mean they would have to fight 2 fronts to survive and try to keep their supremacy.
Now, with notebooks being the new eldorado, Microsoft could benefit a lot more if they try to gain momentum on ARM which Apple cannot afford to follow (yet) because of another big CPU switch.
Wherever there are ARM, the CORE will come to destroy. Long live CORE!
The problem isn't the OS, it's the software for the OS. On Linux, you port the kernel, and then simply rebuild your distro (fixing portability bugs in the process relatively rarely). Job done. On Windows, you need mom & pop go to the car boot sale, buy Knitting Extravaganza 4.0, and still have it install/run successfully.
I think this is the whole reason why microsoft is pushing dot-net and higher-level languages -- not because they care about the languages so much, but because they care about abstracting the windows platform away from PCs until a virtual machine, like Java has been doing for years. Whether Windows, OS X, Linux, or something else wins the desktop wars, Java will survive. Microsoft wants to survive that loss too.
Does it Freeze, lock up, blue screen, crash & reboot like a full windows OS too?
Where is this freezing, locking, BSODing, crashing, and rebooting Windows OS that you speak of? Aside from a few driver conflict issues, I haven't had many problems since Win2k (and XP). I have yet to have a Windows issue on Vista x64 and Windows 7, actually... although I still really didn't like Vista at all.
Disclaimer: No, I am not a Windows fanboy. Yes, I run Linux. I work with AIX, HPUX, Solaris, Windows, and Linux as my day job. I don't like Macs out of principle.
Someone here is ignoring one of the biggest draw of Windows. People can run *their programs* on Windows. They wont be able to do that with Windows on ARM. Then they might as well be running Chrome OS or some other variant of Linux. At least with most variants of Linux they'll have huge selection of software that runs on ARM.
XP was pretty good. After patching it a few times. Windows Vista Home 32 bit still crashes while trying to play Oblivion, and somehow manages to freeze up when playing Pre-Win2K games in "compatibility mode". Windows 7 on the other hand, I haven't had much opportunity to really fiddle around.
Where is this freezing, locking, BSODing, crashing, and rebooting Windows OS that you speak of?
It's called Windows Mobile (formerly Wince) and it already runs on phones.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Was it Linus who said that Microsoft hating was a disease? I am a Linux user at home. I'm not much of a fan for Windows XP and I loath the Vista user interface. Windows 7 actually has me a little excited. And all of these are stable systems. The benefit to Windows XP being around for so long is that Microsoft had a long time to make it stable. I haven't had a blue screen of death on Windows in years. It's time for people to move on from knocking Windows for instability. It just makes them look like lackeys.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
I used Vista x64. No problems with Oblivion, one of th few games I do play. Maybe it was a hrdware or driver issue, I don't know. Hooray for two conflicting anecdotal evidences! ... hehe.
Windows 7 seems much smoother, so far, than Vista - even though I just said I didn't have too many issues with Vista, hehe. I've run some pretty old programs on it with no problems. If you do use Windows, I'd actually recommend it. Oblivion "has issues," according to MS - which I think is an alt-tab issue - but it handles it fine otherwise. It switches the desktop to 'classic' mode before running and switches it back afterwards. NWN2, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Sibelius (music notation software), Age of Empires III ... all working fine so far.
I haven't had a blue screen of death on Windows in years.
Then that means you're doing it wrong!
I'm just kidding, I only ever have them when I'm pushing the limits, IE, running something slightly below the Minimum Requirements.
(Damn you AutoCAD!)
Actually, the first BSOD I had in a number of years was when I installed Vista recently (fully SPed too). I quickly went back to XP until 7 RTM came out.
Yes, I will admit 7 has been quite smooth, apart from the odd lock up/crash when playing TF2. Still, there's your lock up.
Whether you're a fanboy or not, you seem to be ill informed about windows issues. They still exist and are still a thorn in Microsoft's side.
