HP Starts Pushing Desktop Linux 465
iswm writes "HP has supposedly been selling MandrakeSoft Linux on the desktop for a while but has been so quiet about it that for all intents and purposes it's been a stealth operation. That's all about to change, with two new Linux desktops ready for rolling out by HP to the North American SMB market, both boxes to be sold with Mandrake Linux."
HP and Apple and Starbucks (Score:4, Insightful)
HP is on a roll (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:HP and Apple and Starbucks (Score:1, Insightful)
I''m glad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why no high end workstations? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is nothing wrong, of course, with building your own computer and putting a distro on it. And if you do it like I did you save ~$1,000 US in the process. ~$1,100 if you don't have any reason to buy Windows.
Re:Don't trust HP. (Score:3, Insightful)
The way I see it, we're forced to play a "least of many evils" game on the way to world domination.
Re:What's Microsoft gonna do? (Score:4, Insightful)
More realistically HP PC sales would fall through the floor as people would just deal with other vendors and save themselves the trouble. To most consumers an HP box is a box just like any -- generally an interchangable commodity part. Claiming that HP holds the power position in such a scenario seems dubious.
Of course this is a silly academic exercise anyways. Microsoft was barred, via the whole antitrust thing, from performing such retaliatory practices. Microsoft doesn't have the option to, as you claim, "cut off their own balls".
Re:Don't trust HP. (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting the cart ahead of the horse. (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod me down and bury your head in the sand if you can't take the truth, but...
Every time some manufacturer has linux somewhere and it makes the Slashdot news there are always the same comments, but the main hold back for wide adoption of Linux isn't getting manufacturers to sell PCs with it or public recognition. The main hold up is the mantra of any highschool composition class, "Who is your audience?" Who is the audience? Geeks? No, Geeks can and do already use linux. The audience that needs to be targeted is the average user, and no it is not 'joe six-pack', or at least not entirely. The primary audience for wide-adoption consists of your parents, your grand parents, your neighbors and friends who call you to fix their systems, children, etc. People who want to use their computer with a minimum of fuss, and who DO freak out when they get an unexpected pop-up, and DO run anything sent to them in an email, and DO use their first name as their password. Advances in Linux performance and functionality are great, but for wide adoption to ever succeed usability and intuitive design must take precedence. And as long as there is anything that requires a text file to be edited in linux, Windows will remain king.
Re:Interesting. (Score:3, Insightful)
So's AmigaOS4, Doom III and Duke Nuke'em Forever
(actually I think mandrake is doing well enough now as is to be a competitor to windows. Both have quirks that need fiddling from time to time, and mandrake is improving quicker than win)
Hey HP! (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one do not welcome our Linux newbie underlor (Score:5, Insightful)
I dread a scenario where, around 2005, everyone and their grandma is buying a Linux box (that new OS that just came out year or so ago). And it all goes to shit. You just know it will.
Everyone will run as root, open viruses, execute them. All our favorite apps will become add-filled feature-burdened piles of stinking filth rushed to market despite thousands of high severity bugs.
It willl suck hard and we'll all look back fondly on the good old days.
Drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
Someday, someone will explain to me why 'We' want linux to be adopted by the other 95% of the market.
More market share than, say, Mac OS X means more chance of getting manufacturers of newer peripherals to put effort into writing drivers or at least into providing free software developers with technical information sufficient to write and maintain a driver. Lack of drivers is the primary reason I'm still on Windows 2000, as the copy of Mandrake I tried a few months ago didn't work with my Radeon 9000 card (except in unaccelerated VESA mode), and Microtek denies the SANE developers any information about my scanner (a Scanmaker 4850).
Re:Year of Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
except that the other freight train is 100x as big, already moving, and in the opposite direction on the same track.
Re:Don't trust HP. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not an American's God given right to be employeed - its not even a God given right to have a chance to be employeed. The only God given right you have is the right to life... everything else, your own your own bucko!
