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Asus Slaps Linux In the Face
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu May 28, 2009 06:57 AM
from the et-tu-asus dept.
from the et-tu-asus dept.
vigmeister writes "From Techgeist, 'Linux just got a major slap in the face today from Asus. One of the highlights of Linux going mainstream was the wildly popular Asus Eee PC preinstalled with a customized Linux distro geared towards web applications. While I personally never got what the big deal was, I was still happy for all the Linux people out there waiting for this day, but it looks like the cause for celebration won't be lasting much longer.
Asus and Microsoft have teamed up and have made a site called 'It's Better With Windows.' The page touts how easy it is to get up and ready with Windows on an Asus Eee PC, while slyly stating that you won't have to deal with an 'unfamiliar environment' and 'major compatibility issues.' While it is silly to state such a thing since Asus built the Linux distribution specifically for the Eee PC, I give Microsoft two points for snarky comments.'"
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Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Meh (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
That's a damn shame (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought it was already pretty easy to "get up and ready" with my EeePC. Well, Asus will have to live with their decision.
My next motherboard will be a Gigabyte.
Re:That's a damn shame (Score:5, Insightful)
This website is such a hack-job. I can't believe MS or Asus was involved. The video player is FlowPlayer, the tracking uses Google Analytics, the fonts are all wrong for a MS job. There's no copyright, disclaimer, contact. Nothing. I call bullshit.
That, and I don't believe MS would be encouraging people to use XP with Vista taking so much heat and Windows 7 just on the horizon.
Parent
Re:That's a damn shame (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you, I think its bullshit.
Parent
Re:That's a damn shame (Score:5, Informative)
http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx?Domain=ITSBETTERWITHWINDOWS.COM [godaddy.com]
Check out the owner's Expert-Exchange profile
http://www.experts-exchange.com/M_1301691.html [experts-exchange.com]
"I am an independant web and application developer, specializing in Content Management and Collaboration. My company, CollaborationPeople, Inc. serves clients in Seattle, Washington and the greater Puget Sound Region, although I have clients as far away as Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, CA and Portland, Or."
Registrant:
Michael Sharp
12932 SE Kent-Kangley Rd.
Box 238
Kent, Washington 98030
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: ITSBETTERWITHWINDOWS.COM
Created on: 05-Dec-08
Expires on: 05-Dec-09
Last Updated on: 05-Dec-08
Administrative Contact:
Sharp, Michael rdcpro@hotmail.com
12932 SE Kent-Kangley Rd.
Box 238
Kent, Washington 98030
United States
(877) 788-8066
Technical Contact:
Sharp, Michael rdcpro@hotmail.com
12932 SE Kent-Kangley Rd.
Box 238
Kent, Washington 98030
United States
(877) 788-8066
Domain servers in listed order:
NS61.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS62.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Registry Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Registry Status: clientRenewProhibited
Registry Status: clientTransferProhibited
Registry Status: clientUpdateProhibited
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Re:That's a damn shame (Score:5, Funny)
His actual name is Microsoft Visual Michael#, but he was not able to register under that name due to technical restrictions.
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Re:That's a damn shame (Score:5, Funny)
This website is such a hack-job. I can't believe MS or Asus was involved. The video player is FlowPlayer, the tracking uses Google Analytics, the fonts are all wrong for a MS job.
They didn't. But we are meant to think they did. These trackers are by Google Analytics. The MS advertisement execs always use a single tracker to hide their numbers.
And these talking points, too trollish for MS advertisement execs. Only Apple Fanbois are so precise.
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Re:That's a damn shame (Score:5, Insightful)
One should note that this is the UK division not the corporate offices in Taiwan. I think someone's doing some cowboy marketing within their UK sales division.
I'm none to happy about this little song and dance they're doing (I liked my eeePC with Linux on it... Can't wait for the Cortex-A8/A9 netbooks to show, though. Double the battery life, same power and capabilities- literally.)
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How much money changed hands? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is difficult to believe that Asus did this out of love for Redmond. I wonder how much MS paid for this special treatment, or did they threaten Asus with higher prices?