When Apple switched from Motorola 680x0 to PowerPC processors in 1994, they built an emulator into the operating system to allow m68k code to run transparently on the new platform. In fact, they didn't even port the entire operating system itself; bits and pieces of it ran under emulation for years as Apple gradually finished porting it all.
In addition, they created an easy way for applications to be compiled natively for BOTH architectures at the same time, and encouraged application developers to release fat binary versions of their apps. This worked so well that the majority of users weren't even aware that the PowerPC was a completely new incompatible architecture, as opposed to simply a new faster version of what they'd always had.
When Apple switched CPU architectures again, they mostly duplicated this success. Some applications and drivers aren't compatible with Rosetta (the PowerPC emulator), and it's not possible to use a plugin compiled for one processor in an application compiled for another, but Apple's own developer tools offered a simple checkbox to recompile an app as a Universal Binary, and most developers have moved away from third-party compilers.
Microsoft does have x86 emulation technology that they bought from Connectix a few years ago, but they have no experience getting applications to work transparently across dissimilar architectures, and moving from a faster Intel CPU to a slower ARM CPU makes emulation pretty unappealing anyway. Look at what a pain in the ass it is just to get everything to work on a 64-bit version of Windows!
Mac developers are accustomed to following Apple's spontaneous whims, because users consistently reward them with big piles of cash, but Windows developers have a lot less incentive to play ball by releasing native applications for a platform that doesn't exist yet, has no users, and seems unlikely to get users because there is no native software. If they can make the emulation work perfectly, then they might get some users, and if they have users, some developers will start porting their apps. You'll never get all of them, of course, but the ones most people use every day will probably have ARM-native versions introduced. Also, pure .Net applications should work perfectly out-of-the-box. Microsoft wouldn't use a universal binary architecture like Mac OS X; since virtually all Windows applications require an installer and you can't easily move an app from one computer to another without reinstalling it from scratch, there's no reason to do that.
In contrast, Apple could announce a new ARM-based Mac netbook tomorrow, and a majority of developers would have native applications ready to go in six months.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
There is a HTC Shift, a 7" mobile running Vista Business, 800MHz CPU, 1GB RAM and GMA 900.
NT came in Alpha and MIPS once too, you can see how well that went.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
The benefit to Windows XP being around for so long is that Microsoft had a long time to make it stable.
Before that even - Windows 2000 is rock solid. The important point is that they're all derived from the much more stable NT line, as opposed to the shoddy Windows 9x that everyone remembers, and still seems to give Windows a bad name, even though it was a completely different OS (it would be like criticising OS X for the flaws in the joke that was classic MacOS).
I bought a new laptop preloaded with Vista, which blue screened as soon as a USB mouse was plugged in.
You can imagine how impressed I was with my first Vista machine. This was with Vista SP2 out of the box a few months ago.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
If M$ can shove Vista down consumers throats (admittedly their success rate has been low), why can't folks imagine something just as preposterous on the hardware front?
It's pretty hard to blame the OS for a game lockup. In most cases it's the graphics driver getting woefully confused and eating it, resulting in a hard lock, or the game just wedging (if you could get the processor time to switch out you could kill the process, but often you can't--this happens in Linux gaming, what little there is of it, too).
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
(sigh). I miss my Commodore Amiga. So easy-to-use and once an MMU was nstalled, as stable as a rock.
>>>haven't had many problems since Win2k (and XP).
Me neither... on my desktop. The Pentium 4 PC has no problems with XP, but my AMD K6(?) laptop does bluescreen at least once a week. So Windows ain't perfect yet.
And as for Vista, ugh. Last time I turned-on my Vista machine, it claimed I had an invalid serial number. I copied it directly from the CD install disc - don't know why it's giving me hassles. (And of course even when it's working properly, that "Are you sure you want to watch video XYZ?" pop-up is damned annoying.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
XP is simply Windows 2000 with a new coat of paint, so that's why they are so similar. Also these are not just "derived" from NT - they are all still part of that line:
NT 3.1 (first release)
NT 3.5
NT 4.0
2000 = NT 5.0
XP == NT 5.1
Vista == NT 6.0
Windows7 = NT 6.1
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
When the first decent mass produced netbook -running ARM- hits the status of "blisterpack computer hanging near the checkout @ $99.95".. right next to the prepaid cellphones..I think the sales will be a lot better than "nothing other" and there will be browsers and media players and chat clients and wifi and so on, on it. Who knows, I could see a combo package, the netbook AND a cellphone in the same blisterpack.
