HP May Be Developing Its Own Version of Linux 303
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."
Lest we get excited. (Score:4, Insightful)
It might be nice to have the average user know what Linux is though.
Worst euphamism ever (Score:5, Insightful)
...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:Lest we get excited. (Score:5, Insightful)
Build upon debian? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the smartest route would be to build on debian in this case. While they could cram whatever they like ontop the OS would still both benefit from and contribute back to the community.
Whatever they build upon i hold my thumbs its something new because if one thing is needed today its more OS out there. More diversity demands more standards and interoperations and that would be very good for IT as a whole.
HP Double speak (Score:1, Insightful)
Executives at HP deny that any meaningful amount of resources are being directed into plans for a mass-market operating system
Translated, a bunch of guys are working on this by themselves and if they ever get something marketable, HP will steal it from them claiming that since they (the employees) already work for HP, that HP owns anything they might tend to create and thusly, will market it to its fullest potential.
That translated means that HP really means Hefty Profit!
Applications are the key. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been saying this for years... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Ubuntu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lest we get excited. (Score:2, Insightful)
Any support from major manufacturers can only lead to increased acceptance of alternative OSes in general. If they're working on one I think it's great.
Re:Year of the Linux Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wowee (Score:2, Insightful)
no kidding. its a lot of work to take ubuntu, change 17 of the packages, 2 of the default backgrounds and the default theme. its like...3 hours of work, and you dont get paid for it. :(
Re:Lest we get excited. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:3, Insightful)
HP has the Stallmanesque "freedom" to make and sell any kind of hardware that it likes. If they make hardware Linux-friendly, that is excellent--pure and simple. At least that software will be available to HP users so that they can tinker on their machines AND other users can look at what HP has done to Linux and can build on that.
I see no downside here. Who cares if HP's Linux is difficult to move to other systems? (1) "Generic" Linux will still almost surely be portable to the HP systems; and (2) if HP's Linux fork is better, then the LINUX community will follow it.
Lastly, any kind of good open source operating system is one more bit of competitive pressure to push Microsoft to develop a leaner, cheaper, and friendlier operating system.
Re:Lest we get excited. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Lest M$ gets excited. (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me reword what you said to show how silly it is:
Motives are less important than the freedoms provided. If HP offers the four software freedoms, I hope they make buckets of money. Good faith contribution and use are always welcome, both strengthen software freedom.
"Undercutting" in the free software world is as preposterous a notion as Windoze OEM installs that really don't transfer to other systems or run without permission. Software freedom is about cooperating to meet user needs. No one cares who provides the eventual solution and who profits from it because everyone wins anyway you look at it.
For all of that, I have to agree with your last assertion. It would be good if more people understood software freedom. When that is clear both GNU/Linux and Windows can be seen for what they are.
Re:Lest we get excited. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, that's where the GPL trumps the BSD license.... :) Apple doesn't contribute code back to BSD because it's not required.
Who mods this crap "insightful?" Apple has continually released the BSD subsystem of OS X as Darwin, despite the BSD license not requiring them to. They do this because it allows others to fix things for them and help create interoperable systems. They understand the benefits of an OSS license and want to gain those benefits (for areas outside their core competency and value propositions).
But HP cares less about locking down their shit, and more about moving boxes, so Linux would be a logical choice for them.
Actually, HP is probably not willing to spend the time or expense to develop their own GUI and Linux is the best bet to provide one. That doesn't mean HP won't develop closed source drivers and end-user software and services on top of Linux in order to help motivate users to stick with their hardware.
User means ignorant, not stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Being ignorant, that is to say, having little or no knowledge of a subject, does not mean that someone is incapable of learning (stupid.) I have two users I support on a regular basis who know how to do their jobs well, and complicated jobs at that, but don't know much at all about the computer they're using. One was recently quite frustrated that they weren't able to open PDF files with Word, the idea that files required specific applications to be used was a revelation. (Yeah, I might have been able to get it to work, but simple is better.) Another was only vaguely aware that they could navigate to files outside of applications, starting with My Computer was a novelty.
