Verily I say unto thee, that The Ghost In The Machine spake thusly:
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, 7 <website_has_email@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote on Sun, 07 Oct 2007 16:30:49 GMT
> <ZQ7Oi.27359$c_1.18901@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>> ASUS Motherboard Ships With Embedded Linux, Web Browser
[...]
>> I WANT ONE!!!!
>>
>> TWO ACTUALLY.
>>
>> NOPE! *ALL OF THEM!!!!*
>>
>> 10 seconds to boot into Linux bios with browser and other things
>> working.
>>
>
> 10? I though it was more like 3! I certainly wouldn't mind one for
> Christmas if the framerate's any good. :-)
Hardware initialisation might make that tricky (damn those verbose BIOS
notices and hardware tests).
> ObFrustration: IT'S ABOUT TIME!!!! :-) Gah, computers these days.
> Apart from this ASUS product (which will be officially announced
> Friday, apparently), the C64 and variants of the Apple ][, Amiga and
> presumably Atari as well could be instantly on.
Initialising the Zorro bus was a lot faster, for one thing. Plus the
number of thingies that Amigan's generally had plugged in tended to be
minimal. Bootstrapping an A4000T with Cybergfx and PPC, hard drives, two
optical drives, and a Prelude audio card; was a tad slower than starting
the A500 wedge of cheese ... by a couple of seconds, maybe.
> Why has it taken Microsoft so long that ASUS decided to upstage them
> with a *Linux*-based product?
Maybe because they've been battling Microsoft to get out of their plan
for world domination via the BIOS (escaping Microsoft's clutches seems
to be in vogue this year):
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/general-10/warning-there-is-windows-in-my..-bios-544779/
> One wonders.
>
> BTW...save some for me, you glutton. :-) Let's hope ASUS has a
> winner here.
Oh yes. Things have moved on quite a bit from those days when Asus
snubbed people (even OEMs) just for /mentioning/ that they use Linux:
.----
| OEM's Narrative
|
| The ASUS K8V Se Deluxe is the motherboard with which we are having
| issues. The onboard Ethernet controller is missing Vital Product
| Data, VPD, which is necessary for the kernel module sk98lin to
| properly configure itself. This VPD error causes the onboard
| Ethernet to be non-functional without special hacks to bypass
| reading the VPD. This eventually leads to system lockups and other
| odd behavior.
|
| I went to the ASUS website and created a support ticket. Then I
| called the ASUS tech support number where I was put on hold for
| about 20 minutes before someone picked up. They took my number and
| assured me that the next available representative would call me.
| Turns out by 10 AM the next day I still hadn't received a call.
|
| Once again I called their support number and within 3 minutes I was
| connected with someone. They told me that they don't support open
| source operating systems. I explained to him that this wasn't an
| issue with the operating system; rather it was a result of an
| inability to properly engineer their products. A short while later
| I received an email showing an update to the problem ID's status
| saying they don't support open source operating systems.
|
| Linux is an open-source operating system. M.A.
|
| I figured if they don't support open-source operating systems I
| would have to step down to a much less favorable operating system,
| Windows 2000 Professional. It took a while before I was able to
| track down a diagnostic utility for the onboard Ethernet.
|
| Once I had the utility installed I ran it and didn't get any error.
| However, when I selected 'Read VPD Data' from one of the utility's
| menus I received this beautiful error 'Fatal VPD error'.
|
| I updated the problem report to include this and called ASUS again.
| This time I was connected with a guy that identified himself as
| **** on the problem report. I gave him all the information that I
| had on the problem and he sent it off in a report to their
| engineers in Taiwan. I informed him that we were testing other
| manufacturers' boards because we cannot ship out systems that have
| problems due to sub-standard hardware, he didn't seem to care much.
|
| The next week I figured it was about time that I check up on the
| status of this. I was on hold for about 10 minutes before I was
| connected to an arrogant representative. I stated the problem ID
| and he read the entire set of notes to me. Then I inquired what the
| status of the issue was.
|
| He informed me that they do not support open source operating
| systems so I gladly explained how I was able to reproduce the
| problem under Windows. I could tell he was getting a bit annoyed
| with my persistent nature, but that was the least of my worries. He
| reassured me multiple times that this exact same motherboard was
| working perfectly fine on one of his coworkers systems.
|
| Then he put me on hold and about 30 seconds later I was transferred
| to someone else's extension, where I was left to leave a voice mail
| (something we would never do to our customers). This gives me the
| impression that they really don't care much about their customers.
|
| I'm glad to report that the [other vendors'] motherboards we are
| testing in R&D are coming along quite nicely so far.
`----
http://web.archive.org/web/20051124084542/mozillaquest.com/Linux04/Asus_Sucks_Story-02.html
Well that was 3 years ago. Now, Asus are building Linux right into the
motherboard.
Poor Microsoft, it seems they are running rapidly out of friends.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "OOXML is a superb standard"
| - GNU/Linux traitor, Miguel de Icaza.
`----
Fedora release 7 (Moonshine) on sky, running kernel 2.6.22.1-41.fc7
21:10:21 up 60 days, 20:05, 3 users, load average: 0.30, 0.33, 0.33
|
|
