Source based distributions won't solve the numbers problem, that namely you still need someone to package up the software you want in their equivalent of a.deb or.rpm. You still need people to test the building, potential library incompatabilities etc etc.
Back in 1999, when I first switched to Linux, (slashdot being one of the places that had informed me about it), the first boxed distro I picked up at the local stores was Debian GNU/Linux, with the free
"Learning Debian GNU/Linux" book from O'Reilly. I did things the old fashioned way: I did websearches for my hardware to make sure they were supported, and dove right into the install.
It took me around 10 mins to setup X. Sound was a bit more problematic, but #debian proved helpful.
Unfortunately, that box died, and I had to get a replacement earlier this year, but my point is : the installer isn't really hard, but Debian expects more from the user in terms of knowledge. And honestly, reliable hardware autodetection should be one of them by now.
Kerneltrap.org covered all of this. for those too lazy to read through the whole exchange, i'll extract the best part (emphasis in bold is mine): " From: Larry McVoy Subject: Re: New BK License Problem? Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 16:44:06 -0700
> And that's perfectly fair. However as worded in your license today, the > individuals who work for those companies and have nothing to do with > the competitive software you are worried about can't use your product > to work on open source software.
Yes, that's true. But that doesn't mean we can't make exceptions, we can and do.
> defined on www.opensource.org, may apply for a waiver to > > stating > 1) Which company they work for > 2) Which Open Source Project(s) they are going to be using the > Bitkeeper software for > 3) Identify if they are working on this project in their "free" time or > as part of their > job definition > > If granted the waiver will only cover the stated Open Source project(s) > you have named. If you expand your use of the BitKeeper software to > other Open Source project(s) you will need to apply for a waiver for > those project(s) as well.
If *I* had suggested this language I would have been flamed off the face of the earth. The people who are complaining the loudest are complaining that BitKeeper limits their choices or takes their freedom away or whatever. They absolutely *despise* any sort of authority figure and the idea of coming begging to BitMover for a waiver each time just makes them crazy. "
In short?
If you want to use Bitkeeper for the development of something to replace it, you have to purchase a commercial license. Otherwise, you can use the "gratis" license.
I quote: "Yesterday, Todd Bradley, CEO of Palm's Solutions Group, said his company would be launching a handheld that runs Palm OS 5 on October 28. This appears to be the model he was referring to.
Bradley said that this high-end model will have Bluetooth wireless networking built in and use a Texas Instruments OMAP processor, which is based on designs from ARM Holdings. According to rumor, the Tungsten T will use the OMAP1510 processor, which combines into a single chip an ARM-compliant processor with a DSP for multimedia capabilities, and runs at 175 MHz. Sources familiar with this device say it will have 16 MB of RAM."
Also, Palm OS 5 includes PACE (Palm Application Compatibility Environment), an emulation enviroment of sorts that allows the running of existing Palm Apps. (It emulates the DragonBall)
Hopefully, fuel cells / will help.
Also, isn't the onus on device manufacturers to manufacture a wireless chip/card/ that uses power intelligently? Eg. when only transmitting pings / packets to maintain your ip on the "mesh", use minimal power?
That begets the idea: the majority of users might not even need to be connected all the time. Then a simple powering down of the wireless chip/card would suffice once no network traffic is scheduled.
How secure any software you're running on your system(s) depends on the quality of the code audit done on the code. I'm not judging the standard of the OpenSSH's team code audit here: things will slip through given the inherent complexity of software.
Privilege separation is a step in the right direction. By minimising the amount of code running as root, it makes code audits simpler and more through, and minimises the damage any potential exploit could do in the part running as a normal user.
Stepping back from the situation, privilege separation is just a bandaid for the lousy UNIX security model. Yes, granted, UNIX / Linux (i have no experience with other UNIX systems, so i shall reserve comment) have a security model that's used, as compared to Windows 9X. (Windows 2K has a security model, but the MS culture makes it difficult to administer it, but i digress). However, this security model is too coarse grained: it grants "root" too many privileges, too many rights. This is evident in the move towards ACLs, for example in NSA's SE Linux, as well as LIDS.
We need to overhaul the security model to one that's not prone to insecure software as much. Note I said as much:No system is 100% secure, and I don't want to replace my system with a toaster.
Appreciate feedback. Thanks. =)
Security bugs in software are inevitable : it is bound to happen , sooner or later. A properly setup system can mitigate some of these problems (ie. chroot, modified security kernels). What my concern is is how long and how public security disclosures are, and how long the affected vendor takes to issue a bugfix.
