5 ms·

Yes, MS already sell XP Home OEM for $40 for the eeePC... they have the capacity for brutality. From sales so far, it doesn't seem to need to be any cheaper (in

by 13ren 18y ago

Yes, MS already sell XP Home OEM for $40 for the eeePC... they have the capacity for brutality. From sales so far, it doesn't seem to need to be any cheaper (in fact, a higher price would probably be OK). The ecosystem built on XP's platform is still worth a lot. What could kill them is a crossover to the web as a platform... ie. as the desktop. Implementations of Flash, Javascript and Java are getting faster and adding features needed for the desktop (e.g. client-side persistence). It seems inevitable that the old settop box dream will be realized. It was such a cool idea! The OS might even be non-linux, if it has other features that are needed more. e.g. faster, more power efficient, maybe intrinsically multicore, so it can work on cheaper, lighter devices, requiring less power - like a phone. Linux has bloated, through evolving in the same rich hardware environment as Windows.

jbert 18y ago
> Linux has bloated, through evolving in the same rich hardware environment as Windows. I'm not disputing your point directly, but I'd be interested in your data. For example, there are Linux distros which run well on what I consider low-power devices (I'm thinking of ARM-powered NSLU-2 or WRT54 devices) with, say, 32Mbyte RAM. I'm also not sure what you mean by 'intrinsically multicore' - are you implying that Linux doesn't make use of multiple cores? Or doesn't do it well?
- astine 18y ago
  Linux can be made to be far more lightweight than Windows or OSX, but who uses those distros? Most people use Ubuntu or something similar and those distros are fairly heavy, not as heavy as Vista, but still much heavier than they could be. Things like Compiz and KDE/Gnome really weigh a system down.
  - jbert 18y ago
    > Things like Compiz and KDE/Gnome really weigh a system down. If you're looking for a modern desktop operating system, then yes, it is tuned for a modern(-ish) desktop. But if you're talking about using "a different OS" (as the OP was), then you're already further from the mainstream than using a linux distro tuned for your needs. I'm just checking on the substance of the "Linux is bloated" claim, and trying to find out what alternatives there might be.
    - 13ren 18y ago
      Also, I believe that the kernel has also grown much larger, especially in recent years (don't have data or links, just from articles I've read). Concurrency isn't really a solved problem. If someone did solve it, and formed an OS around it, that would be what I mean by intrinsically multi-core. It might also involve an entirely different CPU architecture, and view of the hardware, which the fundamental concepts of linux just didn't map to efficiently (e.g. no filesystem). Hypothetically speaking. But if you could make it look the same to webapps, it wouldn't matter. My point isn't that linux is bad in any way, but that if your platform is the web, then the OS doesn't matter. BTW: I also don't believe that linux is the ultimate OS - it's just an OS, and it's possible to have something better. In practice, the alternative might be based on linux (or at least compatible). Not because linux is perfect, but it's there already and because of the ecosystem of software that relies on it (borrowed from unix). Linux is a market success - by which I mean many people use it. The only alternatives I can think off the top of my head are: BSD, solaris, minix, QNX, Plan 9, AmigaOS and there are also some really "weird" OS's in academia, many no longer used. I believe Plan 9 was written by the creators of unix... as an improvement. But it lacked market success. EDIT BTW I'm not claiming that linux is as bloated as Windows - just that it has increased significantly in size, and due to the same cause: there is no real need not to.
      - jbert 18y ago
        > Also, I believe that the kernel has also grown much larger, especially in recent years (don't have data or links, just from articles I've read). OK. The kernel runs happily on a 32Mbyte ARM system I have to hand. dmesg tells me the kernel usage (a 2.6.21) at boot time is ~2Mbytes: <5>Memory: 30292KB available (1912K code, 153K data, 84K init) I don't think that justifies being called 'much larger', unless you're comparing with mid-90s kernel versions or something. The source code for Linux is much larger, but I think that's mostly due to broader support for hardware and other optional components.
        13ren 18y ago
        That's pretty impressive, though I was thinking from the beginning, and "recent years" being the last 10 years, and also of the kernel size (not its RAM usage). I agree that kernel size matters less than RAM usage. But to share my perspective: My first computer was a ZX81, with 1K RAM total (i.e. 1024 bytes). 32*24=768 bytes were used for video in the worst case (it was compressed, newline style). To be fair, it didn't have a filesystem (no disks) or multitasking. In truth, I found 1K just too limiting, and went for the 16K rampack addon. Regarding my main point: I doubt the massive software base can be given up at this point (even the disruptive technology of cell phones switch to linux when they get powerful enough) - it's just my yearning for those days of daring frugality, when a byte was worth fighting for.
  - rkowalick 18y ago
    This is a bold-faced lie. I use fluxbox, and honestly, I have never even used the swap partition on my computer with 512mb of RAM. I don't even recall seeing it use over half of the system memory.
    - astine 18y ago
      Wtf? Are you being sarcastic? Your standard Ubuntu install doesn't use Fluxbox, it uses Gnome+Compiz.

