Pentalobe Drivers are like $3 on Ebay, but you REALLY want to spend the the money on a Wiha, which fits far more precise. I also recommend a brand new set of screws as well, not only because they are pre-threadlocked, but also you will probably damage one getting it out. And that's just to get inside, it only gets worse inside.
Sadly, Ipads and Surface tablets are worse... Never again.
Airs always rate low on repairability, 90% of the 11in form were sold with only 4gigs and usually a small ssd, which has a proprietary connector, newer models even use Apple's pentalobe screws (which are ridiculously small and easy to strip).
On top of that, battery life is atrocious is Linux and you have to fix a resume problem.
Sometimes called the Princeton, NP300 or just 300.
11.6in screen, 3rd gen Core I3, 8gigs ram, 2.5 pounds, standard 2.5in drive (easy to add SSD) same form factor as old netbooks. Battery life could be better, but still a fantastic little machine. Not always easy to find, but the last one I saw on Ebay went for well under $100, you could add an ssd and 8gigs and still be under $200.
Not only that, most were sold with only 4 gigs of ram (blah) and they don't exactly take to Linux well.
My 2014 gets 3 hours on Mint (with power optimization), 5 hours on Windows and 9 hours on Mac. Linux also had an issue with sleep if I remember right. It can be fixed with some effort, but the battery will always be an issue.
Like almost every other CAD program, neither of those CAD programs run natively in Mac.
And no, you can't always just run them in a VM, not only is it slower (negating the point of 32gigs), but Solidworks 2016 will throw up an error if you do.
I'm amazed no big company has stepped up to do it yet, how much are companies spending fighting all of these?
Microsoft only stepped up it's game to stop the fake updates when they wanted to display ads in the OS, which tells you exactly how much these companies really care about it, so long as it's not truly effecting their bottom line or putting them at risk of being sued they won't bother. There's a reason ads have such a bad reputation and it's one that's well deserved.
Besides adblockers, switch your dns to OpenDNS, they block most ad networks so your blocker has less to do.
32bit UEFI support in anything other than Windows 8+ is terrible. Even if you get it to boot it's likely to need special drivers, which no one will bother making (thanks Intel!). This is no different from all the cheap Atom tablets and notebooks currently on the market, looks like a great Linux platform, except that it isn't.
Linux has long had better hardware support, but often it was older hardware that Windows users didn't care about.
As for using the Windows version, yes, you could make it work, but you may have to download extra drivers, and there is another consideration with the hardware you should be concerned with more than that, and that is battery life. Just because something is supported, doesn't mean it plays well with it. I've seen systems lose only a small fraction of runtime while others lost more than half.
My bet is that Dell put in components that not only work out of the box, but aren't going to chew up the battery either.
How does your battery life compare to the Windows version, Linux (unfortunately) almost always takes a hit on this. My x220, even with every trick I could find, still lost 10-20%, by contrast, while I'm still tweaking it, my Macbook Air loses 60% (ouch).
"Samsung is in talks with telcos from nine other countries where the phablet is available to deploy a similar software upgrade."
This is a great example of just how broken Android really is. If it was Apple (and MS?), everyone would get this right away, but instead it has to be dealt with carrier by carrier, and if your carrier decides not to allow for the patch ("bandwidth!"), Samsung decides not to work with your carrier, or someone misses an email you won't be getting it at all.
Telcos should have zero say in when or how you update your device, or have any say in what you do with it in the first place.
People are misunderstanding this announcement.
They are not saying no other Os will work at all, just that Intel and AMD themselves will only supply and support Windows drivers for version 10. So you can install Windows 7 (not easy but possible due to some other tricks they did), but USB 3.1 will probably not work unless you can find an older driver that happens to work and graphics will default to a generic Windows display driver, things like that. In other words, it can work, it just won't be supported/optimal. As for Linux, Linux doesn't rely on Intel or AMD to make drivers for anything, the community makes working drivers for almost everything, it may take a bit and not work as well as the Windows counterpart due to proprietary functions, but they work. it's pretty rare that you absolutely cannot gets something to function in Linux, it's just a matter of finding the info necessary, which I admit is not always easy, but easier and less likely if you use corporate laptops.
