HP May Be Developing Its Own Version of Linux

vondiggity writes to tell us that HP is working on several different ways to make an end run around Vista. Among the plans is also a supposed rumor that certain factions within HP are developing their own flavor of Linux. Executives at HP deny that any meaningful amount of resources are being directed into plans for a mass-market operating system, stating their main goal is to innovate on top of Vista. "Still, the sources say employees in HP's PC division are exploring the possibility of building a mass-market operating system. HP's software would be based on Linux, the open-source operating system that is already widely available, but it would be simpler and easier for mainstream users, the sources say. The goal may be to make HP less dependent on Windows and to strengthen HP's hand against Apple (AAPL), which has gained market share in recent years by offering easy-to-use computers with its own operating system."

That would be awesome!

They could name it HP-LX!

Lest we get excited.

It occurs to me that they aren't going to do this because they love Linux. They would do it to make money and I'm willing to bet that if they make their own version it would be designed to be difficult to move to other systems. They won't want to develop something at any expense and have someone else under cut their prices.

It might be nice to have the average user know what Linux is though.

Re:Lest we get excited.

If HP makes a decent version of Linux for their computers, even if it has system locks, could be an important introduction into the OS for many new users. A growth in the amount of users running Linux, or derivations thereof, could be good for Linux in general. Wider use = wider support. Not to mention that it could help to make porting games for Linux more lucrative.

Re:Lest we get excited.

I don't see how HP could do any more for Linux than OSX has done for FreeBSD. I doubt very many Mac users even know what FreeBSD is.

Precisely. Users do not care. Windows/Linux/OSX/whatever...they do not care. As long as the UI is relatively easy, it makes no difference.

recently, I had my daughter and her roommate living with us. A couple of 20somethings. I gave them an older VAIO with Ubuntu on it to use. No instruction, no notification, nada. After a few weeks, I asked "how do you like that new operaing system? It's not Windows, ya know"
'Huh, what do you mean?'

They never knew, nor cared, what the underlying susbsystem was. All they saw was a different wallpaper, and slightly different menu location. They found everything they needed to do, and simply got on with it.
of course, without a geek (me) setting it up, they would have been lost. No printer, no network, etc.

Linux needs better 3rd party periph hardware integration (camera/WiFi/printer-scanner, etc), better 'applications', and games. Given that, and no one in userland will notice the difference.

Re:Lest we get excited.

Just to go a little further, most people do not understand the concept of "operating system". I've tried talking to people about it before, and it's weird, but and I've even had to explain to people before that there's a difference between "the system" and "an application". In other words, not all computers have Microsoft Office, because that's an application that needs to be installed. Some people don't understand the difference between "the Internet" and a web browser.

When you talk about "the system", it can be pretty hard to explain to people what an operating system is, because they don't have a very good idea of what's done by the hardware and what's software. Some people think the "My Computer" icon is somewhere in the computer, almost physically, and they don't have a very good concept of how it can go away. Hell, in the early days of my desktop support, I had to explain to a couple people that "that box" was the computer, and without it "the computer" (i.e. the monitor) won't work.

I know it's sounds crazy to people here, but lots of people don't know and don't care. At most, they know how to use a computer for the things they want to use it for. At long as they can do that without too much hassle, you can give them any OS you want.

Re:Lest we get excited.

Apple doesn't contribute code back to BSD

Yes they do, but since most of their improvements are in the Mach and IOKit layers, there aren't many improvements for them to give back. They give back huge amounts of code to LLVM, which has a similarly permissive license.

That's likely why Apple didn't use Linux

No, they didn't use Linux because it didn't exist in 1986 when they (they being NeXT, at the time) first released the OS that would later be re-branded as OS X. They didn't use Linux in 2000 after the Apple purchase because the internals of Linux and 4BSD are very different, while FreeBSD and NetBSD still retain a lot of overall structure inherited from early BSD releases, making it easier to import their code into the XNU kernel.

Apple released a lot of patches for Linux when they ported it to the PowerPC architecture in 1996 and ran it on top of the Mach microkernel. Apple even shipped a Linux distribution for a while, although it never came close to A/UX, their own UNIX (which only ran on m68k machines) in terms of user friendliness.