Both have the capacity to learn how to use their computer for more than they have, and they are both capable of doing complex work very well. That said, there is some basic knowledge that IT professionals take for granted. The concepts of files and programs is a distinction that many computer users never make. The OS is a concept that both could grasp, but neither has any motivation to learn since it doesn't help them accomplish their tasks any faster or easier. It proves a distraction in fact to learn the things that they *could* do, since actually doing those things would cut down on their production and learning how to do them would take valuable time.
Just to underscore the point, I recently put in a call to tech support for a complex application that was not functioning correctly. The subject matter was one of moving significant amounts of money that belong to other people, so we're not talking minor stuff. The support technician told me to open up "your Internet" and was quick to blame the oft maligned Microsoft Updates for the problem (and no, it was not an update at fault.) Granted, the reference to Internet Explorer, which is what they really meant, and the assumption that updates applied flawlessly to millions of computers would mysteriously make one machine malfunction did nothing to improve my assessment of their knowledge, but in the end they knew all they needed to in order to fix the issue. Their SOP was sufficient without real understanding of the underlying technology.
The computing industry is still in infancy. Like a two year old taking first steps, the industry has collectively leaned a tremendous number of things and started to make huge headway into new areas. Like a toddler, we are proud and excited and tend to think that whatever we're currently doing (cloud computing, virtualization, ajax, xml) is the coolest thing ever. Often we have no idea what we're going to be excited by next. Note that none of this is bad, but perhaps a little perspective is called for.
In the not too terribly distant future, the computer may be unimportant, the OS may be unimportant and the particular applications may be unimportant. It doesn't take a tremendous leap to imagine systems that look and feel pretty much like a browser but handle any type of content we want to throw at it and can analyze faster and better than we've grown used to expecting. Imagine an AI that could do all the tasks for you, which currently require "basic" computing knowledge. I submit that we'll soon look back on the days of files, applications and operating systems like we do now on the different types of engine building knowledge of a hundred years ago. It won't be unimportant, but users soon really won't need to know and when they don't, and they won't, it will be the most efficient tools that are used, not the best marketed.
Re:Lest we get excited. (Score:1, Insightful)
They can also slap the Linux brand on it, so everyone becomes more comfortable running it.
How times have changed.
Re:I've been saying this for years... (Score:3, Insightful)
Brilliant idea. Just fork everything. It's easy for the first couple years when you can just make superficial hacks to make it work on your narrow hardware selection.
Then eventually major changes have to be made. None of your programmers actually wrote this code or have a deep understanding of why it is how it is, and the people that did are actively hostile to you for trying to usurp their role in the project. A community with real responsibility and leadership isn't compatible with the kind of tight control you want. You'll be writing everything from here on out.
At this point you've either become Microsoft or Apple. Microsoft probably has the hardest job in software: making Windows run well on all those PCs. Without economies of scale and a stranglehold on the market that allows you to charge real money for licenses you won't be able to hire all the programmers you need to be Microsoft.
Apple only has to make their OS run on a few computers, but you can't really succeed doing that unless they're a few computers that really matter. To be Apple you need a buzz machine on the order of Steve Jobs, maybe even bigger because you're burdened by your company's existing stodgy reputation. This buzz machine can't just be the head of marketing, he needs to run the damn joint. Both because you need the buzz and mystique to pervade the company internally as well, and because a guy >= O(Steve Jobs) simply isn't going to accept being your sniveling underling.