(btw posting as AC, cause I don't have an account.)
Re:The good with the bad (Score:5, Insightful)
I run XP and Mandrake 10 (beta) on my laptop at work. My experience with using both OS's on a daily basis makes me wonder what facts you base that statement on.
Re:I for one do not welcome our Linux newbie under (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: viruses, your worst case sounds no worse than the current state. The favourite apps will not become ad-filled because the base is open. Someone puts an ad in, fork the last one.
Because given the chance (Score:5, Insightful)
As for everyone running as root and viruses, how is that different from when they run Windows? As for our apps, I use free ones. I know better than to run some shmuck's pop up blocker when I've got Mozilla and Konqueror.
Re:I for one do not welcome our Linux newbie under (Score:5, Insightful)
Someday, someone will explain to me why 'We' want linux to be adopted by the other 95% of the market. 'we' all lament what has happened to the Internet since 'they' finally found out about it (and thought it had just been invented). We pine about the good old days of the usenet, when it was like, useful.
Usenet is a communications mechanism, not software. When Microsoft put the BSD FTP client on every desktop did that affect you at all? When Winzip became popular did that hurt people who use infozip? Ignore the consumer distributions of Linux and move on with your life.
I dread a scenario where, around 2005, everyone and their grandma is buying a Linux box (that new OS that just came out year or so ago). And it all goes to shit. You just know it will.
No it won't. They'll use Lycoris. You'll use Gentoo or Dragonfly or some other 'leet *nix distribution. There will be essentially no interaction between the two. Why do you care? You're like a high school student who is afraid that they won't be cool and unique if everyone else listens to the same music they do.
Everyone will run as root, open viruses, execute them.
So what? Why does it matter to you whether these viruses come from computers running Linux rather than Windows?
All our favorite apps will become add-filled feature-burdened piles of stinking filth rushed to market despite thousands of high severity bugs.
Sure. Grandma is going to ask for a graphical interface in VI and smilies in Berkley mail.
It willl suck hard and we'll all look back fondly on the good old days
The usual elitist blah blah.
Re:Opensource Income? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonetheless, Linux is rising. Windows is falling. Anything and everything that helps the open-source community is great in my book. I've never really disliked HP, but I've never really liked them as much as I do now either. =)
But Will it Be Cheaper? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, with this HP development, I have to wonder if we're going to see more of the same, particularly since there's no mention that the Mandrake-equipped boxes will be any cheaper than their XP counterparts. Granted, there are some people who, for whatever reason, feel some dislike for Microsoft ;) And these people might be willing to have their computer ship without an XP license solely to deprive Microsoft of a few dollars.
But I have to think that most people, if they can't get a discount by going without Windows, would want to receive XP. After all, why turn down something that's free, and something you might decide to install later -- if only to make the machine more valuable for resale?
With this in mind, the option of ordering Linux boxes from major manufacturers just isn't all that exciting unless there's some kind of discount involved. Once you have the option to save thirty dollars by ordering your HP or Dell without XP, that will really be news.
Re:As an XP user I tried switching to Mandrake: (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree, for me that's one of the most annoying things about most distros. While legalities and shortages of people to make new packages are understanable, I still hated either installing from source on an rpm based system or trying to make updated packages based on how mandrake did it. That's why eventually I settled on Debian Unstable. What it lacks in configuration utilities it more than makes up for in available packages. I use the command line for it since I've usually got it open anyway for working on my own code, but had I wanted to everything I've installed could have been done through synaptic's gui. Well, excepting comercial releases.
Re:Putting the cart ahead of the horse. (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary audience is the CEO. Linux desktops are ideal for the corporate environment. That's where they will rule first and foremost. Linux gives businesses more options and more freedom when it comes to the desktop. This means a business may choose to run thick or thin clients, they can centralize all software so upgrades are a snap, they can effectively lock down desktops and won't have to worry about their users clicking on emails or web sites that carry virus payloads. Of course they also get to save a buttload of money and dictate their own upgrade schedule too.