by 13ren 18y ago

jbert 18y ago

> Linux has bloated, through evolving in the same rich hardware environment as Windows. I'm not disputing your point directly, but I'd be interested in your data. For example, there are Linux distros which run well on what I consider low-power devices (I'm thinking of ARM-powered NSLU-2 or WRT54 devices) with, say, 32Mbyte RAM. I'm also not sure what you mean by 'intrinsically multicore' - are you implying that Linux doesn't make use of multiple cores? Or doesn't do it well?

astine 18y ago
Linux can be made to be far more lightweight than Windows or OSX, but who uses those distros? Most people use Ubuntu or something similar and those distros are fairly heavy, not as heavy as Vista, but still much heavier than they could be. Things like Compiz and KDE/Gnome really weigh a system down.
- jbert 18y ago
  > Things like Compiz and KDE/Gnome really weigh a system down. If you're looking for a modern desktop operating system, then yes, it is tuned for a modern(-ish) desktop. But if you're talking about using "a different OS" (as the OP was), then you're already further from the mainstream than using a linux distro tuned for your needs. I'm just checking on the substance of the "Linux is bloated" claim, and trying to find out what alternatives there might be.
  - 13ren 18y ago
    Also, I believe that the kernel has also grown much larger, especially in recent years (don't have data or links, just from articles I've read). Concurrency isn't really a solved problem. If someone did solve it, and formed an OS around it, that would be what I mean by intrinsically multi-core. It might also involve an entirely different CPU architecture, and view of the hardware, which the fundamental concepts of linux just didn't map to efficiently (e.g. no filesystem). Hypothetically speaking. But if you could make it look the same to webapps, it wouldn't matter. My point isn't that linux is bad in any way, but that if your platform is the web, then the OS doesn't matter. BTW: I also don't believe that linux is the ultimate OS - it's just an OS, and it's possible to have something better. In practice, the alternative might be based on linux (or at least compatible). Not because linux is perfect, but it's there already and because of the ecosystem of software that relies on it (borrowed from unix). Linux is a market success - by which I mean many people use it. The only alternatives I can think off the top of my head are: BSD, solaris, minix, QNX, Plan 9, AmigaOS and there are also some really "weird" OS's in academia, many no longer used. I believe Plan 9 was written by the creators of unix... as an improvement. But it lacked market success. EDIT BTW I'm not claiming that linux is as bloated as Windows - just that it has increased significantly in size, and due to the same cause: there is no real need not to.
    - jbert 18y ago
      > Also, I believe that the kernel has also grown much larger, especially in recent years (don't have data or links, just from articles I've read). OK. The kernel runs happily on a 32Mbyte ARM system I have to hand. dmesg tells me the kernel usage (a 2.6.21) at boot time is ~2Mbytes: <5>Memory: 30292KB available (1912K code, 153K data, 84K init) I don't think that justifies being called 'much larger', unless you're comparing with mid-90s kernel versions or something. The source code for Linux is much larger, but I think that's mostly due to broader support for hardware and other optional components.
      - 13ren 18y ago
        That's pretty impressive, though I was thinking from the beginning, and "recent years" being the last 10 years, and also of the kernel size (not its RAM usage). I agree that kernel size matters less than RAM usage. But to share my perspective: My first computer was a ZX81, with 1K RAM total (i.e. 1024 bytes). 32*24=768 bytes were used for video in the worst case (it was compressed, newline style). To be fair, it didn't have a filesystem (no disks) or multitasking. In truth, I found 1K just too limiting, and went for the 16K rampack addon. Regarding my main point: I doubt the massive software base can be given up at this point (even the disruptive technology of cell phones switch to linux when they get powerful enough) - it's just my yearning for those days of daring frugality, when a byte was worth fighting for.
- rkowalick 18y ago
  This is a bold-faced lie. I use fluxbox, and honestly, I have never even used the swap partition on my computer with 512mb of RAM. I don't even recall seeing it use over half of the system memory.
  - astine 18y ago
    Wtf? Are you being sarcastic? Your standard Ubuntu install doesn't use Fluxbox, it uses Gnome+Compiz.