And people will not care if it isn't microsoft, or x86, just like they don't care much today with cheaper phones. If it does some basic expected things, that's all it needs. They will sell millions of those machines. Browse, watch vids or listen to tunes, do some email, do some messaging...they'll sell. Nailing that C note is a huge marketing psychological advantage, first company there with something that doesn't suck and is "good enough" will get "*rich*. At 3-5 hundred bucks like they are today, nope, just little laptops with no DVD drive, they sell good enough, but... when netbooks crack $100...license to print money almost. More apps and developer interest will follow shortly.
Yes, I run Linux. I work with AIX, HPUX, Solaris, Windows, and Linux as my day job.
You make broken records sound fresh and new. Let me guess, you have some black friends too.
This whole concept is nauseating. Others have explained why above -- no software, the only reason to do it is to emulate the UI, and we can do that with Linux, and why would we?
(That's what makes me gag.)
Okay, the other reason is marketing, to go with the crowd, to be "in" because Bill Gates is "in".
(And that also makes me gag.)
Sure, it's my opinion, but why mod me down for saying so in a crude way?
-this happens in Linux gaming
Bullshit! You fucking piece of shit troll. In all the years I have used Linux, the kernel has never not once locked up. If something, like a game, freezes X, it is braindead trivial to just ssh into the box from another machine and
$ ps aux | grep $OFFENDING_APP
$ kill -9 $OFFENDING_APP_PID Your lies aren't fooling anyone so go scuttle back under your bridge and get some new ones fucking shill bastard.
I've stuck with Intel motherboards, intel CPUs and Nvidia video for the past 6 years, and the only blue screen i have seen in that time (on my desktop, don't get me started on the BIOS and driver issues on my P.O.S. Dell E6400 under Vista) was due to faulty RAM.
But again, blue screens on the E6400 are Dell's fault. As proven by them coming and going with various BIOS and driver updates.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Sorry, but I *HAVE* had shitty drivers in Linux cause lockups when playing a graphically intense game. Hard-lock, wouldn't even panic. I've also seen kernel panics from drivers with nearly-correct hardware. Linux isn't immune from faulty drivers/hardware locking up the OS.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
it'll suffer the same problem as the PPC version of Windows did, no applications.
All versions of Windows NT for x86 have a compatibility environment for running DOS apps and Windows 3.1 apps. All versions of Windows NT for x86-64 have a compatibility environment for running Win32 apps. Why can't Windows NT for ARM have a compatibility environment for running Windows CE apps?
When people read the specs and it says "Windows 7", they will expect to run Windows apps on it.
Not if it says "Windows Mobile 7".
Because anything positive said about Windows usually prompts responses shrilly claiming that the parent poster must be a paid shill. Without any proof, of course.
Apple already ships a huge number of OS X machines with ARM chips, they just brand them as iPhones and iPod Touches. OS X makes it easy to add another architecture for fat binaries
Currently, if I compile an app as a fat binary for x86 and ARM, it won't actually run on a computer with an ARM CPU unless I pay Apple $99 to join the iPhone Creators Club. If Apple were to introduce "Mac" brand computers with ARM CPUs, how would the "fat binary" system handle different code signing requirements per instruction set?
Anyone expecting games (not counting little cellphone suitable stuff) to EVER be released as managed code will grow old and die waiting.
Games on .NET? Let me Bing that for you.
So, what you're telling me is that it does wedge the system for any normal user?
Awesome. Thanks for the corroboration.