Some points you raise: "* Mozilla is less system tolerant than IE. Mozilla is often the first application to lose its icons and its interface starts falling to pieces. This is probably because of my memory or the CPU overheating.. but IE remains stable until the last minute."
And this is a problem in Mozilla why? You yourself state that it's because of your RAM or your overheating CPU. I don't understand how changing software will fix your hardware problem.
"* Many sites still don't display well in Mozilla. This is the Web developer's fault, but still.. Mozilla can do all of those DHTML menus and stuff, yet I still run into problems on sites that use them. An optional 'IE compliancy' patch in Mozilla would be very very useful!"
This wouldn't help anyone: sticking an IE compliancy patch would only encourage web "developers" to stick to supporting IE specific html. Mozilla renders standard HTML, not "Microsoft HTML". You want more sites to display properly in Mozilla? Email the webmaster and ask him/her to write standard HTML. Once again, you expect the Mozilla team to make such a terrible compromise when you clearly state that "This is the Web developer's fault"
You raise several very good points, and I'll like to add to your comment that any linux user concerned
about the integrity of their system at all run software like tripwire or AIDE.
For example, I have the MD5sums and other hash signatures of certain binaries on my system backed up onto CDR: a simple comparision would immediately alert me to the presence of your hypothetical virus.
Nonethelesss, I agree that one often gets a mistaken impression that Linux systems are more secure. The security model is too coarse, and clunky even.
Distros should be reasonably secure by default install.
Would it be possible and legal for non Americans to contribute to such a setup as well?
I grow increasingly concerned over the state of such laws being proposed / enacted in the USA, simply because American culture and laws have become popular precedents for many other countries to follow.
I fear that someday that such laws may take away the freedom of my fair use, and the freedom of the private sector of my country to innovate, simply because some law was passed in the USA some 30,000 miles away.
Interesting point to note : Bush just passed the Campaign Finance Reform Act which places limits on the amount of money one can recieve during a campaign. Relevant hyperlinks are the Press Release and the text of the Act (in pdf form)
It's just like what I tell my s.o. every night "Don't worry, I'm coming in a minute".. of course that minute usually happens only after a few hours of merciless coding and tweaking, by which time she is long asleep.
I hope the rest of you aren't thinking what I'm thinking.;)
The Treo is an evolutionary improvement over previous cellphone and pda combination devices. Sure, it's smaller, and has nifty things like jogdial, but 2 things kill it.
1. It's still to big. Having handled one in person (I live in singapore and it's been out for half a month or so now) it's still too big. It hasn't reached that crtical *lack* of mass that'll make it replace my tiny Nokia phone as yet.
Only the core layer of OS X is open sourced: it's what we know as Darwin..
What makes Mac OS X really attractive on the surface is it's GUI, which is not open source. Check out a nifty diagram here to see how it all stacks up.
The answer is yes: Darwin will probably run easily on one of these boards, (there is an intel port of darwin). It is unlikely you'll get Aqua and the other supporting layers to run though, bearing in mind that it is unlikely Mac OS X "as is" will run on one of these boards without significant code surgery.
If you use these linux binaries, you're essentially choosing or have chosen to put your dollar votes towards the Win32 Boxed version of RTCW. If anyone really wants to show Id software that there is a significant minority willing to pay for Boxed Linux Games, then one should wait for the actual Linux Boxed version of RTCW. Please, put your money where your interest lies.
I can only speculate on how large such a minority is.
I'll admit upfront i can't come up with any solution that be less than $100. I'm interested if anybody can though.
My suggesttion:
Small form factor PC : the SV24 Cube or something like that.
Wall Mounted LCD display : for the "digital picture frame" .
Run whatever OS you want. (My preference is some distribution of Linux).
Write some custom software that'll do whatever you want to make it act like a picture frame, ie. scan the cdrom whenver a cd is inserted, get all image files on the cdrom and display it on the LCD as a screenshow.
Speakers of your choice : the box can double as a Ogg Vorbis / Mp3 player in the room.
Wireless / Wired Ethernet : Pull new pictures directly from your home lan, the minute you load whatever new pictures you've taken on your digital cam onto your PC that you use to manipulate your photos on.
In the most straight forward way. They'll explore the Linux kernel code, and improve it in terms of threading, and preemptibility.