And then what if you succeed at doing that? Either one of those things, take your pick. You've technically made a desktop success out of some of Linux's code. Who cares? There's nothing magical about the code that makes up the GNU/Linux desktop. Most of it has commercial counterparts with important advantages. The reason we care about F/OSS is because of the community processes that generate it. The people of Linux will carry on in the frustration of hacking their xorg.conf files. Not that it's a very enjoyable thing to do on a Friday night, or even that it's something that human beings running standard PC hardware should have to bother with in 2008, but because the software is documented, not marketed. Because there's a community there that's honest, open, and passionate (for all its flaws it surpasses what any corporation will ever put out in these quantities). Because they don't just want to consume, they want to understand. And because hacking the xorg.conf sure beats going out and talking to people. Ew.
Re:HP Double speak (Score:3, Insightful)
HP will steal it from them claiming that since they (the employees) already work for HP, that HP owns anything they might tend to create and thusly, will kill the project and notify all HP employees that similar skunkworks will get them fired.
Fixed that for you.
Re:Build upon debian? (Score:4, Insightful)
And i wasn't slamming the GPL, it has its place. But in a corporation that wants to make lots of $, it isn't there.
So IBM isn't a corporation? Sorry, in my experience most Linux development is done by corporations looking to make a profit. Why would HP copy Apple and be later to market and have less of a software base to start with? Even Apple releases all their changes to BSD code back, so they're not making use of any of the so-called advantage of BSD over GPL.
Using Linux would allow HP to undercut Apple's development costs by having more code to make use of and more ongoing development from other companies. It's clearly the best starting point and nothing stops HP from preventing user migration with closed source end user software and services, or simply by selling the best, cheapest hardware (they are the number one vendor already).
If they don't do it another PC vendor will.. (Score:2, Insightful)
PC retailers large and small depend fractionally on the sucess of the OSes that will run on them. Especially in light of the competition offered by to Apple which is stealing sales off Dell, HP etc.
If Microsoft's blundering starts hurting the bottom line of these big companies, they will take matters into their own hands
Re:If they don't do it another PC vendor will.. (Score:4, Insightful)
If Microsoft's blundering starts hurting the bottom line of these big companies, they will take matters into their own hands
MS's bundling and gouging has been hurting these companies' bottom line for many years. The real question is, will any of them be able to create a valid competitor and will any of them trust the court system to stop MS from killing them for offering an alternative and do so in time to make any difference. The fact that no major OEM has tried to sell a mainstream desktop OS (aside from Apple) is basically a vote of no confidence in the US court system. Heck, most American companies go straight to the EU courts these days and even there they have to wait many, many years for little compensation. So far there have been a few niche products outside the mainstream and that's about it. Vista isn't the real problem for OEMs introducing Linux, inefficient courts and murky, incompetent bureaucracies that are very conservative are. The best, practical hope is *shudder* Walmart who is not scared of MS and will hit them hard if given reason.
Re:Lest we get excited. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Indeed. This would mean official support and official drivers on a wide range of machines, even if they're only HP-branded ones."
We can also look forward to the usual bundled crapware.
Re:Lest we get excited. (Score:3, Insightful)
Fix things for them, that might happen on occasion, but has anyone created an "interoperable system" based on that source?
Sure they have. Unsanity created APplication Enhancer (APE) which opened up cool new ways to do things (and broke stuff occasionally). Security geeks in my office wrote some cool kernel extensions for locking down specific processes that would not have ben possible without the source. Would KDE even have been able to port their kit to OS X in a reasonable amount of time without that source? It helps certain developers quite a bit.
Then look at other technologies like Bonjour, Apple's ZeroConf implementation. It sure helps to have that source if you're writing zeroconf for Linux or even for an application on Windows, like CS3.
I also recall reading that the macFUSE /proc implementation was based on unpublished APIs. I don't think it was the Darwin source that made it work.
I bet they did look at the source and almost certainly for the SpotlightFS support and the like.
In any case, having the source is always preferable if you're trying to create an interoperable system because when it comes right down to it, all documentation has deficiencies and sometimes the easiest way to resolve an ambiguous part of a standard or poorly explained interaction is to look and see how the other party actually coded that part.