For your laptop, you can have Mint split the drive and dual boot (make a backup first!), or better yet, buy an ssd for it and put Mint on that. This leaves you a good drive to fall back on if needed and gives you a nice SSD upgrade. If you decide to forget Windows entirely, stick the old drive in an external bay for backups, if you want to go back, put the drive back in or image it onto the ssd. Honestly, you will never really "get" Linux until you cut the Windows cord because it's too easy to fall back on Windows when you get stuck and by doing so, you may miss out on some fantastic software that not only fixes the problem, but does it better than Windows ever did. I'm not saying it's easy to do, you may feel like a complete noob for a bit, but the end results are worth it.
Some laptops are better than others, corporate laptops tend to do better, but no matter what, expect a 10-20% loss in battery runtime (be sure to install TLP and P-state). No need to run out and buy a bunch of laptops, there is enough Lenovo, HP and Dell corporate lease models on Ebay to keep us supplied for years to come with more still arriving. The Lenovo X and T series in particular have good Linux support. As mentioned by others, should Intel and AMD deny functionality to other systems entirely it would be shooting themselves in the foot as many corporations use Linux as does the server industry. Besides, we would find a way, the more they lock it down and force us onto fewer and fewer options, the more likely it is that someone will find a way around it. Necessity is the mother of invention.
The new Win7 update method will end up with the same problems as Win10 has.
You may not be forced to install them, but the new updates come as a single package, you won't be able to pick and choose anymore. If you get one update, you get them all.
Also, I don't see it as some huge security loss to disable the updates. It took a month to fix this problem, a virus can spread world-wide in less than 10 minutes. If MS updates is your security blanket you already lost.
It's not because they fixed the bug, it's because they introduce a show stopping new bug every couple weeks that requires a second patch to correct, none of which you can opt out of without causing some sort of issue.
Yes, they fixed it, but it took a month.
You might be able to limp along for a month, but some cannot, especially small businesses. Even if you can, what about the next show-stopper or how about one that bricks the computer, it's not like they haven't bricked any machines before (Surface tablets). This whole forced update system is a major accident just waiting to happen. If you think a major virus is bad, just wait.
How about you stop assuming things about people you know nothing about.
My desktop, laptop, tablet, and server all run Linux, and I was an Android rom developer for several years.
And by the way,
Not every Windows user is an ignorant fool, it's people like you who give Linux a bad rep.
This, so much this. All of it.
If we wanted Chrome we would just use Chrome.
Some of their steps have been infuriating, whoever is directing their development should have been removed a long time ago. I'll toss in another obvious misstep, and that was the decision to focus on 32bit instead of 64bit, how they thought that was a good idea is beyond me, luckily public outcry got them to pull their head out of their @ss.
It boots fast because it's not actually shutting down.
What it's doing is closing apps and logging you out then goes into a modified hibernate/sleep mode. Read up on Fast Startup (Fast Boot for Win8).
Intel and Microsoft joining hands in making a Windows 7 unfriendly ecosystem – SpeedStep to add support for RAM and more
http://wccftech.com/intel-skyl...
Skylake users given 18 months to upgrade to Windows 10
"And next generation processors, including Intel's Kaby Lake, won't be supported in old Windows." http://arstechnica.com/informa...
It's VERY dependent on the laptop and whether or not you install any power management, which most distros (even Ubuntu) seem to skip.
My Lenovo X220 does almost the same with Windows or Linux once I install power management, I lose around 10% compared to Windows while using Cinnamon. I mention that because it also depends on the desktop environment (DE) and browser you use, newer flashier DE's are going to use more power. As much as I love Cinnamon, it does use more power than say XFCE or LXDE, I expect by switching to one of them I'd be within a few percent of Windows.
"I know that a lot of people are just going to focus on the seizing money. That's a very small thing that' s happening now. The largest part that we have found... the biggest benefit has been the identity theft," Vincent said.
He's just making things up to justify it and this is very much all about the money.
Your idea is good, but personally I don't think it goes far enough for first timers.
If you're making something small, scaling isn't terribly difficult, if you are making something complex, such as a 3d printer, scaling becomes tricky. The more parts you have the trickier the logistics, some suppliers may not scale as easily, China becomes a minefield, and your timeline may be significantly stretched.
This was exactly what happened to us.