Using the Linux kernel has many advantages:
1. They don't have to write their own kernel from scratch.
2. They benefit from the man hours spent on the kernel, and the devices it supports.
Plus, any changes they make will be released and contributed back to the Linux kernel.
Anyhow, it'll be interesting to see how it develops. And for those many comments as to why they bother doing such a thing, I have simple answer.
I'm not completely familiar with the whole architecture of X in general, but a couple of points to bring up.
The main thing we're all talking about here is not X, but an implementation of X Windows, Xfree86, vs some .
I believe that until someone can point at more than one implementation of X and say confidently that it's the architecture (ie. design) rather than the code (ie. implementation) that's the bottleneck.
While we're talking about speed : won't brute hardware acceleration negate any percieved speed issues with X? I'm pretty happy with Xfree86 4 right now. Any one got any opinions on this?
(a ELSA GeForce 2 MX over here)
I'm an hacker. I write code as an hobby. I...oops.
Wrong definition.
"Security holes are only an issue because of the damn hackers. Hacker: 'Hey, we're helping you exposing security holes so you can fix them'. Dude: 'And why should we fix the holes?.' Hacker: 'Um uh. To protect you from us.' That's great isn't it. WITHOUT THE HACKERS THIS WOULDN'T BE AN ISSUE."
Hackers expose security holes. Why? Hackers work on code. Hackers write code. *You* are referring to crackers. Without widespread *open* and *public* dessimination of security holes by people who write, use and develop software, said information would only circulate amongst the dark, underground of illegal electronic intrusion and what not. The bad guys (eg the script kiddies, the people who steal credit card nos. etc) already know about security codes. *They* certainly don't bother informing securityfocus.org about the new hole they just found, exploited and punched through in your spanking new e-commerce website that runs whatever combination of software.
Who does?
People who care. People who write code. Use code.
People who at this very moment are contributing patches, time and effort to the development of the Linux kernel. The FreeBSD kernel. The KDE project. The Apache webserver. Mozilla.(i think/hope?:P.
Indeed. "OpenGL, on the other hand, has been criticized because they're slow to add extensions".
Who is they? The OpenGL ARB? Or the card vendor?
Hopefully the following quote from Carmack's plan file might shed some light:
"DX8 tries to pretend that pixel shaders live on hardware that is a lot
more general than the reality.
Nvidia's OpenGL extensions expose things much more the way they
actually are: the existing register combiners functionality extended to
eight stages with a couple tweaks, and the texture lookup engine is
configurable to interact between textures in a list of specific ways."
(22/2/01)
Nvidia already *HAS* it's own OpenGL extensions that expose the pixel shader functionality of the GF3. Previously, when 3Dfx (sigh) first launched the Voodoo2, it also offered it's vendor specific OpenGL extension for multi-texturing( using both texture units on the card namely. )
I'll like to give my 2 cents worth regarding the above.
1.Price
Itz a Sony VAIO for crying out loud. They're not exactly cheap: Sony charges for the cool shiny magnesium casing, formfactor etc. heck. VAIO = cool, shiny but expensive laptop. Sony is the first out with a laptop/picturebook thingy: as other laptop manufacturers enter the market, the market forces will help lower prices. Not to mention the fact that simple, plain, cheap laptops will be available without having to pay for the VAIO coolness and chic.:P
2. Performance
Crusoe, imho from the German magazine or wotever thingy report, is supposedly between the speed of a 400mhz and 600 mhz Pentium III. The 600mhz version of it that is. THIS IS ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD. Considering that it emulates/dynamically translates the x86 ISA on the fly. Remember: this is one of the first few Crusoe chips: the relatively low number of transistors required on Crusoe chip designs allows them to scale clockspeed easily. I wouldn't be surprised to see higher clocked Crusoes in future that perform on par with the fastest Intel mobile Pentium III, while consuming significantly less power and cash.
3. Battery Life
The power consumption of a CPU is only one factor: the other 70-90% is due to harddisks, LCD screens, cd-rom, etc etc. One cannot expect amazing battery life improvements unless one builds a laptop that doesn't use any of these components. Most importantly, the size of the battery counts. We probably will be able get an accurate gauge of how Crusoe helps battery life improve when the first fullsized screens laptop come out from the other manufacturers.
Slashdot Mirror
Source based distributions won't solve the numbers problem, that namely you still need someone to package up the software you want in their equivalent of a .deb or .rpm. You still need people to test the building, potential library incompatabilities etc etc.
My V-TEK sticker works better.