Once the corporate desktop belongs to linux then the home users will also adopt it so they can take their work home.
that's what happened to windows, that's what's going to happen to linux.
Look at what HP is doing, they are selling these PCs at small businesses not Joe Shmoe. IBM and SUN are also selling linux to the corporate desktop.
Here is my prediction. By the end of 2005 Linux will have reached critical mass on the corporate desktop. By that I mean around 20% of all corporate desktops in the world (not the US though) will be running a linux desktop. It will double in 2006 and then the growth will slow down because the US businesses will be very slow to migrate to it.
For use... (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a good point, but I cannot resist noting that between dealing with spyware, a future SP2 release that may break who knows what software, and product activation worries that there is an old quote with a new twist that seems very applicable:
"Windows XP is only free if your time has no value".
Re:Why no high end workstations? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's Microsoft gonna do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Err yes, but due to the DMCA will Mandrake-running HPs be able to play encrypted DVDs out-of-the-box?
Standard installation/uninstallation routines (Score:3, Insightful)
An installation API needs to exist that allows for software makers to have a simple installer on their CDs, just like in Windows, that allows them to install binaries, create shortcuts on the menu, and allow for proper uninstallation.
Doesn't look like that's gonna happen any time soon, though.
Re:I for one do not welcome our Linux newbie under (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows, being the current popular OS, has thousands of independent yet commercial developers and companies investing time, effort and research making cool tools and apps for it.
As a developer, it's great to have tools like Emacs and Python for free. But let's face it: some top notch tools probably won't be replaced by OSS any time soon. It just requires too much effort, research, and knowledge (much of which is patented by Adobe) to create a graphic suite as powerful as Adobe CS.
So making Linux popular is the only way to lure all these powerful art and development tools to the Linux environment.
Re:Drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
It should be said there is not a single device made that is not supported by linux. Now before the onslaught comes let me clarify. . .There is not a single class of devices not supported by linux. Some particular manufacturers do not support their product so it does take a bit of forethought and planning (e.g. checking supported hardware lists). No, you can't just buy device and bank on the drivers being included on a shrinkwrapped CD in the box.
I'm happy to say that currently I have a fully working color scanner, 9500 pro w/ full hardware acceleration, iPod, CDRW/DVD player, sound cards, network cards (of course :)), ATA 100 expansion cards, digital camera, and other miscelaneous gadgets and hardware. I do know how the parent must feel though, when switching over from Windows I was burned several times by purchasing before planning. Now I've learned that 15 minutes of googling can save hours of migraines.
Re:Hey HP! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As an XP user I tried switching to Mandrake: (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't use
KDE has Control Center that has Peripherals that also lists mouse, this is where you can change the mouse tracking speed, make sure to hit apply after each change.
You say your soundcard worked, then say it didn't in the next section as you wanted to install the correct driver?
Are you sure you're not running to the commandline quicker than needed?
Not sure on Mandrake, but most root installed programs end up in
Sometimes you're better off getting Linux as a box set, at least with SuSE you'd get plenty of manuals that show how to use programs and to do installations, the price alone is almost worth it for the manuals alone.
Re:iTunes for Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
Uhh, no.
Buy yourself a f. clue.
Re:Drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
I was under the impression that Nvidia had far better performance in OpenGL than Radeon.
But whatever. Since you allways have to spend at least half a day installing the Radeon drivers while the Nvidia ones are up and running i 7 seconds, it's really not much of a choise anyway.
Re:I for one do not welcome our Linux newbie under (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but you're talking commercial linux distros here. There will be always the side - Debian, Gentoo, Fedora and the people who care will just (e)merge the good (GPL) parts of the other side and leave the bad ones. I for one don't see Debian and DRM mixing too well >:)
It's not going to be much different from today - and the GP poster has a point. The "popular choice" will be something like Lindows or Lycoris for desktop users - and remember that Lindows already has those problems, default root and 'windows-type convenience' (hah!) So there will be 'secure Linux boxes' and 'insecure Linux boxes'
But the most important part is: if you're using a GPL distro you won't care about commercialized Linux! no, scratch that - you will probably get drivers due to commercial Linux distros, so it's not that bad.