Unless you're trolling to demonstrate how braindead-fucked-up the Linux-on-the-desktop people tend to be, in which case I applaud heartily.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Erm. Freezing X and freezing the kernel are totally different. Bluescreens and driver crashes in windows are in the kernel, and they'd cause the same problems in linux, you just don't see them as often because you generally don't get production-rushed, crappy games there :p
Yes, I've worked for nvidia on their kernel driver, on windows and linux.
It is good opportunity to make another Apple-like machines, e.g. running really damn polished Ubuntu or something like that.
The JVM concept works. Right now I develop on an Intel/Linux[1] desktop and deploy the exact same jar files to an ARM system and a PowerPC system. Saves me a HUGE amount of effort. The user interface is via the web, so it all looks the same no matter where it runs. Luckily the JIT compilers make things fast enough so the app can be a pure java app, no dll/so required.
[1] The rest of the developers use Intel/Windows. Makes very little difference
for what we do except for video rendering.
No, troll, but thanks for playing and winning the stoopie prize. On Linux, you log into the machine from another machine and unfreeze the user interface by killing whatever poorly coded app that caused the problem as a worse case scenario. Only thing you lose is the data in the app that froze X.
Contrast this to Winduhs where you lose everything right about the time you press the power button as that is the only to unlock a frozen Winblows box.
But you knew that. Hence, your OS of choice is shit and you are a troll.
Then Microsoft will be happy to follow suit!
Seriously though, an Apple "netbook" tablet style PC with a reasonable size screen (10" maybe?) with gestureriffic stuff and some nice note taking software would be awesome. I'd probably even preorder one... and I've never owned an Apple PC before. :-)
Sometimes I wonder if I think too much.
And once it's done, you've a way to run apps typically designed for a cell phone screen, with cell-phone buttons, on what is essentially a small laptop.
Every Windows Mobile device I've used has been a Pocket PC with a touch screen. And there even used to be Windows CE subnotebooks.
This would be a great time for Microsoft to get rid of 1001 compatibility fixes for applications that still rely on misfeatures DOS for x86 and will never be recompiled for ARM anyway. Maybe Windows will be able to become stable and secure in this iteration.
How do you prove whether a particular poster is a paid shill or not? Who knows? How do you prove anything? I'll spare you the philosophical implications of that questions as you aren't intellectually equipped to appreciate them anyway. However, it is a known and verifiable fact that Microsoft does indeed pay people to troll internet forums like slashdot and spout vague shill bullshit. In memos released during a certain trial against Microsoft, it said precisely that and one of the tactics discussed in the document to give the professional propagandist "credibility" was to pretend to be a Linux user that "is willing to give Windows its due"
Don't insult your inteligence by pretending this isn't so. And, if you are so oblivious or stupid to not already be aware of this fact, look it up. Typically, I don't do trolls' research for them but, this time, I'll at least point you to a couple of good places to get started.
You obviously have some studying up to do, so I'll bid a good day sir.
Yeah, because I really keep another computer around just in case X wedges when I'm playing the (very few) games that exist on Linux.
Oh, wait. I don't, because my other machines (which do run Linux) are all headless and keyboardless.
You're a fucking retard.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
[quote]Aside from a few driver conflict issues, I haven't had many problems since Win2k (and XP).[/quote]
Aside from a few recurring issues that the average user would not have a clue how to fix, would probably just live with?
There is no evidence that MS is interested in porting Windows to ARM, the only thing anyone from ARM has said is that they would like WIndows to be available from ARM. They have not said that they will make any particular effort to get it ported.. This is all pure speculation.
I've been writing PC/console games for 10 years now, and these days if your system locks (at least while playing something like TF2, especially fullscreen) there's a 90% chance it's a driver issue, most likely video drivers.
I've been a mac user since 1984, run ubuntu on my netbook, and have refused to install any MS software on my macs (mostly as a test). I also have to run windows at work (xbox dev sort of requires it), and it almost never crashes. It hurts me to say it, but it's true.
There are still countless horrible design flaws all over windows, but frequent OS instability in the absence of buggy driver-level code is now rare.