Back in 1999, when I first switched to Linux, (slashdot being one of the places that had informed me about it), the first boxed distro I picked up at the local stores was Debian GNU/Linux, with the free
"Learning Debian GNU/Linux" book from O'Reilly. I did things the old fashioned way: I did websearches for my hardware to make sure they were supported, and dove right into the install.
It took me around 10 mins to setup X. Sound was a bit more problematic, but #debian proved helpful.
Unfortunately, that box died, and I had to get a replacement earlier this year, but my point is : the installer isn't really hard, but Debian expects more from the user in terms of knowledge. And honestly, reliable hardware autodetection should be one of them by now.
Kerneltrap.org covered all of this. for those too lazy to read through the whole exchange, i'll extract the best part (emphasis in bold is mine):
"
From: Larry McVoy
Subject: Re: New BK License Problem?
Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 16:44:06 -0700
> And that's perfectly fair. However as worded in your license today, the
> individuals who work for those companies and have nothing to do with
> the competitive software you are worried about can't use your product
> to work on open source software.
Yes, that's true. But that doesn't mean we can't make exceptions, we can
and do.
> defined on www.opensource.org, may apply for a waiver to
>
> stating
> 1) Which company they work for
> 2) Which Open Source Project(s) they are going to be using the
> Bitkeeper software for
> 3) Identify if they are working on this project in their "free" time or
> as part of their
> job definition
>
> If granted the waiver will only cover the stated Open Source project(s)
> you have named. If you expand your use of the BitKeeper software to
> other Open Source project(s) you will need to apply for a waiver for
> those project(s) as well.
If *I* had suggested this language I would have been flamed off the face
of the earth. The people who are complaining the loudest are complaining
that BitKeeper limits their choices or takes their freedom away or whatever.
They absolutely *despise* any sort of authority figure and the idea of
coming begging to BitMover for a waiver each time just makes them crazy. "
In short?
If you want to use Bitkeeper for the development of something to replace it, you have to purchase a commercial license. Otherwise, you can use the "gratis" license.
I quote: "Yesterday, Todd Bradley, CEO of Palm's Solutions Group, said his company would be launching a handheld that runs Palm OS 5 on October 28. This appears to be the model he was referring to.
Bradley said that this high-end model will have Bluetooth wireless networking built in and use a Texas Instruments OMAP processor, which is based on designs from ARM Holdings. According to rumor, the Tungsten T will use the OMAP1510 processor, which combines into a single chip an ARM-compliant processor with a DSP for multimedia capabilities, and runs at 175 MHz. Sources familiar with this device say it will have 16 MB of RAM."
Also, Palm OS 5 includes PACE (Palm Application Compatibility Environment), an emulation enviroment of sorts that allows the running of existing Palm Apps. (It emulates the DragonBall)
Hopefully, fuel cells / will help.
Also, isn't the onus on device manufacturers to manufacture a wireless chip/card/ that uses power intelligently? Eg. when only transmitting pings / packets to maintain your ip on the "mesh", use minimal power?
That begets the idea: the majority of users might not even need to be connected all the time. Then a simple powering down of the wireless chip/card would suffice once no network traffic is scheduled.
Little savings here and there can go a long way.
red-carpet.
How secure any software you're running on your system(s) depends on the quality of the code audit done on the code. I'm not judging the standard of the OpenSSH's team code audit here: things will slip through given the inherent complexity of software.
Privilege separation is a step in the right direction. By minimising the amount of code running as root, it makes code audits simpler and more through, and minimises the damage any potential exploit could do in the part running as a normal user.
Stepping back from the situation, privilege separation is just a bandaid for the lousy UNIX security model. Yes, granted, UNIX / Linux (i have no experience with other UNIX systems, so i shall reserve comment) have a security model that's used, as compared to Windows 9X. (Windows 2K has a security model, but the MS culture makes it difficult to administer it, but i digress). However, this security model is too coarse grained: it grants "root" too many privileges, too many rights. This is evident in the move towards ACLs, for example in NSA's SE Linux, as well as LIDS.
We need to overhaul the security model to one that's not prone to insecure software as much. Note I said as much:No system is 100% secure, and I don't want to replace my system with a toaster.
Appreciate feedback. Thanks. =)
Security bugs in software are inevitable : it is bound to happen , sooner or later. A properly setup system can mitigate some of these problems (ie. chroot, modified security kernels). What my concern is is how long and how public security disclosures are, and how long the affected vendor takes to issue a bugfix.