Re:How much money changed hands? (Score:5, Informative)
It is difficult to believe that Asus did this out of love for Redmond. I wonder how much MS paid for this special treatment, or did they threaten Asus with higher prices?
I still don't see any conclusive evidence thi was Asus' work. I think your anger should be directed at Microsoft. I can't prove it for sure but the whois of this domain itsbetterwithwindows.com [domaintools.com] reads:
And so we put it in the same state as Washington. Now, I'm guessing this is a PR company and we have a perfect match of Arbirtron Ad agency listing Michael Sharp as Manager, Agency & Advertiser Services for several different regions of the US [arbitron.com].
Ok, from there if you google Arbitron Asus [google.com] and Arbitron Microsoft [google.com] you come up with two very juicy powerpoints from Microsoft on Arbitron's site.
I would put my guess at 95% that this is a Microsoft run and funded site with little to do with Asus other than get their permission.
Parent
Also a Michael Sharp at Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
And so we put it in the same state as Washington. Now, I'm guessing this is a PR company and we have a perfect match of Arbitron Ad agency listing Michael Sharp as Manager, Agency & Advertiser Services for several different regions of the US. Ok, from there if you google Arbitron Asus and Arbitron Microsoft you come up with two very juicy powerpoints from Microsoft on Arbitron's site.
I just noticed those two powerpoints only come up because they're Microsoft Powerpoints so that's not a very strong link.
But that linking is probably unnecessary considering I just found this bio on Microsoft [microsoft.com] of a Michael Sharp as Director with the Information Security Team. Yes, it's a pretty common name but I'm pretty sure this ad work reeks of Microsoft and not Asus.
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Re:How much money changed hands? (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent work.
Now can you do something about the Lindbergh Kidnapping?
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Re:How much money changed hands? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, from there if you google Arbitron Asus [google.com] and Arbitron Microsoft [google.com] you come up with two very juicy powerpoints from Microsoft on Arbitron's site.
Errr, where exactly? I see a couple of Powerpoint links on Google. Newsflash - all Powerpoint files linked on Google say "Microsoft" next to them because that's who made Powerpoint. Neither of the presentations actually seem to be from, to or about Microsoft.
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Re:How much money changed hands? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's have a dramatic reenactment, shall we?
Hi, Mike Sharp here. We've got a site going where we will talk about the benefits of running XP on your devices. Can we get you to link to it?
The ancient operating system you keep trying to kill?
Yeah, (ha ha), exactly.
I haven't heard the magic words....
Please?
No, the other magic words
Oh, your next 15,000 OEM licenses are essentially free.
There we go!
And... scene.
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Re:Mod parent up! (Score:4, Informative)
I can't imagine why it would be sponsored by Asus but they certainly link to it: http://www.asus.co.uk/eeepc/1008HA/features.html [asus.co.uk]
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Re:Mod parent up! (Score:5, Funny)
Unless of course somebody hacked into Asus's website and added that link. You can tell it was hacked because if you play the video on itsbetterwithwindows.com frame by frame, there is one frame in the middle where if you squint you can see the reflection from a sign saying "p0wn3d by D4 Cr3w". A quick search of Google will turn up the fact that "D4 Cr3w" are the same folk who faked the moon landing in the 60's.
By the way, cattle mutilations are up.
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Re:How much money changed hands? (Score:4, Interesting)
Asus is a Taiwanese hardware manufacturer. They fund Linux because they know it drives Microsoft crazy and they get better procurement conditions. So when they say "windows is better" than mind that before it was "no choice", and as all competitors know it advises to the opposite. Microsoft will not stop Asus' wise Linux investment, and Taiwanese open source efforts like LXDE.
Hardware manufacturere need a Linux strategy to get like Asus a super return on investment. AOL invested in Mozilla and Microsoft paid them a shitload of money to stay with their browser engine, a few years later the IE dominance is gone. The business of open source with Microsoft, you invest a bit in open source and Microsoft gets really scared and throws money at you.
Asus thinks Windows is better because they now get it almost for free. But the very reason for that was their progressive Linux embracement.
Parent
I agree (Score:5, Funny)
It is better with Windows.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Funny)
I'd rather use an OS that doesn't have a security model that resemble Swiss cheese requiring that it ship with an anti-virus application.