Re:Lest we get excited.

HP maybe just playing around with a simple linux interface for netbooks..

HP has supported Linux on its laptops for a long time. I have a NC6400 laptop which came with SLED10 installed on it, even has a nice green and silver SUSE logo badge.

What we're seeing here isn't just one hardware maker toying Linux, there are dozens of them - Nokia was an early adopter with Maemo/OS200x, but Asus, Everex/Wallmart, Dell, etc, etc are all jumping on the bandwagon. Even Intel, Microsoft's long-term partner in crime, has it's own Linux plans [cbronline.com]. And the important point these early adopters have demonstrated is that it isn't hard.

Microsoft's monopoly has been an immense roadblock for computing progress for decades now, but Vista's failure means there are cracks appearing in their Windows, and both competitors and partners have a scent of the fresh air on the other side. That's why the commentators are all calling HP's efforts an end-run around MS.

It's not a fait accompli yet, but with Adobe reinventing Flash as an application platform, Google poising Chrome/Gears in a similar role and Linux being adopted by most major hardware makers, Microsoft is looking more and more like losing control of the computing world.
And not before time.

Re:Lest we get excited.

'm willing to bet that if they make their own version it would be designed to be difficult to move to other systems

They have one already (sortof) - HP-UX [wikipedia.org]. Perhaps they're thinking of making their own Linux version to make it easier to move to other systems, like all the x86_64 boxes they currently ship with Windows on. If they stop producing HP-UX and port a lot of the code they have in it to Linux, they get the best of all worlds - fancy stuff for their fancy servers, and fancy stuff for their mass-market servers and workstations.

They can also slap the Linux brand on it, so everyone becomes more comfortable running it.

Weak

If anyone can kill Linux its HP

Server Division Uses Linux

For their quick start CD, firmware update CD's etc. System Insight manager and their other management tools are full of GPL software.

It's not rocket science at this point and I'm sure they have enough market data at this point to see that it's a viable niche. After all, a low price is always a viable niche.

Year of the Linux Desktop

If Linux is going to make it on the desktop this is the way it will happen. Now there is a concentrated effort of programmers (paid ones at that) with a large amount of financial support from a major player in the desktop market.

HP wins because they can now ship a desktop for less and they have more control over the quality of the product which they ship. Win-Win for them unless MS decides this won't do and threaten to increase prices. It will be a long time before a corporate provider of desktops/servers can say no to MS.

Re:Year of the Linux Desktop

The real question is, does HP need Microsoft more than Microsoft needs HP?

The answer is not entirely obvious to me.

Easy to say that Microsoft could make HP very uncomfortable with abusive pricing, support terms, and general sabotage.

HP could, however, deprive Microsoft of easy revenue.

Or this could be the first step towards a serious anti-trust case, with Microsoft being charged with monopolistic practices, punishing hardware vendors for even tolerating competitive operating systems. Which they are pretty much avoiding right now, since Linux is such a small fraction of the OEM pre-installed market.

But let a HP-Linux get 10% of the home market, and maybe Microsoft decides it needs to spank HP and teach it a lesson? And HP has almost as many lawyers as Microsoft. I;m counting the DOJ. Though they aren't very motivated most of the time, if the DOJ gets fired up, they will win.

Interesting. Match this up with Ubuntu's new emphasis on being useable, and this could be pretty cool.

Re:Year of the Linux Desktop

The moment that major manufacturers stop preinstalling Windows is the day Windows officially starts dying.

Microsoft needs HP more.

Re:Year of the Linux Desktop

When the lease to the space the company I worked for was about two years away from expiring, there was a huge and fairly public campaign launched to 'find a new location'. The company wasn't the only in the building, but they did lease about 15% of the floors.

There was much excitement, employees were given surveys and polls. There were even a few... disagreements between people who were for locations closer to home that ended in one or the other no longer working for the company. The Business Journal even ran stories about it.

The company sold the idea heavy for almost the entire year, to the point where everyone was excited to find out where we would be moving to.

A year away from the date the lease was going to expire, the company announced that after exhausive study, it was determined that our current location was the best suited site, and that we had signed a new lease with the building. In consideration for signing the lease early, the building announced that our company's logo would be on the building and the upper management would have reserved parking spaces near the garage elevators.

