[Klug-general] Is the worm slowly turning?

[Karl Lattimer]

On Fri, 6 Jun 2008 10:15:32 +0100, "Andrew Miller (Spode)"
<spode at thinkbikes.com> wrote:
> A few years ago, trying to persuade a magazine to let me run a Linux
> article
> was really hard.
> 
> Now, everyone is really excited about the whole open source and linux
> movement. Good news for me :)
> 
> My personal opinion is that it's only a matter of time. But Linux is not
> perfect yet. But the Xandros/EeePC combination is a wonderful step in the
> right direction.
> 

Linux really isn't ready for mainstream consumer desktops, read through the
Linux haters blog and you'll get some reasons why. There are tonnes of
little niggles and corner cases where polish is still required. 

However, I'd say this, for highly customised OS's on specialist hardware
like eeepc its just right. This is where Linux on the desktop will find its
core competency, this is a place where MS can't compete because MS has one
OS, albeit in many price hungry flavors but still, they can't make it run
on terrible hardware, eeepc is a good example of this. They've upped the
specs to run XP on eeepc, and even then its pre-configured to be retarded
by default. So what hope would they have with vista+.

The problem with the whole MS thing is that they've got shady deals with
OEMs, these deals consist of, 'we'll create the obsolescence of hardware if
you bundle our OS'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Obsolescence

So in order to keep the economy churning over, MS make their OS more and
more bloated, which requires newer and newer hardware. We are of course now
using this overblown hardware a lot in linux, but not to the extent where
OEM vendors will actually consider it as a driving OS for following
generations of hardware. So the niche market here is low cost devices, low
power devices where Linux can excel, strip it down and ship it out :) 

BR, 
 k,