Wow, you proprie-tards just don't know when to shut the fuck up. You think I give a shit how many computers you don't have? Go buy a fucking netbook or something. Or, shit, get an ssh client for your cellphone. You have one of those right, you unimagininitave prick? I'm just saying that you can unfreeze a stuck Linux machine by logging in. Something you singularly can't do with your precious Windows. Of course, you won't acknowledge that I am just right and move on. No, you have to pull the classic professional propaganist dick move of just dancing around a point when you are cornered on it. You make me want to vomit. But back to the point, for anyone else that may be reading this, as a matter of fact, with putty, you can even use the Windows box to do the logging in with.
And, something else, you keep throwing the bait out there about Linux not having many games. Last I checked, there were plenty of first tier games that work on Linux. Are they Linux games in the truest sense of the word? No. But, who gives a fuck? FarCry 2, Fallout 3, Oblivion, Morrowind, Half-Life 2, etc. seem to work well on my box. So, suck it, bitch. This is Linux on the desktop. And I hope you don't like it. Sucks to be you because we will be here long after the last BSOD has faded into ancient history.
Is that a regular ton + the weight of the approximate animal that shit that much for a whole year?
So, the average 180lb man would excrete 1 shit ton or equivalent of 2 English pounds of solid waiste for 365 days to meet the expectancy of his shit ton?
I know a full-size mare would reach a man's shit ton every 2 months easily, so that would make a man about 1/6 mare shit ton, and if a man were to sire a creature to be half-horse then that offspring would be 1/3 mare shit ton.
I know I kinda eluded onto a metric that might differentiate from yours, so I'll wait for your enlightenment O-ring King.
On a related note, I've had kernel panics while installing Arch Linux. Not a knock against Arch at all, I'm really interested in getting it on my machine but the fact is that bad/broken drivers will lock up any OS, and a BSOD is always a hardware issue by design. The only time I've seen a BSOD in the past 8 years or so was recently when I was undervolting my laptop to reduce the heat, but I expected it to happen anyway.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Clearly you've never had a driver wedge the kernel, you maggot-fucked brain-dead freetard. I have. It happens. And no, you can't just magically SSH into it when it panics because the graphics driver shits itself.
And WINE doesn't count for games when I have a perfectly good Windows machine right here. You can't help but fail, can you?
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
work on Linux.
lol.
You imbecile! Pull Ballmer's cock from your mouth long enough to think for a second. I never said anything about sshing into a box that has a kernel lock. Dumbshit, I was talking about X freezing up. You can even refer to my original post in this thread where I quite specifically said I had never had a kernel lock up. Again, in proprietard-land, sometimes, explorer freezes. When this happens, it's over. You reboot. When X freezes, you do what I've already said like three times. Since you are obviously so slow or just blinded by your hatred of freedom and open source, I'll spell it out. Your monopoly fueled Wintendo bullshit is fucking buggy bloated slow trash. Stick it up your ass.
As far as Wine not counting, just hold on a minute. Oftentimes, Wine works better than your [sic]"perfectly good Windows". I had almost given up on FarCry as there was a weird graphical glitch that made everything black around my character everywhere I went back when I used to be shackled to the Winduhs teet like you are. Then, when I moved on to Linux, I decided to try FarCry in Wine to see what would happen. And wouldn't you know it, the black shit was gone. And furthermore, the game was considerably smoother. When new enemies jumped out, they didn't jerk at all. It was all perfectly smooth. Unlike Windows where there would always be the slightest momentary freeze when something new would hit the screen. So, yes, Wine is a credible alternative. I wouldn't go back to gaming on Windows if Ballmer open sourced the whole thing tomorrow. The only thing failing is you and your bullshit.
Now, go back to your magnificent Vista *snicker*, fire up Internet Exploiter and jack off to some Win7 press releases. And while you're at it, don't forget to reboot the next time you update your precious fucking graphics driver that you seem to love so much.