Take this for what you will.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

I didn't see anything concrete in the 'article'.

Here's my take: it's a press release to put the fear of Jebus in MS. That's all. There's nothing concrete. There's no explicit description of what exactly they're going to do - all HP would need to do is just ship with [insert your favorite distro here]. But instead they make this BIG announcement of how they're going to have their 'own Linux flavor' to 'replace' Windows.

Yawn. Negotiating strategy and they're bluffing.

Worst euphamism ever

...stating their main goal is to innovate on top of Vista.

Could we please stop referring to programming as "innovating"? Not every single piece of code anyone writes is a breakthrough.

Re:Worst euphamism ever

...stating their main goal is to innovate on top of Vista.

Could we please stop referring to programming as "innovating"? Not every single piece of code anyone writes is a breakthrough.

I'm the exception. I wrote 'Bon jour World!'.That's innovation - at least according to most marketing professionals who sell software.

Funny, they've had Unix for years with HP-UX...

...and I've got it right next to me on an Intel machine. I guess they aren't having too hard a time 'getting around Vista.'

Applications are the key.

For both Dell and HP the allure of Linux is no need to be dependent on another company to innovate the OS to drive Laptop and Desktop sales. If they are willing to take a short term loss supporting two operating systems (Don't fool yourselves, OEM's support Windows for end users, not Microsoft) then they get to keep another $30-$100 bucks to add to their profits. Until the promise of cloud computing materializes, it will be difficult to sell consumer Linux without setting expectations that you will be using free versions of software or provide the software and support like Apple does. Plus be willing to stick out the growing process until you get 2-3% of the market. By the way, the model has worked for the big three of servers (IBM, HP and Dell) and now Linux is decent, higher margin revenue driver for all three companies.

I've been saying this for years...

I don't know if this is what HP is speculated to be doing, but if Linux were to ever be successful as a desktop OS, they would need to do the following:

• Determine which components are going to be part of the system.
• Fork every single one of them.
• Tightly integrate them
• Do not call it a "distro" but rather a "linux based desktop OS."
• Brand it without the word "linux"

If desktop linux is ever to be successful, there needs to be a standard and tightly integrated stack. The choice and openness that makes linux so great in the eyes of some is it's bane in the desktop market, and for software support as well.

Re:I've been saying this for years...

Why would they have to do that? It seems like they'd gain more fans and get continued community support by not-forking.

I agree that it might be to their benefit to go their own way and optimize for their own purposes, but if they start from Linux, they're going to have release the source code anyway. Purposefully making it hard to patch those improvements back into the vanilla code is going to piss off a bunch of potential customers, and make it harder to port community improvements over to their version.

Linux will be a successful desktop OS if someone can put enough pressure on major desktop app developers to release their software to on it. Or, depending on your criteria, Linux is already a successful desktop OS.

Market differentiation

HP needs what most all of the other OEMs need and that is some market differentiation that isn't based on price. No one wants a perfectly commodotized market to compete in. Windows for all of it's possible benefits carries a huge burden in that when you wish to sell a product built around it your product ends up looking an awful lot like everyone else's product. Leaving price (and profit) as the only real difference

In the end I think that this is survival for HP because I think MS has jumped the shark.

IF they really wanted to compete with windows...

They would work on developing WINE. Just another Linux distribution would only be another OS that cant compete with Windows because it cant do wht most people need to do, run windows apps. If HP really was interested in defeating Windows it would help develop Wine, so everyone would be able to compete in the OS marketplace on an even playing field. Microsoft only keeps its market share because apps and drivers which only run on Windows. Allow people to run Windows apps and drivers and then you have an OS that really can make headway against MS.

Re:Ubuntu

Simple enough.

repository.ubuntu.hp.com With all the required drivers for hardware along with setup scripts. Just aim HPuntu at HP's repository and it does the rest. They could even provoide the i386 and 64 binaries on a DVD for a apt-cd repo.

Dont repeat what Ubuntu does. Add to it.

Re:Really?

right, but if they want to compete on the desktop, it'll need a snazzy look and a new name. They can call it OS Eleven

It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be working with OS X. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your computer. Where can you go from there? Where?