When we told a supplier we needed 180% instead of the 100% we expected, he panicked (but came through). A Chinese company pulled a bait and switch, the test parts worked, but production was swapped to a higher temp item which would have melted our product, then blamed us for the error. We switched to another company, but lost thousands in shipping and higher costs.
Kickstarter is meant to start your business, it shouldn't be an all-you-can-eat salad bar. Make it 80-120%. This gives you a very specific amount of product to plan for, you either get funded and can do it, or you don't, but at least you can properly plan for it. Kickstarter is responsible for some of this problem because of how they highlight campaigns (it's different once you reach your goal) and handle funding (fail you get nothing, so people set it low), this too needs to change. Remember, these people are new to business, some aren't even out of school, we shouldn't be handing them half a million dollars and allowing them to go build a company with no supervision just because they put together a flashy video. It's more than most people can handle.
Most people I've seen using 8, 8.1 and Win10 are using online accounts because MS makes it hard figure out how to get around it when setting up a new system.
Wifi password? You gave them root, the system stores wifi passwords in plain text right out in the open.
Granted, that chart you linked was garbage since it explained little, but had you gone through and clicked on who they got their stats from you will find what you quoted to be very off the mark.
Site: http://gs.statcounter.com/
Firefox has been dropping, but very slowly and it's still pretty consistent at around 15% or so of the market, Most of Chrome's growth has been at the hands of other browsers, I.E. in particular. The odds of Vivaldi making a significant dent in Firefox is small, it's more likely to cannibalize Chrome and everyone else.
And Mozilla is concerned, and they should be. Personally, I think they should have fired several developers YEARS ago. The growing number of forks, 64bit and UI, should have been good indications they were doing something wrong. Which leads back to Chrome as well, yes, Chrome is growing, however, some of that could also be forks, since there is enough of them, but why are there so many? I have yet to see a Chrome fork that actually makes things any better.
Proper Baytrail support would open Ubuntu, derivatives and Linux in general to a bunch of cheap, plentiful Intel powered tablets, that cost a fraction of what this does.
And yes, I know you can get some distros to run, however they usually lack a bunch of drivers, wifi and touchscreen are a particular problem, as is battery life.
Slashdot Mirror
Pentalobe Drivers are like $3 on Ebay, but you REALLY want to spend the the money on a Wiha, which fits far more precise. I also recommend a brand new set of screws as well, not only because they are pre-threadlocked, but also you will probably damage one getting it out. And that's just to get inside, it only gets worse inside.
Sadly, Ipads and Surface tablets are worse... Never again.
Airs always rate low on repairability, 90% of the 11in form were sold with only 4gigs and usually a small ssd, which has a proprietary connector, newer models even use Apple's pentalobe screws (which are ridiculously small and easy to strip).
On top of that, battery life is atrocious is Linux and you have to fix a resume problem.
Sometimes called the Princeton, NP300 or just 300.
11.6in screen, 3rd gen Core I3, 8gigs ram, 2.5 pounds, standard 2.5in drive (easy to add SSD) same form factor as old netbooks. Battery life could be better, but still a fantastic little machine. Not always easy to find, but the last one I saw on Ebay went for well under $100, you could add an ssd and 8gigs and still be under $200.
Takes to Linux, Windows or even Mac well.
Not only that, most were sold with only 4 gigs of ram (blah) and they don't exactly take to Linux well.
My 2014 gets 3 hours on Mint (with power optimization), 5 hours on Windows and 9 hours on Mac. Linux also had an issue with sleep if I remember right. It can be fixed with some effort, but the battery will always be an issue.
Like almost every other CAD program, neither of those CAD programs run natively in Mac.
And no, you can't always just run them in a VM, not only is it slower (negating the point of 32gigs), but Solidworks 2016 will throw up an error if you do.
I'm amazed no big company has stepped up to do it yet, how much are companies spending fighting all of these?
Microsoft only stepped up it's game to stop the fake updates when they wanted to display ads in the OS, which tells you exactly how much these companies really care about it, so long as it's not truly effecting their bottom line or putting them at risk of being sued they won't bother. There's a reason ads have such a bad reputation and it's one that's well deserved.
Besides adblockers, switch your dns to OpenDNS, they block most ad networks so your blocker has less to do.
We call it "Campfire!"
32bit UEFI support in anything other than Windows 8+ is terrible. Even if you get it to boot it's likely to need special drivers, which no one will bother making (thanks Intel!). This is no different from all the cheap Atom tablets and notebooks currently on the market, looks like a great Linux platform, except that it isn't.