Some points you raise:
"* Mozilla is less system tolerant than IE. Mozilla is often the first application to lose its icons and its interface starts falling to pieces. This is probably because of my memory or the CPU overheating.. but IE remains stable until the last minute."
And this is a problem in Mozilla why? You yourself state that it's because of your RAM or your overheating CPU. I don't understand how changing software will fix your hardware problem.
"* Many sites still don't display well in Mozilla. This is the Web developer's fault, but still.. Mozilla can do all of those DHTML menus and stuff, yet I still run into problems on sites that use them. An optional 'IE compliancy' patch in Mozilla would be very very useful!"
This wouldn't help anyone: sticking an IE compliancy patch would only encourage web "developers" to stick to supporting IE specific html. Mozilla renders standard HTML, not "Microsoft HTML". You want more sites to display properly in Mozilla? Email the webmaster and ask him/her to write standard HTML. Once again, you expect the Mozilla team to make such a terrible compromise when you clearly state that "This is the Web developer's fault"
You raise several very good points, and I'll like to add to your comment that any linux user concerned
about the integrity of their system at all run software like tripwire or AIDE.
For example, I have the MD5sums and other hash signatures of certain binaries on my system backed up onto CDR: a simple comparision would immediately alert me to the presence of your hypothetical virus.
Nonethelesss, I agree that one often gets a mistaken impression that Linux systems are more secure. The security model is too coarse, and clunky even.
Distros should be reasonably secure by default install.
Would it be possible and legal for non Americans to contribute to such a setup as well?
I grow increasingly concerned over the state of such laws being proposed / enacted in the USA, simply because American culture and laws have become popular precedents for many other countries to follow.
I fear that someday that such laws may take away the freedom of my fair use, and the freedom of the private sector of my country to innovate, simply because some law was passed in the USA some 30,000 miles away.
Interesting point to note : Bush just passed the Campaign Finance Reform Act which places limits on the amount of money one can recieve during a campaign.
Relevant hyperlinks are the Press Release and the text of the Act (in pdf form)
It's just like what I tell my s.o. every night "Don't worry, I'm coming in a minute".. of course that minute usually happens only after a few hours of merciless coding and tweaking, by which time she is long asleep.
;)
I hope the rest of you aren't thinking what I'm thinking.
The Treo is an evolutionary improvement over previous cellphone and pda combination devices. Sure, it's smaller, and has nifty things like jogdial, but 2 things kill it.
1. It's still to big. Having handled one in person (I live in singapore and it's been out for half a month or so now) it's still too big. It hasn't reached that crtical *lack* of mass that'll make it replace my tiny Nokia phone as yet.
2. No GPRS.
Only the core layer of OS X is open sourced: it's what we know as Darwin..
What makes Mac OS X really attractive on the surface is it's GUI, which is not open source. Check out a nifty diagram here to see how it all stacks up.
The answer is yes: Darwin will probably run easily on one of these boards, (there is an intel port of darwin). It is unlikely you'll get Aqua and the other supporting layers to run though, bearing in mind that it is unlikely Mac OS X "as is" will run on one of these boards without significant code surgery.
Soldam also has something similar. Pandora
If you use these linux binaries, you're essentially choosing or have chosen to put your dollar votes towards the Win32 Boxed version of RTCW. If anyone really wants to show Id software that there is a significant minority willing to pay for Boxed Linux Games, then one should wait for the actual Linux Boxed version of RTCW. Please, put your money where your interest lies.
I can only speculate on how large such a minority is.
I'll admit upfront i can't come up with any solution that be less than $100. I'm interested if anybody can though.
My suggesttion:
Small form factor PC : the SV24 Cube or something like that.
Wall Mounted LCD display : for the "digital picture frame" .
Run whatever OS you want. (My preference is some distribution of Linux).
Write some custom software that'll do whatever you want to make it act like a picture frame, ie. scan the cdrom whenver a cd is inserted, get all image files on the cdrom and display it on the LCD as a screenshow.
Speakers of your choice : the box can double as a Ogg Vorbis / Mp3 player in the room.
Wireless / Wired Ethernet : Pull new pictures directly from your home lan, the minute you load whatever new pictures you've taken on your digital cam onto your PC that you use to manipulate your photos on.
In the most straight forward way. They'll explore the Linux kernel code, and improve it in terms of threading, and preemptibility.