Re:They're just selling to pirates (Score:4, Insightful)
That's still a good thing for Linux folk. Less funds for Microsoft mean less funds used to attack Linux.
Re:Putting the cart ahead of the horse. (Score:3, Insightful)
Businesses do transitions when they bring in new machines. A typical business machine has, what, a four year lifecycle? That means that even if every machine being replaced was converted to Linux, there'd be less than 50% people using Linux. You're requiring about half of all new desktop purchases to be Linux-based. That's wildly unrealistic.
I'd say that 20% Linux desktop business penetration by the end of 2007 would be a very positive outcome.
Linux OS accrediation (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the time in the past was people getting excited about the ability for *geeks* to use exclusively Linux -- Open Office, Samba, etc made it feasible to work with Windows users and still keep using Linux.
Red Hat's CEO said, what, six months ago that Linux isn't ready for the desktop war just yet?
This year and last year are big because there are a lot of major open source apps coming out and being *usable*, by *typical users*, at at least a basic level, as a substitute for Windows apps.
Finally, if you don't think Linux usability has improved massively since '98, you just plain don't remember 98. We had no GNOME or KDE apps. Preference dialogs didn't exist. Widget sets were Tk, and black-and-white Athena. Boxes required a serious sysadmin to secure out-of-box.
Last year, I agree that there were a lot of people on Slashdot that were predicting big gains on the desktop. And guess what? A bunch of governments and big companies starting transition processes, or at least made it much more easy to move a chunk at a time to Linux. If anything, I'm surprised that things are going this quickly.
My prediction is that Linux will break 10% desktop market share before the end of 2006. That is a *huge* number of users to move from one platform to another -- perhaps around 100 million users -- , but remember that there's a threshhold effect at which point application vendors, people doing file formats, etc cannot ignore Linux, and once that hump is over, it becomes much easier to move to Linux.
Web sites are already improving -- I don't see the number of "IE-only" sites that I did thanks to the spread of Mozilla, Linux, and Mac OS X running Safari.
That being said, I think that as Microsoft gets more worried, they will do whatever it takes to fight back effectively. That may be as far as moving to a Linux-based distribution and porting their products to it. Microsoft is unlikely to die, no matter what.
Re:Drivers (Score:2, Insightful)
I actually doubt that even beating OS X will dramatically improve hardware support :(
Apple produced their own, very restricted, range of hardware (in terms of graphics cards etc) and then persuade (pay?) manufacturers to produce drivers. Look at the latest ATI cards ... out of the entire 9x00 range of Radeon cards only two (9800 Pro and 9000 Pro) currently have official drivers produced for them, compared to five for Windows (and that isn't including the Pro, XT versions etc.).
I suspect that at some point the Linux community may have to compromise and accept greater use of binary-only drivers in exchange for their hardware support being stronger than it currently is.
I am sure that there will always be those members of the Open Source community who would shun this and quite happily stick to cards that are possibly a generation behind in order to have open drivers. Unfortunately I don't have the strength to follow those principles, I just want my computer to do it's job and if that means compromise on whether I can see the source, then so be it (not that I would understand the source anyway you understand).
I buy open source (Score:3, Insightful)
For years, Matrox had the best support for Linux with open source drivers. I bought Matrox cards. Currently, ATI has the best open source support. Right now, I'm buying ATI. I'll keep doing so, as well. I use my cards under Linux exclusively, and binary drivers are a tremendous pain in the ass to deal with. I recognize that video card vendors have reasons for wanting to keep their drivers closed-source -- that's fine, but I happen to value open source.