Parent
Can you say "Bought by Microsoft"? (Score:5, Insightful)
This might actually make sense economically for ASUS:
_Maybe_ less support calls.
_Very deep_ discounts/kickbacks from Microsoft.
Personally I am very glad that I got the Linux version of my Eee PC 901: More flash disk and more ram, for a little less money.
Currently I run the latest Ubuntu Netbook remix, and I'm very happy with it. The last time I booted it into XP must have been during Easter, to debug a Windows problem.
Terje
Now I'm definitely going to buy one! (Score:5, Interesting)
Didn't plan on buying another Asus EEE anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
In a way their Linux distro is more of a slap in the face for Linux than not using Linux.
I've had much better luck since putting my own instance of Ubuntu onto the machine which I prefer much more than I would Windows or that custom Xandros OS.
Re:Didn't plan on buying another Asus EEE anyway (Score:4, Informative)
I've got an Eee that I ordered with Linux. Their version came off in about an hour. I tried Easy Peasy for a few hours till I found Ubuntu Netbook Remix. (I've been a Gentoo fan for years, so I haven't followed that really closely.) Everything about UNR is fantastic except for one thing: browsers crash on it very frequently. And by "very frequently," I mean every time I use it. Unfortunately, running a browser is the single biggest use case for a netbook. I've read the forums; I've tried the suggestions; nothing works for me. I can't even get gdb to give me any useful info. At this point, I'm hoping that a big update comes out that magically fixes it. Until then, I keep looking for something else to try. Maybe Moblin? Maybe Win7? (Yeah, yeah, I know, but I have 9 computers at home. I just want the thing to WORK.) I'd put Gentoo on it, but I don't want to thrash the SSD, and I can't figure out how to get a cross-compiler going on my workstation. (Well, that, and I know I'd spend a MONTH tweaking everything to get it to the same level of functionality -- laptop-wise -- that UNR has out of the box.)
Parent
US Fanboys are still archaic (Score:4, Interesting)
Those who want Windows on their netbook can buy it, those who don't can buy Linux. See?
Ultimately this is business, and it ain't pretty.
calm down fanboy. (Score:5, Insightful)
its still a computer
it still has an option to install an operating system
you can still order an ASUS with linux preinstalled
windows can be returned for a refund
there are market alternatives.
and just because a corporation appears to align itself with your ideals and interests doesnt mean it likes you or said ideals...its just business.
Asus screwed up (Score:5, Interesting)
unfamiliar environment, major compatibility issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Also excellent reasons not to use Vista and Windows 7.
Calm down, the campaing is a fake. (Score:5, Interesting)
The campaing is a fake. Somebody took Asus EEE commercial videos and slapped a crappy looking badly aligned 'It's better with Windows' Slogan over it. Fonts aren't MS branding and the layout of the website is notably amatureish. You all have been trolled, so chill. It's a compareatively elaborate troll though, I give him that.
There's a problem here (Score:5, Interesting)
We need a new mass-market/"newb friendly," distro, and we need to make sure that this one is NOT Debian based.
FreeBSD has the following technical advantages over anything Debian based that I've been able to see, and these could be recreated most easily with a non-Debian based Linux. These might be under the hood things, but they would definitely filter up to make life easier for the end user.
- Single point of daemon loading at bootup with /etc/rc.conf.
- Comparitive ease of kernel recompilation that is so much greater than Linux, and Debian in particular, that it isn't funny. The config file is tiny, and completely documented.
- Package management which doesn't subpackage, or have incomprehensibly stupid, bogus dependency declarations. Said package management also uses the directory structure of the filesystem itself as a database, so it can be used on low-powered systems which would have difficulty running an SQL database engine.
These are simplifications which, IMHO, Ubuntu very badly needs to adopt.
Re:hey Asus (Score:4, Informative)
They definitely lost sales from me... and I regularly buy motherboards from them.
Parent
Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Insightful)
I love Asus motherboards and hardware. That said, the site looks very fishy to me. It doesn't look "professional" at all. The Asus and Micro$hit websites look really polished and complex. Itsbetterwithwindoze looks like an attempt to start a new flamewar between the M$ and OSS camps while putting Asus in the middle of the crossfire.
