I have one of these in my kitchen (long story) that has been happily chugging away without any downtime for about a year now.
These processors/computers are certainly now the highest-performance machines in the world, but they handle most home tasks wonderfully and consume almost no power when idle. For 24/7 operation this becomes very important. Also, most varieties of C7 can operate with passive cooling, meaning your power supply fan will be the only noise it generates.
If you can afford it (I put mine together with a gig of memory, 500gb disk, and DVD for about $350 a year ago), this is a better approach than "throw slackware on an old Pentium 3" because you can get the same or better performance without the ongoing electricity cost and loud operation.
text advertising is beginning to show its age as well. Like any new medium, the early adopters were the smaller sites, and many had great success. Then the big guys jumped in and it became a bidding war. While I like the idea of relevence being a factor in which ads get displayed, it's very tough to distinguish yourself in 100 characters if you are looking to get noticed in popular keywords.
Agreed and agreed. Linux is not inevitable on the desktop, at least not in a timeframe that is meaningful.
The point of the article was that we should embrace one of the open source Windows environments (such as ReactOS, in a more mature form) as a way of establishing OSS on the desktop. This would provide value to the OEMs (they would have more leverage with Microsoft in OEM license pricing and would be able to lower the costs of PCs) and would give the corporate users an answer to Licensing 3.0 that doesn't involve paying MS for software on a subscription basis whether or not MS decides to ship something each year.
Of course, none of this works if the OSS Windows software isn't up to snuff. ReactOS's stated goals of device driver and binary application compatibility would certainly help the two biggest gripes I've seen here with Linux though.
What I still think is being missed here is that I don't think people should move away from a Windows platform. I'm advocating that the OSS community spend more time trying to fix up ReactOS or a similar open-source Windows environment instead of trying to shoehorn a Unix into a desktop environment.
The reasons why this is important have less to do with getting people to use "our stuff" and more to do with trying to reestablish some balance in the control of the IT industry. I honestly believe (perhaps foolishly) that if there was an alternative but compatible OSS Windows environment available that OEMs, corporate technical staff, etc, would see it a viable option instead of the threat to their business models/careers that they currently see Linux as. They won't switch en mass to it, but it would certainly enter into negotiations for new OEM Windows licenses and corporate site licenses, and that is exactly what we want.
Many people are against this because they see embracing the Windows platform means that you are giving MS even more power. See the contorversy around Mono as an example. This is silly though. MS lives off of their installed base, and if you made an XP compatible OS today there is nothing they could do to take away compatibility with everything that is available right now. The API is the API, you know? This is a difficult task, to be sure, but the fact that you can use native DLLs (licenses permitting) and drivers would make it so that the upkeep of the system would likely be easier in the long run than the OSS Unix alternatives.
Linux is certainly a great server environment, and I use it all the time in this capacity. But instead of fighting the tide and trying to reimplement an entire desktop stack, I think it makes more sense to take advantage of what is already out there in terms of Windows infrastructure, developers, and existing applications.
It may be the realpolitik answer, but personally my biggest concern is that Microsoft makes $40 billion a year in revenues with very, very healthy profit margins. With that kind of money, they have unbelievable leverage in breaking into any market they choose.
Look at video games for instance. The XBox can lose money for decades and it won't matter, since they can finance it with Windows money. Eventually they'll get the right features or game publishers to take over that market, and then they have a beachhead in the family room as well as the computer room.
Look at this DRM stuff. They can get their technology to content creators, give it away for free, and even offer to help market the movies through co-branded ads if they want to, and they can do this indefinitely due to their cash surplus. I know that they haven't dominated this field yet, but their ability to create defacto standards around their products is certainly a challenge to independant companies (such as Real) who must rely on revenues from their competing products to survive.
I don't mean for this to sound as Orwellian as it does, and I'm probably going to be cringing when I reread it. To answer the original question "Why do I care what OS people use" is that I don't. What I care about is that the industry I work in has one vendor controlling probably 90-95% of all the desktops, and that the power this gives them makes me uncomfortable.
You certainly don't come across as flamebait, and everything you said makes sense. An incidently, yes, I was pushing the blog a little, but more because the fist 20 or so posts were just gut reactions to the headline instead of thoughtful responses to the article.
I agree that Linux needs to come a long way before if gets even simple computer needs to work flawlessly like they do with Windows. The lack of a non-hacked way of getting USB WiFi cards working drove me crazy for many a night, and sent me back to Microsoft's arms several times.
As for the pre-install not being the cure-all I make it out to be, I agree only partly. One would hope that the vendor of the PC would get all of the driver stuff sorted out before shipping, so our respective horrors would be unlikely to be repeated. The application support would give new users pause, but I think that between OO.o, Evolution, and Firefox we have the basis for a good mainstream system.