Linux has long had better hardware support, but often it was older hardware that Windows users didn't care about.
As for using the Windows version, yes, you could make it work, but you may have to download extra drivers, and there is another consideration with the hardware you should be concerned with more than that, and that is battery life. Just because something is supported, doesn't mean it plays well with it. I've seen systems lose only a small fraction of runtime while others lost more than half.
My bet is that Dell put in components that not only work out of the box, but aren't going to chew up the battery either.
How does your battery life compare to the Windows version, Linux (unfortunately) almost always takes a hit on this. My x220, even with every trick I could find, still lost 10-20%, by contrast, while I'm still tweaking it, my Macbook Air loses 60% (ouch).
"Samsung is in talks with telcos from nine other countries where the phablet is available to deploy a similar software upgrade."
This is a great example of just how broken Android really is. If it was Apple (and MS?), everyone would get this right away, but instead it has to be dealt with carrier by carrier, and if your carrier decides not to allow for the patch ("bandwidth!"), Samsung decides not to work with your carrier, or someone misses an email you won't be getting it at all.
Telcos should have zero say in when or how you update your device, or have any say in what you do with it in the first place.
People are misunderstanding this announcement.
They are not saying no other Os will work at all, just that Intel and AMD themselves will only supply and support Windows drivers for version 10. So you can install Windows 7 (not easy but possible due to some other tricks they did), but USB 3.1 will probably not work unless you can find an older driver that happens to work and graphics will default to a generic Windows display driver, things like that. In other words, it can work, it just won't be supported/optimal. As for Linux, Linux doesn't rely on Intel or AMD to make drivers for anything, the community makes working drivers for almost everything, it may take a bit and not work as well as the Windows counterpart due to proprietary functions, but they work. it's pretty rare that you absolutely cannot gets something to function in Linux, it's just a matter of finding the info necessary, which I admit is not always easy, but easier and less likely if you use corporate laptops.
For your laptop, you can have Mint split the drive and dual boot (make a backup first!), or better yet, buy an ssd for it and put Mint on that. This leaves you a good drive to fall back on if needed and gives you a nice SSD upgrade. If you decide to forget Windows entirely, stick the old drive in an external bay for backups, if you want to go back, put the drive back in or image it onto the ssd. Honestly, you will never really "get" Linux until you cut the Windows cord because it's too easy to fall back on Windows when you get stuck and by doing so, you may miss out on some fantastic software that not only fixes the problem, but does it better than Windows ever did. I'm not saying it's easy to do, you may feel like a complete noob for a bit, but the end results are worth it.
Some laptops are better than others, corporate laptops tend to do better, but no matter what, expect a 10-20% loss in battery runtime (be sure to install TLP and P-state). No need to run out and buy a bunch of laptops, there is enough Lenovo, HP and Dell corporate lease models on Ebay to keep us supplied for years to come with more still arriving. The Lenovo X and T series in particular have good Linux support. As mentioned by others, should Intel and AMD deny functionality to other systems entirely it would be shooting themselves in the foot as many corporations use Linux as does the server industry. Besides, we would find a way, the more they lock it down and force us onto fewer and fewer options, the more likely it is that someone will find a way around it. Necessity is the mother of invention.
The new Win7 update method will end up with the same problems as Win10 has.
You may not be forced to install them, but the new updates come as a single package, you won't be able to pick and choose anymore. If you get one update, you get them all.
Also, I don't see it as some huge security loss to disable the updates. It took a month to fix this problem, a virus can spread world-wide in less than 10 minutes. If MS updates is your security blanket you already lost.
It's not because they fixed the bug, it's because they introduce a show stopping new bug every couple weeks that requires a second patch to correct, none of which you can opt out of without causing some sort of issue.
Yes, they fixed it, but it took a month.
You might be able to limp along for a month, but some cannot, especially small businesses. Even if you can, what about the next show-stopper or how about one that bricks the computer, it's not like they haven't bricked any machines before (Surface tablets). This whole forced update system is a major accident just waiting to happen. If you think a major virus is bad, just wait.
How about you stop assuming things about people you know nothing about.
My desktop, laptop, tablet, and server all run Linux, and I was an Android rom developer for several years.