Using the Linux kernel has many advantages:
1. They don't have to write their own kernel from scratch.
2. They benefit from the man hours spent on the kernel, and the devices it supports.
Plus, any changes they make will be released and contributed back to the Linux kernel.
Anyhow, it'll be interesting to see how it develops. And for those many comments as to why they bother doing such a thing, I have simple answer.
They want to. Period.
I'm not completely familiar with the whole architecture of X in general, but a couple of points to bring up.
The main thing we're all talking about here is not X, but an implementation of X Windows, Xfree86, vs some .
I believe that until someone can point at more than one implementation of X and say confidently that it's the architecture (ie. design) rather than the code (ie. implementation) that's the bottleneck.
While we're talking about speed : won't brute hardware acceleration negate any percieved speed issues with X? I'm pretty happy with Xfree86 4 right now. Any one got any opinions on this?
(a ELSA GeForce 2 MX over here)
I'm an hacker. I write code as an hobby. I...oops.
:P.
Wrong definition.
"Security holes are only an issue because of the damn hackers. Hacker: 'Hey, we're helping you exposing security holes so you can fix them'. Dude: 'And why should we fix the holes?.' Hacker: 'Um uh. To protect you from us.' That's great isn't it. WITHOUT THE HACKERS THIS WOULDN'T BE AN ISSUE."
Hackers expose security holes. Why? Hackers work on code. Hackers write code. *You* are referring to crackers. Without widespread *open* and *public* dessimination of security holes by people who write, use and develop software, said information would only circulate amongst the dark, underground of illegal electronic intrusion and what not. The bad guys (eg the script kiddies, the people who steal credit card nos. etc) already know about security codes. *They* certainly don't bother informing securityfocus.org about the new hole they just found, exploited and punched through in your spanking new e-commerce website that runs whatever combination of software.
Who does?
People who care. People who write code. Use code.
People who at this very moment are contributing patches, time and effort to the development of the Linux kernel. The FreeBSD kernel. The KDE project. The Apache webserver. Mozilla.(i think/hope?
I am a hacker.
In that case, wait for tables to be implemented.
Even better, if you code, you could help out with the development of said feature.
I'm curious to know what you mean by "full featured word processor". =)
Co-routines. =)
Indeed. "OpenGL, on the other hand, has been criticized because they're slow to add extensions".
Who is they? The OpenGL ARB? Or the card vendor?
Hopefully the following quote from Carmack's plan file might shed some light:
"DX8 tries to pretend that pixel shaders live on hardware that is a lot
more general than the reality.
Nvidia's OpenGL extensions expose things much more the way they
actually are: the existing register combiners functionality extended to
eight stages with a couple tweaks, and the texture lookup engine is
configurable to interact between textures in a list of specific ways."
(22/2/01)
Nvidia already *HAS* it's own OpenGL extensions that expose the pixel shader functionality of the GF3. Previously, when 3Dfx (sigh) first launched the Voodoo2, it also offered it's vendor specific OpenGL extension for multi-texturing( using both texture units on the card namely. )
I'll like to give my 2 cents worth regarding the above.
:P
1.Price
Itz a Sony VAIO for crying out loud. They're not exactly cheap: Sony charges for the cool shiny magnesium casing, formfactor etc. heck. VAIO = cool, shiny but expensive laptop. Sony is the first out with a laptop/picturebook thingy: as other laptop manufacturers enter the market, the market forces will help lower prices. Not to mention the fact that simple, plain, cheap laptops will be available without having to pay for the VAIO coolness and chic.
2. Performance
Crusoe, imho from the German magazine or wotever thingy report, is supposedly between the speed of a 400mhz and 600 mhz Pentium III. The 600mhz version of it that is. THIS IS ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD. Considering that it emulates/dynamically translates the x86 ISA on the fly. Remember: this is one of the first few Crusoe chips: the relatively low number of transistors required on Crusoe chip designs allows them to scale clockspeed easily. I wouldn't be surprised to see higher clocked Crusoes in future that perform on par with the fastest Intel mobile Pentium III, while consuming significantly less power and cash.
3. Battery Life
The power consumption of a CPU is only one factor: the other 70-90% is due to harddisks, LCD screens, cd-rom, etc etc. One cannot expect amazing battery life improvements unless one builds a laptop that doesn't use any of these components. Most importantly, the size of the battery counts. We probably will be able get an accurate gauge of how Crusoe helps battery life improve when the first fullsized screens laptop come out from the other manufacturers.