If I had time to waste
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| bigg Jun 19, 2009 9:06 AM EDT |
I'd bother responding to this nonsense. So much FUD, so little time. If nvidia wants to badmouth Linux, I've got an easy solution, I just won't buy nvidia again. Intel is winning the battle for Linux users, so of course nvidia will be bitter. |
| bigg Jun 19, 2009 9:29 AM EDT |
And maybe a little background can also be provided by this article. I knew I saw something earlier, but now have found it: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-ion-intel-atom-netbo... Quoting:Huang doesn’t have flattering words for current netbooks, saying, “I think that so far, what a netbook is, is a low-cost PC that doesn’t work that well. nvidia doesn't like the idea of a basic computing device whose selling point is portability. Then there's no use for high-end graphics. There's no need for nvidia on a Linux netbook running an Intel processor. |
| jdixon Jun 19, 2009 9:46 AM EDT |
> The Atom platform is creating an installed base that doesn’t run modern applications. It runs all of mine fine. > It doesn’tt run anything well from Electronic Arts... It's not intended as a gaming machine. ...it doesn’t run anything well from Adobe... Flash and Acrobat run fine (though I'll have to check to see if Acrobat is the default PDF viewer or not). What else does your average user need? ...it doesn’t run anything well from Microsoft... He says this like it's a bad thing. :) Like you said, it's just that there's no need for Nvidia on a netbook that's getting his goat. I'm sure they could team with Via to develop an equivalent netbook platform with Nvidia graphics if they wanted, but that would be work. It's far easier to pan the Atom based ones. |
| jacog Jun 19, 2009 9:50 AM EDT |
Ugh. No really. Ugh. I have to just comment on the statement that "The world soundly rejected the first netbooks that came out with Linux"... firsty, I don't think this is true, and if it were, it was certainly not "Linux" that was rejected, but watered-down, crippled distributions like that Xandros and Linpus Lite that ship with the Eee and Aspire Ones respectively. |
| bigg Jun 19, 2009 10:00 AM EDT |
What's so funny about that comment is that Microsoft didn't have an OS that ran on netbooks when they first came out. Microsoft responded to the spectacular popularity of Linux netbooks by bringing back XP and essentially giving it away. As the popular saying goes, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.” |
| qcimushroom Jun 19, 2009 10:36 AM EDT |
Even if some of what was said is true, Android is still very young..... If Android sticks around for another 6 months or a year and I think it will, nothing or not much will still be true. |
| DrDubious Jun 19, 2009 10:45 AM EDT |
Let's see if I undertand this - a hardcore-proprietary-only company that makes its profits off of high-resolution, high-markup video-game players with gigantic screens and the occasional GPU-loaded supercomputer (CUDA) thinks small, portable, inexpensive netbooks are icky. I'm shocked. Shocked, I say. And as previous posters have pointed out - I, too, am running full-powered applications on my little 8.9" netbook, including photo editing (GIMP), Flash and HTML5/Ogg audio and video (via Firefox 3.5RC1), PDF reading (admittedly using Okular rather than the grotesquely bloated Acrobat(tm) reader), Google Earth, and on rare occasions, OpenOffice and audio handling with Audacity. I'm doing it in the full KDE4.2 environment, too. The ONLY limitation I find is the physical one: Yes, the screen is kind of small. The portability more than makes up for it, and I'm eagerly awaiting sub-$100 ARM-based smartbooks that I can feel comfortable using as a "field" computer ("Oops, I accidentally dropped it in the lake - guess I'll have to go buy another one...") with virtually all the same applications (is there and Android port of Google Earth?...) |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 19, 2009 10:55 AM EDT |
Quoting:nvidia doesn't like the idea of a basic computing device whose selling point is portability. Then there's no use for high-end graphics. There's no need for nvidia on a Linux netbook running an Intel processor. You probably mean ARM in that last sentence. But anyway, it's wrong IMHO. Nvidia also makes many OpenGL ES chipsets for portables and cellphones. Just look at some of the really nice Clutter powered stuff out there. They even make complete boards with everything on it but a CPU. Nvidia could definitely make money from a big ARM netbook market. |