Parent
Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Insightful)
Why was this guy tagged as a troll? I mean, despite his borderline vitriol about Microsoft, his concerns about the legitimacy of the website seem pretty sensible to me, if one bothers reading the article and following the link to said website.
Hell yes. Seriously, the site looks like it was designed by a 5 year old downs victim and while I don't like the Microsoft and Asus sites, none of those two are made nearly as bad.
+1 to the questioning legitimacy crew.
Until MS/Asus confirm or deny a participation in this, I will treat is as non-existant.
Nothing to see here, move along.
PS: And if I had mod points atm, I wouldn't have bothered to post this but instead just modded up the grandparent.
Parent
Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but:
You'd have to be pretty naive (or blinded by Microsoft-hatred) to actually think either of these companies had anything to do with this site.
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Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Informative)
Also, there is nothing on ASUS's website to indicate that they had anything to do with this.
Actually, this page on asus.co.uk [asus.co.uk] links to itsbetterwithwindows.com, although I can't find any such links on asus.com.
need4mospd deserves the credit for finding that link [slashdot.org].
Parent
Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Informative)
Except that site links to www.asus.co.uk Asus's real UK website is uk.asus.com
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Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:hey Asus (Score:4, Insightful)
Hope you bought your Thinkpad used; IBM's PC division has always been in bed with Microsoft, and I doubt Lenovo is any better. This is just more of the golden rule, "He, who has the gold, makes the rules." in action; it will continue as long as Microsoft maintains it's ill-gotten monopoly.
Parent
Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Insightful)
"Sucks that the company is "disloyal""
Well those two words have never been uttered in succession before... and never will again!
I don't know what people are getting so upset for, it's just marketting, it doesn't mean anything. It's not like they're gonna be saying on their linux pages "but you'll prob want the windows version, cuz this one's shit"... no, their linux page is gonna be bigging up their linux product (presumably, I cba to look). Is like when a waiter says "excellent choice sir" when you choose the soup, the guy who cooks the chicken isn't gonna pipe up and say "what's wrong with the chicken?!". Everything is better than everything else, depending on what you're looking at.
Parent
Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Interesting)
... it's just marketing....
There are some people that would like to take an organization's word for what the words mean. Asus made their own cut of Linux to work with the Eee and now they've caved to Microsoft pressure to eat their own words. Worse, it's a lie.
The integrity of such an organization then becomes suspect, as if they lied about this, then what else did they lie about? Trust is broken. And we then know them for what they are: an organization that will capitulate, lie, send mixed messages, all in the names of sales desparation. Too bad about Asus....
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Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Insightful)
There are some people that would like to take an organization's word for what the words mean.
And those people are incredibly naive.
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Re:hey Asus (Score:4, Insightful)
Or perhaps they have an expectation of truth and honesty, and not finding that, believe that integrity is in question.
Naivety, once vanquished, leads to skepticism. Skepticism leads doubts, doubts make us look somewhere else for truth.
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Re:hey Asus (Score:4, Insightful)
Along the way, I've found that trust-based relationships can be made. Often, it's more with individuals than the organizations that they represent. You build mutual trust, then go from there.
Without trust, we're a bunch of warring autonomous micro-nations.
For many of us, integrity is above making a buck. Yes, we have to survive, but we can do so without lip farting, lies, FUD, and so on. The gift of communications has incumbent upon the gift, the onus and responsibility to do the best to speak the truth.
In this context, Asus has demonstrated their sense of that responsibility. In turn, we take note of that. We file that information for decisions made later. Perhaps they'll listen that we now categorize them as lackey sycophants of Microsoft. Perhaps not.
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Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps they'll listen that we now categorize them as lackey sycophants of Microsoft.
Since when we're they never not that? Did you honestly think that Asus put Linux on their EEE PCs because they really believed in the ideas of GNU and the GPL? Seriously? They put it on there probably to lower margin costs and to make money on some gullible GNUtards who are apparently just now realizing that Asus was out to make a buck and not to spread their ideology.