The conclusion in the article, however, is that the open-source community should think about supporting ReactOS (in a substantially more mature form) as a way of getting onto the desktop rather than try to shoehorn Linux into the existing Windows-friendly infrastructure. That is that conclusion that I haven't seen anyone mention in this forum, and why I asked them to read the article.:)
My point wasn't that innovation is bad, that would be kind of silly.
The point is rather that innovation for the sake of innovation when 95% of the world is completely happy with what they use every day of their lives is sort of a waste of time. I, for one, have no need for a 3D user interface to use a word processor, yet there are several projects out there tackling this problem. (I know that new applications will likely arise that would be impossible without the 3D interface, so don't take this the wrong way, 3D desktop folks!)
Even if this innovation was useful, I think our fundamental problem is one of distribution, or rather, making a product that the existing PC ecosystem can live with without feeling like it is a threat to their livelihood. Thinking up new ways to make this happen is the goal of this post.
I was trying to lay out the situation as I see it.
On the consumer side, we are stopped by the fact that all of the major vendors are bullied by MS, perhaps more implicitly than in the past, but bullied none the less. If any of them were to support Linux on an equal footing with Windows, in catalogs, on the front of the websites, etc, the would risk losing their OEM license or getting their rates changed. When they sell cheap commodity boxen in a very competitive space, that can easily kill a business model. All the big players are profitable and have boards to report to, so throwing caution to the wind is unlikely.
On the business side, we are faced with a generation of tech workers raised to develop applications for the Windows platform, administer NT/2000/2003 servers, support XP users, get MS certifications, etc. All of these people, right or wrong, have staked their careers to the MS platform and are unlikely to see the incursion of UNIX systems into the workplace as anything less than a threat to their jobs. The amount of corporate infrastructure currently geared towards the Windows platform, from helpdesks, to workgroup servers, desktops, custom applications, macros, Exchange email, etc is staggering, and there is little chance that CTOs will wake up one day and say "Oops. Let's try this other thing."
What I'm trying to get at here is that there is more than simply applications keeping Linux/UNIX from the desktop; that is mostly there, at least in the form of reasonable substitutes. It is the inertia that has formed around Microsoft's platform that keeps open source from becoming mainstream.
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I have one of these in my kitchen (long story) that has been happily chugging away without any downtime for about a year now.
These processors/computers are certainly now the highest-performance machines in the world, but they handle most home tasks wonderfully and consume almost no power when idle. For 24/7 operation this becomes very important. Also, most varieties of C7 can operate with passive cooling, meaning your power supply fan will be the only noise it generates.
If you can afford it (I put mine together with a gig of memory, 500gb disk, and DVD for about $350 a year ago), this is a better approach than "throw slackware on an old Pentium 3" because you can get the same or better performance without the ongoing electricity cost and loud operation.
Powersauce bars are great!
text advertising is beginning to show its age as well. Like any new medium, the early adopters were the smaller sites, and many had great success. Then the big guys jumped in and it became a bidding war. While I like the idea of relevence being a factor in which ads get displayed, it's very tough to distinguish yourself in 100 characters if you are looking to get noticed in popular keywords.
Agreed and agreed. Linux is not inevitable on the desktop, at least not in a timeframe that is meaningful.
The point of the article was that we should embrace one of the open source Windows environments (such as ReactOS, in a more mature form) as a way of establishing OSS on the desktop. This would provide value to the OEMs (they would have more leverage with Microsoft in OEM license pricing and would be able to lower the costs of PCs) and would give the corporate users an answer to Licensing 3.0 that doesn't involve paying MS for software on a subscription basis whether or not MS decides to ship something each year.
Of course, none of this works if the OSS Windows software isn't up to snuff. ReactOS's stated goals of device driver and binary application compatibility would certainly help the two biggest gripes I've seen here with Linux though.
What I still think is being missed here is that I don't think people should move away from a Windows platform. I'm advocating that the OSS community spend more time trying to fix up ReactOS or a similar open-source Windows environment instead of trying to shoehorn a Unix into a desktop environment.
The reasons why this is important have less to do with getting people to use "our stuff" and more to do with trying to reestablish some balance in the control of the IT industry. I honestly believe (perhaps foolishly) that if there was an alternative but compatible OSS Windows environment available that OEMs, corporate technical staff, etc, would see it a viable option instead of the threat to their business models/careers that they currently see Linux as. They won't switch en mass to it, but it would certainly enter into negotiations for new OEM Windows licenses and corporate site licenses, and that is exactly what we want.