And by the way,
Not every Windows user is an ignorant fool, it's people like you who give Linux a bad rep.
This, so much this. All of it.
If we wanted Chrome we would just use Chrome.
Some of their steps have been infuriating, whoever is directing their development should have been removed a long time ago. I'll toss in another obvious misstep, and that was the decision to focus on 32bit instead of 64bit, how they thought that was a good idea is beyond me, luckily public outcry got them to pull their head out of their @ss.
It boots fast because it's not actually shutting down.
What it's doing is closing apps and logging you out then goes into a modified hibernate/sleep mode. Read up on Fast Startup (Fast Boot for Win8).
It's a nice feature, even if it's lying to you.
Intel and Microsoft joining hands in making a Windows 7 unfriendly ecosystem – SpeedStep to add support for RAM and more
http://wccftech.com/intel-skyl...
Skylake users given 18 months to upgrade to Windows 10
"And next generation processors, including Intel's Kaby Lake, won't be supported in old Windows."
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
It's VERY dependent on the laptop and whether or not you install any power management, which most distros (even Ubuntu) seem to skip.
My Lenovo X220 does almost the same with Windows or Linux once I install power management, I lose around 10% compared to Windows while using Cinnamon. I mention that because it also depends on the desktop environment (DE) and browser you use, newer flashier DE's are going to use more power. As much as I love Cinnamon, it does use more power than say XFCE or LXDE, I expect by switching to one of them I'd be within a few percent of Windows.
"I know that a lot of people are just going to focus on the seizing money. That's a very small thing that' s happening now. The largest part that we have found ... the biggest benefit has been the identity theft," Vincent said.
He's just making things up to justify it and this is very much all about the money.
This means it could be used to fight patent trolls who abuse open source and creative commons items. Makerbot comes to mind on this.
Your idea is good, but personally I don't think it goes far enough for first timers.
If you're making something small, scaling isn't terribly difficult, if you are making something complex, such as a 3d printer, scaling becomes tricky. The more parts you have the trickier the logistics, some suppliers may not scale as easily, China becomes a minefield, and your timeline may be significantly stretched.
This was exactly what happened to us.
When we told a supplier we needed 180% instead of the 100% we expected, he panicked (but came through). A Chinese company pulled a bait and switch, the test parts worked, but production was swapped to a higher temp item which would have melted our product, then blamed us for the error. We switched to another company, but lost thousands in shipping and higher costs.
Kickstarter is meant to start your business, it shouldn't be an all-you-can-eat salad bar. Make it 80-120%. This gives you a very specific amount of product to plan for, you either get funded and can do it, or you don't, but at least you can properly plan for it. Kickstarter is responsible for some of this problem because of how they highlight campaigns (it's different once you reach your goal) and handle funding (fail you get nothing, so people set it low), this too needs to change. Remember, these people are new to business, some aren't even out of school, we shouldn't be handing them half a million dollars and allowing them to go build a company with no supervision just because they put together a flashy video. It's more than most people can handle.
Most people I've seen using 8, 8.1 and Win10 are using online accounts because MS makes it hard figure out how to get around it when setting up a new system.
Wifi password? You gave them root, the system stores wifi passwords in plain text right out in the open.
Granted, that chart you linked was garbage since it explained little, but had you gone through and clicked on who they got their stats from you will find what you quoted to be very off the mark.
Site: http://gs.statcounter.com/
Firefox has been dropping, but very slowly and it's still pretty consistent at around 15% or so of the market, Most of Chrome's growth has been at the hands of other browsers, I.E. in particular. The odds of Vivaldi making a significant dent in Firefox is small, it's more likely to cannibalize Chrome and everyone else.
And Mozilla is concerned, and they should be. Personally, I think they should have fired several developers YEARS ago. The growing number of forks, 64bit and UI, should have been good indications they were doing something wrong. Which leads back to Chrome as well, yes, Chrome is growing, however, some of that could also be forks, since there is enough of them, but why are there so many? I have yet to see a Chrome fork that actually makes things any better.
Proper Baytrail support would open Ubuntu, derivatives and Linux in general to a bunch of cheap, plentiful Intel powered tablets, that cost a fraction of what this does.
And yes, I know you can get some distros to run, however they usually lack a bunch of drivers, wifi and touchscreen are a particular problem, as is battery life.