It doesn't matter if MS creates a full Windows OS for ARM, x86 has a different instruction set. Existing Windows software still wont work on it. For backwards compatability, a newer Windows version that either emulates, or requires applications have two sets of instructions would be a nightmare for developers and probably support in general. Imagine the transition from one windows OS to the next, multiplied by 100 times as much pain.
Because of Linux, a soup'd-up ARM processor already has a full OS. There's no lack of one.
There's also no mention of AMD in the article...? The (stronger) ARM would be competing with two companies, with a product that isn't directly compatible. No way they'll coexist, and Windows isn't going to ditch Intel for ARM, like Mac ditched Motorola for Intel.
A quick Google for "Oblivion crash vista" gives things like this
http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/trying-to-get-oblivion-to-work-on-vista#post-53749
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Again, in proprietard-land, sometimes, explorer freezes. When this happens, it's over.
1998 much?
You seem very angry. I guess being a perpetual virgin does that to you.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I never said anything about sshing into a box that has a kernel lock.
Yeah, but I did. Read my first post: in most cases it's the graphics driver getting woefully confused and eating it, resulting in a hard lock. That's a kernel issue. I've been talking about a kernel issue the entire time, except where I bothered to laugh at you for your "well yeah but if X freezes" inanity (where you very well illustrated why I, despite having three headless Linux servers locally and running a number of VMs on Rackspace's cloud services, don't use Linux on my desktop, and how out-of-touch you are with how people actually use their computers). I'm friends with a guy who worked at nVidia on their Linux driver code; even pointed him at this thread. He agreed with me and did so in tones that suggested he found it incredible that you would even contest it.
You seem to be unable to stay on point, though. Ah well. It's okay. Really, Linux appreciates how vitriolic you get about it. Your behavior truly makes other people more interested in Linux. You're awesome.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Since I'm feeling charitable, and I know you won't be capable of understanding what I mean by "1998 much," let me explain: the explorer process can be killed, just like any other process. If explorer wedges, you hit Ctrl-Shift-Escape (or Ctrl-Alt-Delete and click "Task Manager"). This gives you a little thing called a "task manager"--it's like your little Linux "top" command, only it's actually useful for things. Still following with me? Now, you use that mouse thing attached to your computer and you click "explorer.exe". I know it's hard, but stay with me: now click "End Process." Wow! It goes away! But now you need to restart it. Don't be scared, man, it's easy: go to "File", click "New Task", type "explorer" into the friendly wittle box that pops up, and click "OK."
Ain't that amazing? Not rebooting to address a wedged shell! (And, to forestall your tired wrong horseshit, under Vista you can even just kill the desktop manager if it runs amok.)
Just because you don't know how to use Windows and are hostile to things that confuse and upset you doesn't mean the rest of us are as incapable of normal human function as you are. I use Linux, OS X, Solaris, and Windows every day. The best tools for the best jobs. And, no, Linux is not the best tool for the job on the desktop for me. Sorry, but no amount of sad basement vitriol changes that.
I'd say "go home," but it's an open question when the last time you left your basement was. :-)
AMD logo on an ARM newsitem?
Slashdot is getting old ...
hit Ctrl-Shift-Escape (or Ctrl-Alt-Delete and click "Task Manager"). This gives you a little thing called a "task manager"--it's like your little Linux "top" command, only it's actually useful for things. Still following with me? Now, you use that mouse thing attached to your computer and you click "explorer.exe". I know it's hard, but stay with me: now click "End Process." Wow! It goes away!
Damn, and to think I go through all the trouble of hitting ctrl+alt+backspace to do the exact thing in one quick step. Boy, Windows sure does have me beat there.
And task manager is real useful. Let's see. click process, click end process. Nothing happens for something like 10 seconds. Little box pops up, would you like to end this process (or whatever). /facepalm. When I want to end a stubborn app, I click a certain little icon on my taskbar, my mouse cursor turns into a little skull and crossbones. I click on what I want to die and it goes away. Instantly. Funny how that works. You know, without the interminable delay and all you get with Windows with every little thing.
