Although it's a shame that VIA has decided to leave the business of creating Intel/AMD chipsets, I think we're going to see an exciting new chapter in the company's history unfold. Now that VIA has finally developed a competitive processor and made a serious commitment to openness in both hardware (unlike Intel with their Atom line) and software (by releasing specs and hiring free software developers), I'm excited to see their complete solutions become available on the market.
If VIA manages to create a very low-power motherboard solution I may end up getting multiple of these for general use. It looks more and more like Intel and AMD are targetting the mid-to-high end when what most people need is a Nano or Atom based solution (and in my case Loongson/MIPS and ARM Cortex are part of the mix too). I'm not all too happy with Intel and would give up any performance benefit for a solution from a company that has ethics high on their list of virtues.
What exactly do you mean? The integrated graphics on newer ATI/AMD chipsets have free drivers just like the Intel ones. And by Chinese processors, do you mean you're going to buy Loongson, Via or other lesser-known ones?
I was looking at Intel's Atom and Via's Nano as viable processors for low-energy but relatively high-performance systems, but it's clear to me now that Loongson 2E/2F based systems will have a considerable power consumption advantage whenever x86 is not a requirement, not to mention that it may outperform both of them when compiler optimisations hit future releases of MIPS distributions (such as my own, an inofficial Slackware port).
I would like to get my hands on an Nvidia Tegra based device, but unfortunately it's being restricted to Windows Embedded only at the time. So until Nvidia sees the light and supports other operating systems, it unfortunately isn't a viable choice for those wanting something else than Windows.
I'm not impressed either. I'm waiting for Cortex A8 (and A9) based processors, boards and devices to become more widely available. On these kinds of devices the architecture doesn't matter, so my first choice would be an ARM and second a MIPS implementation for low power consumption and accummulated energy costs, which would greatly offset an initially even higher purchase price.
I have read the thread an agree that he comes about as a spoilt brat. The people over there have been really helpful as far as they can be and he has been behaving in a very arrogant and hostile manner. Still he is right that such a thing shouldn't happen. The bug should be and most likely is already fixed, so instead of whining about such an older Ubuntu release he should try a current one and report if the problem he had then persists unless he doesn't actually want to run Ubuntu, in which case he is probably better off with Windows or Mac OS X.
I am glad that there are still some people around that don't seem to think that Red Hat, SUSE and Mandrake and the newer Debian derivatives (Ubuntu, Mepis and Linspire a.o.) are all the options available. I've been a user of Slackware for the last four years and can honestly say that I'd rather use BSD or Solaris than another Linux distribution, even though Debian and Gentoo also possess some of that UNIX spirit (stability, reliability, speed and simplicity, essentially KISS) that is really lacking nowadays.
In fact I have ported the current Slackware release to MIPSEL and SPARC and am looking forward to do the same for Itanium somewhere in the future if I can get my hands on a system containing such processors. You don't need very powerful hardware to get a port completed, even though faster is better of course.
I can't really accuse you of not telling the truth. I'm not an Ubuntu user even though I have installed mostly Kubuntu for a few people. I am in fact a Slackware user and developer and regard this kind of behaviour from the forum posters as very immature. But I think this is more a result of the level of knowledge that most forum posters possess. In my opinion it's more like the blind leading the blind and in the end that doesn't really lead to solutions for your problems.
I am also puzzled at what Windows really has to do with Linux and Ubuntu in particular, they are two completely different systems. Although Ubuntu makes it easier to start using Linux without knowing about the details of the operating systems, thus lowering the barrier to entry, that doesn't mean it is flawless at all and there are indeed plenty of bugs. Still it's much better than the horrible experiences I have had with SUSE, Red Hat/Fedora and Mandrake.
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Although it's a shame that VIA has decided to leave the business of creating Intel/AMD chipsets, I think we're going to see an exciting new chapter in the company's history unfold. Now that VIA has finally developed a competitive processor and made a serious commitment to openness in both hardware (unlike Intel with their Atom line) and software (by releasing specs and hiring free software developers), I'm excited to see their complete solutions become available on the market.
If VIA manages to create a very low-power motherboard solution I may end up getting multiple of these for general use. It looks more and more like Intel and AMD are targetting the mid-to-high end when what most people need is a Nano or Atom based solution (and in my case Loongson/MIPS and ARM Cortex are part of the mix too). I'm not all too happy with Intel and would give up any performance benefit for a solution from a company that has ethics high on their list of virtues.
What exactly do you mean? The integrated graphics on newer ATI/AMD chipsets have free drivers just like the Intel ones. And by Chinese processors, do you mean you're going to buy Loongson, Via or other lesser-known ones?
I was looking at Intel's Atom and Via's Nano as viable processors for low-energy but relatively high-performance systems, but it's clear to me now that Loongson 2E/2F based systems will have a considerable power consumption advantage whenever x86 is not a requirement, not to mention that it may outperform both of them when compiler optimisations hit future releases of MIPS distributions (such as my own, an inofficial Slackware port).
I would like to get my hands on an Nvidia Tegra based device, but unfortunately it's being restricted to Windows Embedded only at the time. So until Nvidia sees the light and supports other operating systems, it unfortunately isn't a viable choice for those wanting something else than Windows.
I'm not impressed either. I'm waiting for Cortex A8 (and A9) based processors, boards and devices to become more widely available. On these kinds of devices the architecture doesn't matter, so my first choice would be an ARM and second a MIPS implementation for low power consumption and accummulated energy costs, which would greatly offset an initially even higher purchase price.
I have read the thread an agree that he comes about as a spoilt brat. The people over there have been really helpful as far as they can be and he has been behaving in a very arrogant and hostile manner. Still he is right that such a thing shouldn't happen. The bug should be and most likely is already fixed, so instead of whining about such an older Ubuntu release he should try a current one and report if the problem he had then persists unless he doesn't actually want to run Ubuntu, in which case he is probably better off with Windows or Mac OS X.
I am glad that there are still some people around that don't seem to think that Red Hat, SUSE and Mandrake and the newer Debian derivatives (Ubuntu, Mepis and Linspire a.o.) are all the options available. I've been a user of Slackware for the last four years and can honestly say that I'd rather use BSD or Solaris than another Linux distribution, even though Debian and Gentoo also possess some of that UNIX spirit (stability, reliability, speed and simplicity, essentially KISS) that is really lacking nowadays.
In fact I have ported the current Slackware release to MIPSEL and SPARC and am looking forward to do the same for Itanium somewhere in the future if I can get my hands on a system containing such processors. You don't need very powerful hardware to get a port completed, even though faster is better of course.
I can't really accuse you of not telling the truth. I'm not an Ubuntu user even though I have installed mostly Kubuntu for a few people. I am in fact a Slackware user and developer and regard this kind of behaviour from the forum posters as very immature. But I think this is more a result of the level of knowledge that most forum posters possess. In my opinion it's more like the blind leading the blind and in the end that doesn't really lead to solutions for your problems.
I am also puzzled at what Windows really has to do with Linux and Ubuntu in particular, they are two completely different systems. Although Ubuntu makes it easier to start using Linux without knowing about the details of the operating systems, thus lowering the barrier to entry, that doesn't mean it is flawless at all and there are indeed plenty of bugs. Still it's much better than the horrible experiences I have had with SUSE, Red Hat/Fedora and Mandrake.