Re:Music and multimedia? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well maybe not right now but what about 1 or 2 years down the line ? I mean compare what Linux is like now to what linux was like 2 years ago in terms of a polished enough desktop that was easy enough for the average email,mp3,web browsing home user ? Look at knoppix and look at the basic linux desktop experience now. It has come along way.
Now take a look at the current state of sound applications under linux
http://www.agnula.org/
http://audacity.sourcef
http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccr
Consider the fact that apple, a major platform in the multimedia world is now based on unix. This makes porting applications that work on osx to other unix like platforms (i.e linux) a lot easier. Also consider the fact that some multimedia companies like dreamworks are currently using linux to get stuff done
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=610
Yes at the moment linux in multimedia is primarily just used to render stuff but consider what linux in multimedia will be like 1 or 2 years down the road ? Eventually it will get there and I think it will be the home enthusiasts who will make this happen.
A lot of companies like adobe complain about the effects of software piracy in asia and eastern europe but it was piracy that helped to promote a lot of these companies among young multimedia students. The fact is a lot multimedia students are unwilling to fork out the big bucks to use a lot of these expensive tools (like maya, brice or 3dsmax) so they download them or copy them for free. When these students then go on to work/start their own multimedia company they do not use pirated software but buy a proper licensed copy and then put it down as a tax right off. At the moment thanks to projects like fink, darwin ports and people making carbon ports a lot of cool free unix apps are becoming available to mac users of different skill levels. Now at the moment their is no question that professional apps like reason or cubase are better than any free unix offerings. The question is at what point does the free apps become good enough to handle most of the basic needs of a multimedia student and at what point does it become easier just to use this free app rather than bother going to the hassle of getting a cracked copy.
I think the gimp has reached this stage and audacity is nearly there. On the macs in my college I know that multimedia students are thought to use the gimp and told about audacity, I also know that a lot of business students use the gimp and have it installed on their laptops.
I think when these students leave college and start up/ start working for a company they are going to be using at least some free software. At first maybe only to do some trivial multimedia/other tasks but eventually I think as core applications mature and their is more input in the free software community from multimedia minded people you will see the quality of applications improve and user bases grow.
Re:Putting the cart ahead of the horse. (Score:2, Insightful)
Early 1980s: Business: Nobody got fired for buying IBM.
Mid 1980s: Individuals: I can afford a computer...I'll get the same one as I have at work. (Not the much nicer Macs or other systems of the time.)
Mid-to-Late 1980s: Business: We will use Word and Excel as well as Lotus 123. It is cheaper and graphical. And cheaper.
Early 1990s: Individuals: I'll get that new computer -- it does Windows!
...and the rest you know, including the fairly recient price increases for MS Office.
Business use definately drove adoption of Windows in the home.
Re:As an XP user I tried switching to Mandrake: (Score:3, Insightful)
>Why do you need to know? Everything is installed so
>that is just works. If you really need to know, the
>package management tools will tell you.
Ha ha! Laughable. The same zealots who flame windows users for "not knowing how the computer works" and for using "an OS that hides half of the files" etc., now flame linux newbies for WANTING to know where the files actually are?
Also, the general tone of your comment is: "learn how the computer works, and learn to do it HIS way!"
Bullshit. The USER is the master and the COMPUTER is the slave, NOT the other way round. Of course one has to learn how it works (and even this is debatable), but it should be simple for the user to set it up the way HE wants. Universal drag & drop, easy shortcut creation, etc, are a good way to achieve that ease of use. Try using MacOS X for a couple days for an example of an UI done (mostly) right.
Don't get me wrong: I tried mandrake (9.0) too, I liked it, and plan to install it on my home PC soon (need to buy new hard drive); but I agree with the original poster: there are a LOT of things that should be WAY more simple on the mandrake desktop. Until fixed, don't expect no "mass adoption" anytime soon.
Re:Music and multimedia? (Score:1, Insightful)
As it stands, corporations are cynically mistreating the people who pay their wages, and hiding behind "secrecy" that doesn't even work for paranoia about "competitors" who probably have already reverse-engineered their products.