Linux isn't ready for your desktop. Fair enough. But making up stories to try to make Windows look better is just plain ugly. I've used Windows. I use Linux now. Linux does everything Windows did for me including play games, run windows only crapps like Quicken (Wine is better than you think), and tons more that Windows is not capable of at all and it does it faster with less drama. Face it, you got sucked into the Windows mindset and now your subconscious is doing everything it can to try to continue justifying it.
As for your basement wisecrack, you'd be surprised. I'm a business owner and it one of the reasons I kick my competitors squarely in their asses is technical savvy and running an open source stack. I can't do anything but laugh when people extol the supposed virtues of closed source software. That's just a joke. Some proprietary software is more featureful but where you're lacking is flexibility. I'll spare you the details but, I couldn't be happier. This has been fun. Bedtime.
Of course that only works if your computer is on a network, you have access to another computer on that network, and ssh access from that other computer to the frozen-X one is enabled.
And BTW, before doing the kill -9, it's a good idea to first try kill -15 (note: -15 is the default for the kill command), kill -2 and kill -1. Unlike kill -9, those give the misbehaving application a chance to clean up. Most applications still react to a regular kill, and an astonishing number of those who don't react on -15 do so on -2 or -1. It's a very rare case that you have to resort to the "nuclear option" -9.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Assuming windows was ported to arm, what about applications?
In the linux world, most apps come with sourcecode and are relatively easy to recompile for arm, you can use an existing distribution like debian which has thousands of applications already compiled for the arm processor, or if you are making such hardware it's not a huge effort to compile appropriate applications yourself.
Most linux applications are coded fairly cleanly, those badly written ones which don't are likely to have been fixed already since linux runs on so many different platforms.
On windows however, most apps come without sourcecode, and only come with binaries for x86, the vast majority of apps don't even come with x86-64 versions.
Only the original app vendor has the capability to port the application to arm, which brings up lots of problems...
Most windows app vendors are for-profit companies, they won't port to an architecture which doesn't have an existing user base. (conversely, a user base wont bulid around an architecture which has no apps)
It's impossible to tell how portable their code is, for some it may be possible to just recompile, but my experience of commercial development is that the build environment is often quite fragile and would need quite a lot of work to target a new platform.
Many people continue to run apps that aren't supported anymore by their original vendors, so no chance of porting.
The only thing windows really has going for it, is the existing base of applications... if you port it to arm, you take all that away so you end up with an immature expensive os with very few applications and very few users which compares very poorly to linux/arm.
the only thing that would help it sell is the windows name, but it would earn itself a very bad reputation when the customers realized they had effectively been tricked.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Tourette much?
I've looked at BeagleBoard and some other TI OMAP3 board specs. They all have PowerVR video/3D accelerator, which does not have any open-source drivers. And I'm not even sure about closed source ones. These boards lose 90% of their cool without them.
Reading these specs felt like kissing a girlfriend and then getting kicked in the groin... Especially at a time when it is becoming possible to have a 100% open-source supported hardware in desktop machines (ATI drivers started supporting new cards, lots of opensource wifi drivers are mature, etc).
--Coder
This was a fairly expensive Toshiba and Vista's default drivers... it was a fucking Microsoft mouse.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
All current ARM processors are 32-bit. There is nothing imminent on the roadmap for a 64-bit ARM processor.
You can kill an X11 application too, using xkill, or terminal and a top...
Both of these examples assume the GUI is functional, which it might not be (some programs, eg vmware, can hijack all input, and if such a program crashes you often find yourself unable to interact with the gui even if technically it hasn't crashed)...
On Linux the gui is not an inherent part of the system, and the entire gui system (X11) can be killed and restarted... Explorer is not the equivalent of X11, it's not even the equivalent of a window manager, it's closer to nautilus.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Good luck with that. Never gonna happen.
The point I was pointing out, and that you missed (as you apparently aren't intellectually equipped to appreciate this) is that just because Microsoft pays shills doesn't mean that a given person with a positive opinion of a Microsoft product is necessarily a Microsoft shill.