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Re:hey Asus (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you somehow missed the last 100+ years of corporations lying, cheating and doing whatever it takes to make a buck? Based on what history should anyone think that a corporation isn't going to do anything it takes to inflate the bottom line?
Have you really never worked for a company that actually practiced what it preached when it comes to ethics and responsibility?
I've had bad bosses and good bosses, but only once have I had a scumbag boss. Outside of the scumbag, everyone wanted to treat our customers fairly and be able to sleep nights. To a certain extent that is self serving because we wanted to keep our customers, but we often spent many hours trying to resolve a problem for a customer, or implement a feature they wanted. If a customer was unhappy we tried to make them happy. If they felt we had let them down we tried to fix that.
That behavior goes up the chain. If you are not a scumbag chances are you don't want to work for a scumbag, and that is a recursive relationship.
Now, every place I have ever worked has tried to figure out how we could get our hands on more money, and that includes charging whatever the traffic will bear for our products. But that is not lying or cheating. We set a price upfront, and if what we produced was worth it to our customers, they paid it and felt like they got value for their money.
I can't believe my experience in business is that different from most peoples. What makes you think that if you work for a corporation (which most people do) you suddenly turn into a scumbag?
Parent
Re:What is the lie? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, they are taking Microsoft marketing money (just like Dell, HP, Lenovo, IBM, etc.) and stating simple facts.
Their custom version of Linux (or ANY version of Linux) IS unfamiliar to windows users. There ARE major compatibility issues between Linux and Windows - Applications from one can't run on the other, and documents from one CAN be incompatible with the other. Do workarounds exist for most issues, CERTAINLY, but those are just that WORKAROUNDS, that, you know, work around incompatibilities.
Additional claims on the site are:
"Trusted - Windows delivers a dependable experience that Microsoft and a worldwide community of partners stand behind" - this is true, there are countless MS partners and MS does provide a "dependable experience" (even MS detractors can't argue with that!)
"Familiar - Windows is easy to use and familiar so you can be up and running right away" - with 94% market share (Mac at 5% and Linux at 1%) it is reasonable to assume that most people are familiar with the Windows environment.
"Compatible - You can be confident that your devices and applications will work with Windows - more than any other platform" - the MS Windows ecosystem has more applications than either the Linux or Mac environments, and there are Windows-only devices in the market (printers, modems, on-board RAID controllers, etc.) that it is trivial to prve that there are more devices that work with Windows than other OSs.
Now, having said all that, this is not an MS or ASUS website - this is a troll to see how much traffic this site can generate.
View the source of the HTML - no copyright asserted, no authorship claimed, only some "google-analytics.com" javascript voodoo at the bottom of the page. There is no way either organization would develop a webpage annonymously.
Michael Sharp went to Godaddy and registered the domain 5-Dec-2008 - I know, he lives in Washington state, but he's having a bit of fun...
(The website is too thin, and there are small issues that scream fake to me - kerning, lack of contact info, no mention that Windows ia a registered trademark, links to additional info, etc.)
Parent
Re:There is no "Linux" (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, but that's very 80s and 90s thinking. The whole idea that systems have to be static, fixed, rigid is very much in the past.
There is no reason why releases have to be so long apart. That thinking comes from a license fee driven mentality; when you charge people for an upgrade, they must have something for it. So there is a huge incentive for feature bloat; look at "ribbons" v. "menus". I've yet to see a substantive difference in use but it's a brand new feature that's used to justify the huge cost of an upgrade.
Now look at the way linux develops. It's incremental, it's fast, and it relies on repositories. It doesn't have an attachment to the past. So a vendor doesn't have to customize the software to each distro, that's the distro maintainers' job.
Distro maintainers in linux are much like the OEMs in the MS world. They're ultimately responsible for making stuff work. The problem currently is that the major commercial vendors just plain don't understand how linux works, and so don't want to trust, support, or even acknowledge the package maintainers' role in making their product work.
The flip side is that the linux community has a short bullshit fuse; with flux and change being the norm, a commercial vendor has to be just as nimble, just as competitive, just as flexible as an open source project. Most of them simply cannot do that as they have too many internally competing goals.
So a piece of software that is not being actively developed is likely to be dropped in favor of some other. Look at what's happening to MySQL right now.
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