The solution is to make CODEC algorithms - which are just mathematical processes, when all is said and done - unpatentable.
We asked politely enough for the codec algorithms, so we could write our own implementations from scratch, and they f**ked us off. If they think that's an acceptable way to treat people, then they shouldn't mind us adapting the Windows codecs. You can't behave one way yourself and expect other people to behave a different way.
Drivers-Slippery slope. (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah wishful thinking. Anyway what would be the point of running a free OS on a proprietary closed-source driver bedrock? If you're not going to abhere to OSS principles, why will they? Anyway I think that Windows people (the one's "requesting" binary drivers) haven't learned their lessons about the downsides of binary drivers. As one of the earlier posters pointed out "popularity" will have it's price, and it will be a high one. The only way to counter it is for us to be more like Stallman (love him, hate him, at least no one says that he doesn't stick to his principles). That's more than a lot of the incoming crowd (yeah that's harsh, but then actions speak louder than words). Point: "Lack of drivers is the primary reason I'm still on Windows 2000, as the copy of Mandrake I tried a few months ago didn't work with my Radeon 9000 card (except in unaccelerated VESA mode), and Microtek denies the SANE developers any information about my scanner (a Scanmaker 4850)." So basically this Windows user wants the OSS community to abandon one of it's core principles, so that he can migrate from Windows to Linux, and it's not even the OSS communities fault (yeah, we're making Microtek not give us any info.).
What's going to happen if that happens? Let's look at history. Geeks get fed up with proprietary OS. Geeks made aware of this up and coming free OS based on open principles. The die hard geeks move over and contribute to the growth of this OS leaving their old OS behind. OS get's good enough that the less hard core geeks make the move, leaving their old os behind. The pool of competent geeks is shrinking elsewere (sort of like salt being left behind when water evaporates). [You are here]. Now this beloved OS becomes really, really easy because it's compromised all the principles that made the competent geeks first come to it.
Competent geeks move on to another OS or create another one, leaving a desolate wasteland behind, with the same problems we presently complain about. So in essense there's a "chasing of the geek" happening. for a demographic that gets short thrift, we seem to be awful necessary(1). Why else do people want to keep playing in our pool?
(1) We're necessary, as the garbageman and taxi driver is necessary. Someone has to build and maintain the infrastructure.
Re:Drivers (Score:2, Insightful)
in the time it has taken Linux
Microsoft Windows has had a ten-year head start, as it started out on a DOS kernel. Developers of desktop environments on top of Linux are not dawdling as you seem to suggest.
Re:What's Microsoft gonna do? (Score:3, Insightful)
What Microsoft definately did, and continue to do, is disallow dual-boot machines. This was done to kill off OS2 and BeOS, though it also continues today to prevent anybody from practically trying Linux or any other alternative. Microsoft does not allow a manufacturer to sell a Windows machine that even has the disk partitioned so that you could install Linux without screwing up the Windows installation.
I'm pretty certain Microsoft's actions worked very well for them. If this had not been done, back in 1990 or so all the manufacturers would probably have come up with dual-boot machines, where the other system was BeOS or some other (perhaps manufacturer-proprietary) system, advertised as the "gaming" system. And all the 3D graphics and games would have been made for the gaming system. Big manufacturers would have locked in their own games so they could support their own proprietary systems, and I would expect there would be no Playstation, instead that market would be covered by inexpensive dual-boot machines.
Users would be quite used to and accepting that they have to reboot their machines to switch from work to playing games. But then, to Microsoft's horror, there would be "productivity" applications that would start to appear for the game, advertised clearly as "uses the better graphics, and no reboot necessary!". They predicted this and they did what they could to squash it.
I don't think Microsoft has ever been too concerned about blank machines. Only geeks buy those. Any large corporation that did so and tried to install Windows would either be paying more than if they bought the pre-installed ones, or would be breaking the law.