Many people are against this because they see embracing the Windows platform means that you are giving MS even more power. See the contorversy around Mono as an example. This is silly though. MS lives off of their installed base, and if you made an XP compatible OS today there is nothing they could do to take away compatibility with everything that is available right now. The API is the API, you know? This is a difficult task, to be sure, but the fact that you can use native DLLs (licenses permitting) and drivers would make it so that the upkeep of the system would likely be easier in the long run than the OSS Unix alternatives.
Linux is certainly a great server environment, and I use it all the time in this capacity. But instead of fighting the tide and trying to reimplement an entire desktop stack, I think it makes more sense to take advantage of what is already out there in terms of Windows infrastructure, developers, and existing applications.
It may be the realpolitik answer, but personally my biggest concern is that Microsoft makes $40 billion a year in revenues with very, very healthy profit margins. With that kind of money, they have unbelievable leverage in breaking into any market they choose.
Look at video games for instance. The XBox can lose money for decades and it won't matter, since they can finance it with Windows money. Eventually they'll get the right features or game publishers to take over that market, and then they have a beachhead in the family room as well as the computer room.
Look at this DRM stuff. They can get their technology to content creators, give it away for free, and even offer to help market the movies through co-branded ads if they want to, and they can do this indefinitely due to their cash surplus. I know that they haven't dominated this field yet, but their ability to create defacto standards around their products is certainly a challenge to independant companies (such as Real) who must rely on revenues from their competing products to survive.
I don't mean for this to sound as Orwellian as it does, and I'm probably going to be cringing when I reread it. To answer the original question "Why do I care what OS people use" is that I don't. What I care about is that the industry I work in has one vendor controlling probably 90-95% of all the desktops, and that the power this gives them makes me uncomfortable.
Hi Furious,
You certainly don't come across as flamebait, and everything you said makes sense. An incidently, yes, I was pushing the blog a little, but more because the fist 20 or so posts were just gut reactions to the headline instead of thoughtful responses to the article.
I agree that Linux needs to come a long way before if gets even simple computer needs to work flawlessly like they do with Windows. The lack of a non-hacked way of getting USB WiFi cards working drove me crazy for many a night, and sent me back to Microsoft's arms several times.
As for the pre-install not being the cure-all I make it out to be, I agree only partly. One would hope that the vendor of the PC would get all of the driver stuff sorted out before shipping, so our respective horrors would be unlikely to be repeated. The application support would give new users pause, but I think that between OO.o, Evolution, and Firefox we have the basis for a good mainstream system.
The conclusion in the article, however, is that the open-source community should think about supporting ReactOS (in a substantially more mature form) as a way of getting onto the desktop rather than try to shoehorn Linux into the existing Windows-friendly infrastructure. That is that conclusion that I haven't seen anyone mention in this forum, and why I asked them to read the article. :)
My point wasn't that innovation is bad, that would be kind of silly.
The point is rather that innovation for the sake of innovation when 95% of the world is completely happy with what they use every day of their lives is sort of a waste of time. I, for one, have no need for a 3D user interface to use a word processor, yet there are several projects out there tackling this problem. (I know that new applications will likely arise that would be impossible without the 3D interface, so don't take this the wrong way, 3D desktop folks!)
Even if this innovation was useful, I think our fundamental problem is one of distribution, or rather, making a product that the existing PC ecosystem can live with without feeling like it is a threat to their livelihood. Thinking up new ways to make this happen is the goal of this post.
I was trying to lay out the situation as I see it.
On the consumer side, we are stopped by the fact that all of the major vendors are bullied by MS, perhaps more implicitly than in the past, but bullied none the less. If any of them were to support Linux on an equal footing with Windows, in catalogs, on the front of the websites, etc, the would risk losing their OEM license or getting their rates changed. When they sell cheap commodity boxen in a very competitive space, that can easily kill a business model. All the big players are profitable and have boards to report to, so throwing caution to the wind is unlikely.
On the business side, we are faced with a generation of tech workers raised to develop applications for the Windows platform, administer NT/2000/2003 servers, support XP users, get MS certifications, etc. All of these people, right or wrong, have staked their careers to the MS platform and are unlikely to see the incursion of UNIX systems into the workplace as anything less than a threat to their jobs. The amount of corporate infrastructure currently geared towards the Windows platform, from helpdesks, to workgroup servers, desktops, custom applications, macros, Exchange email, etc is staggering, and there is little chance that CTOs will wake up one day and say "Oops. Let's try this other thing."
What I'm trying to get at here is that there is more than simply applications keeping Linux/UNIX from the desktop; that is mostly there, at least in the form of reasonable substitutes. It is the inertia that has formed around Microsoft's platform that keeps open source from becoming mainstream.
If you get a chance, check out the article. :)
Given all this, what is our next move?