| bigg Jun 19, 2009 11:33 AM EDT |
> Nvidia also makes many OpenGL ES chipsets for portables and cellphones. But that's a different market. There's not much substitution between cellphones and 17" laptops. There will never be demand for high-end graphics in a cellphone. Every netbook sale with Linux is another sale for which high-end graphics is useless. |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 19, 2009 11:43 AM EDT |
But does that matter bigg? That depends on the margins of Nvidia's various products, which we don't have. Perhaps the margin on an embedded board with built-in OpenGL ES is higher than the margin on a separate graphics card. It wouldn't surprise me. |
| bigg Jun 19, 2009 11:56 AM EDT |
In any event, it is pure speculation on my part as to their motives. I remembered their earlier trashing of netbooks and now trashing Linux with arguments that are complete nonsense (ask Dell about Linux netbooks) and the only thing that comes to mind is that they want to sell more expensive chips. |
| jdixon Jun 19, 2009 11:58 AM EDT |
> Every netbook sale with Linux is another sale for which high-end graphics is useless. More importantly, every sale of an Atom processor based netbook is one without ANY Nvidia chipset. |
| techiem2 Jun 19, 2009 11:59 AM EDT |
Ok, I gotta ask now:
Why aren't we seeing netbooks with decent NV chips?
I don't mean the latest greatest of course, but a netbook with a decent nv chip (hey, even something like an old MX440 era chip) with real vid ram (even say 64MB), would make for a great little Linux gaming comp. :)
(ok, so you might not be able to run Nexuiz and such at full settings, but I bet most of the common Linux games would be perfectly happy - Wesnoth ftw!). Oh right...silly me...it couldn't run the latest Windows Games on Windows Netbooks...therefore MS obviously won't allow it. |
| caitlyn Jun 19, 2009 2:05 PM EDT |
My netbook does everything that I would do with a desktop or laptop, largely because I run Linux and not Microsoft bloatware. Windows CE was and is a poor PDA platform, not an operating system for a real PC. A netbook is a real PC. It just isn't one that is profitable for Microsoft or nVidia. Oh, and no, the public didn't reject Linux. Brick and mortar stores did, and the entrenched interests that make more off Windows did. |
| DrDubious Jun 19, 2009 3:40 PM EDT |
Heck, Microsoft's OWN bought-and-paid-for study showed that despite there being essentially NO Linux netbooks available in the retail store(s) they examined, Linux still made up, what, 5% of the sales anyway? That sounds like pretty high demand from the public to me. |
| caitlyn Jun 19, 2009 4:01 PM EDT |
@DrDubious: That study covered the U.S. only and brick and mortar stores only. Dell and HP both report significantly higher Linux netbook sales. In addition, new Linux-only products keep coming to market. |
| rijelkentaurus Jun 19, 2009 4:37 PM EDT |
Quoting: In addition, new Linux-only products keep coming to market. And from what I am reading on LinuxDevices, LXer, etc...the tidal wave is getting ready to hit. And I agree with DrDubious, I think it will be relatively soon when netbooks/smartbook/WTFE will be quite cheap and easily replaceable. That makes them quite nice for business use. Now we tell people "it makes more business sense to buy a new PC than to have me fix this old one". Soon that might actually be true. |
| DrDubious Jun 19, 2009 5:32 PM EDT |
@Caitlyn that's what I meant: Microsoft has managed to pretty much ELIMINATE Linux netbooks from the stores they studied, but even in that situation there were still one in twenty or so sales of Linux netbooks. (Shorter version: Even in retail stores which stock virtually no Linux netbooks, chosen by Microsoft to attempt to demonstrate a lack of Linux interest, they STILL can't eliminate Linux sales...) To me, that implies a fair number of people who not only want Linux netbooks but want them so much they don't settle for buying Windows ones and reformatting them. There must have been a lot of Linux netbook special orders (or the study was just plain fraudulent.) |
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