And the reality is that it doesn't matter. In one case, the person is conveying their opinion, which can be simply countered with yours, and really doesn't matter in any debate (an opinion isn't proof of anything). In the other case, they're conveying facts, which can be verified or discounted. Claiming that a person is a shill is an anti-intellectual appeal to emotion. Its intellectual dishonesty, unless you have any proof to back up the claim (which they never do). In case you missed it with your staggering intellect, proof here means proof that the person in question is a shill, not proof that Microsoft in general pays for shills.
But then again, you're linking to boycottnovel and twitter's journal, so you know all about intellectual dishonesty (Hell I'm giving it a 50/50 that you are twitter. Hi twitter!) But go ahead, have fun labeling me a troll. Easier to dodge the point that way, isn't it?
Can I keep knocking them for their lousy documentation, unsupported libraries, Dilbert-driven technical decisions, and unethical conduct? I used to never knock Microsoft when I was a Java developer. Now that I'm a native coder, I understand.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Yes
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Ctrl-Alt-Delete is handled below the explorer.exe level, and so still responds even if explorer.exe does not, but my point was that explorer hanging, as the angry little AC insisted, did not mean you had to reboot.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
The funniest bit about this whole thing is that my business's products run on LAMP, because it's the best environment for it. I use Windows on the desktop because it works best for me. I don't call it the best one out there (as far as I'm concerned, OS X has that, I just don't feel like paying for a Mac), but all my business applications run on open-source.
You're a very angry person.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
You seem to be very much in love with your argument and, as such, are unlikely to be swayed by me. However, in true Quixotian fashion...
I'll try to break this down as simply as possibly so as not to overwhelm you. If someone makes an assertion that cannot be proven one way or another, such as, "in my experience, blah blah blah", you have no choice but to consider the character, hence the trustworthiness of the person making the assertion. Especially on an internet forum where you have practically squat to go on. This is doubly so when that person is making a seemingly dubious claim that flies in the face of your own experience. In this regard, judging whether a person fits the classic pattern of a shill, and if so, pointing this out as conspicuously as possible, is not only being intellectually honest but one would be completely remiss not doing so as early as it becomes apparent. I guess in your world, every opinion is taken completely at face value and the concept of "reading between the lines" doesn't even exist. Your wide-eyed innocence almost touches me.
I've been around this stuff long enough and have enough common sense and street smarts to know when someone is feeding me a line of bullshit. Anyone that tries to argue against that is either a fool or is in on the deceit himself. Draw your own conclusion from that.
Amalgamated Regional Militia?
(Its from the Known Space universe)
You're playing a game on your ARM-based netbook away from home - remember, that's what we're talking about here. Not sure what you're playing, Tux Racer, maybe, because that's about all it could handle that runs on Linux. Oh, wait, maybe LBreakout. Anyway, something crashes and you need to SSH into it. Wait, you're on your netbook that you suggested someone buy for the purpose of SSHing into other computers. And you can't set up an ad hoc connection between your cell phone and your netbook because you'd have to SSH in to do that, and last I checked, phones didn't have ethernet or (lately, anyway - yes, I know, Palm OS stuff has them, but you're a Linux beardo that probably has a Freerunner, forget a G1 or a Pre) RS232 ports.
But this is purely a hypothetical that you wouldn't understand, because you'd have to actually venture out of your mom's basement to encounter such a situation.
This article says Linux netbook return rates were high. We keep seeing this. But that doesn't square with what the CEO of Asus reports:
http://ostatic.com/blog/asus-ceo-says-linux-netbook-returns-on-par-with-windows
"He says ASUS has found the return rates for the Linux and Windows models are similar. He also said that Linux has been quite popular in the European market."
You shouldn't be having to confirm to watch a video. If it's a UAC dialog, then you should check to make sure that the viewer you're using isn't writing data out to Program Files or anything, and if it is either swap to a program which is more multiuser friendly or increase your permissions to the location in question.