On Jul 12, 10:32 pm, Homer <use...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Verily I say unto thee, that thufir spake thusly:
>
> > On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:27:31 -0700, The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
> >> It's about 1% of business. How much *cost*, I don't know, but Dell
> >> in particular apparently has to set up entirely different assembly
> >> lines for its Ubuntu machines.
>
> > Yes, but not for technical reasons, that's a requirement created by
> > how Microsoft handles OEM's.
>
> It's a ridiculous situation, if you think about it. It's be like Ford
> requiring separate production lines for exactly the same model of car,
> depending on whether the eventual customer was going to fill it with
> fuel from either Texaco or Shell.
Actually, it would be more like when Mercedes created both Diesel and
Unleaded versions of their cars. The main care was pretty much the
same, but the different engine requirements meant different
transmission requirements (since Diesels have a limited RPM range), so
even though the chassis and differential were the same, there were
elements of the assembly line that were different based on different
requirements.
Microsoft places legal restrictions on what can be put on a drive that
contains Vista. Furthermore, there are certain hardware components,
such as DirectX/10 cards that run very well on Vista, but don't work
well at all with Linux. In addition, Linux users who purchase a
machine specifically to run Linux are generally more demanding. They
are more likely to order features such as WUXGA displays (because they
like to keep several active windows on the same screen, which Vista
still doesn't do very well), and 7200 RPM drives (since Linux can
actually get the benefit of that performance), as well as 4 gigabytes
of RAM (since 64 bit Linux can take full advantage of that much
addressable RAM whether the applications are 32 bit or 64 bit, while
Vista 64 requires a patch before the system is upgraded from 2
gigabytes to 4 gigabytes).
Linux users are also more interested in 802.11n networking, again
because their filesystem can be written at several megaBYTES per
second, compared to Windows with it's 200-300 kbytes per second.
Beyond that, Microsoft wants Dell to void the warranty of Windows/
Vista machines that are upgraded with Linux, but the warranty is about
the only profit Dell can make on Windows machines. On the other hand,
Dell doesn't want to give up the profit of the warranty on Linux
machines, so they have to be kept separate. This means that Linux
machines have to be "burned in" using Linux instead of Windows.
> In exactly the same way that it should be none of Ford's business what
> brand of fuel customers pump into their cars, it should equally be none
> of Microsoft's (or the OEM's) damned business what software customers
> install into their computers.
You obviously haven't read Microsoft's OEM contracts. Everything is
negotiable, but Microsoft provides some pretty substantial incentives
for cooperating, and some pretty substantial penalties and retaliation
for not cooperating with what they want.
Even though court orders prohibit Microsoft from interfering with OEMs
attempts to sell Linux PCs, Microsoft defies the courts by refusing to
allow the OEMs to alter the "boot sequence" in any way, if a Microsoft
operating system is installed. This is intended to prevent the
distribution of "dual-boot" machines, "virtual machines", and other
configurations which would allow an end-user to choose between a fully
configured Windows system and a fully configured Linux system, either
at boot time, or as an "application" started under a virtual host.
Dell, HP, and IBM have pushed back in the server market, and now all
of them offer some form of virtualization in which a "Linux Lite host
system" such as VMWare ESX, is booted, then Windows or Linux is
launched as a "client" operating system, allowing a server to run both
Linux and Windows at the same time.
Microsoft on the other hand, has been extremely agressive in demanding
total control over the configuration of desktop and laptop machines
that run Microsoft's software. Microsoft has done everything short of
telling the judges to "go f*ck yourselves" when it comes to mandates
restricting Microsoft's interference with Linux on desktop and laptop
machines.
It seems that the only way to have Microsoft be "friendly" toward such
installations is to ship a few million machines that run Linux. It
seems that when OLPC and ASUS EEE machines were widely accepted with
Linux, Microsoft was quite willing to let ASUS install and offer free
upgrades to XP home edition, and even offered a cheap version of
Works, just to keep Linux off the display shelves.
HP recently came out with a "Mini Laptop" which they offered with SUSE
Linux, and almost immediatly, Microsoft came up with very flexible
terms that permitted the use of Linux AND Windows together. It seems
that if you don't put a hard dive on the laptop, or you put in an
empty drive, it boots Linux. If you put a Windows drive in it, it
boots Windows. I don't know if you can shrink the Windows partitions
and run both Linux and Windows at the same time (booting Windows under
Xen).
> Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
> 20:31:53 up 204 days, 17:07, 4 users, load average: 0.36, 0.29, 0.23
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