The Economist Suggests Linux For Netbooks 445
Trepidity writes "In its roundup of how to choose a netbook, The Economist suggests that users 'avoid the temptation' to go for a Windows-based netbook, and in particular to treat them as mini laptops on which you'll install a range of apps. In their view, by the time you add the specs needed to run Windows and Windows apps effectively, you might as well have just bought a smallish laptop. Instead, they suggest the sweet spot is ultra-lite, Linux-based netbooks, with a focus on pre-installed software that caters to common tasks. They particularly like OpenOffice, which they rate as easier to use than MS Word and having 'no compatibility problems,' as well as various photo-management software." Besides which, does Windows offer spinning cubes for coffee-shop demos?
Re:No compatibility problems? (Score:5, Interesting)
Even for non net books, Linux is just better than windows for mobiles. It uses significantly less resources and my usable battery life has increased by at least 30% from switching from Vista to Ubuntu. Mind you this is on a high end laptop, Vista feels like a dog while Linux(Ubuntu) runs smoothly.
It's right for you. Will you be allowed to buy it? (Score:5, Interesting)
The big problem here is whether you'll be allowed to buy a mini notebook with 1GB and a 120-160 MB hard disk without Windows. Microsoft certainly does not want notebook vendors selling them that way, and has effective strategies to induce them not to do so.
I expect they start with legal bribes, price structures effecting both the vendors larger systems and the smaller ones, and if that doesn't work the patent portfolio comes out and they discuss whether you'd like to cross-license on their terms or be sued.
All of which means you won't see many of the Linux machines at retail. So, the customer has to self-install, which is beyond most of them.
Re:No compatibility problems? (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess you mean OpenOffice Writer.
Let's see: I write scientific articles choke-full of all sorts of formulas. And I have never ever had a single problem with OpenOffice's formula editor. To be quite frank, I find it superior to Word's, in that I can better predict the outcome of what I'm doing, and can better control the layout of my formulas.
So, I don't like to say this, but your arguments against formulas in OpenOffice is really some kind of horseshit.
Re:1998 called. It wants its issues back. (Score:5, Interesting)
Netbooks increase the application space, which means more opportunities for niche software. For example, now that netbooks are so cheap, more companies will give their employees one to use on the road. So now there's more opportunity to add value by writing code for a particular business need that just opened up because of the cheap netbook? Or for charging for modifying gpl software to cater to a particular need, and contribute back to "the community" at the same time?
Re:No compatibility problems? (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember a few weeks ago I get an email from the computer science cluster admin yelling at me for going way over quota. I wrote back, puzzled, because I hadn't used the account for much of anything in years.
Turns out it was some "beagle" thing they were using, it had, over the years, continually indexed my home dir until eventually it bumped me over quota (I was at about 50% after I deleted all the beagle shit, so at least it plausibly had something to index)
Proposal: merge indexing and backup service;)
Re:I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen (Score:4, Interesting)
Hardware compatibility, or keyboard compatibility? (Score:3, Interesting)
Even for non net books, Linux is just better than windows for mobiles.
Unlike with a desktop computer, you can't easily replace the screen, keyboard, and pointing device of a laptop computer. So how do you try a Linux laptop when the local stores don't sell any Linux laptop other than an ASUS Eee PC? Do you try a Windows model in-store and mail-order the Linux version? Do you try a Windows model, put everything listed in Device Manager into Google to make sure it works with Linux, buy the laptop, and wipe it with Ubuntu? Or do you buy your Linux laptops sight unseen and pay the restocking fee if you can't stand the keyboard or screen?
Re:1998 called. It wants its issues back. (Score:3, Interesting)
OpenOffice is still mediocre (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been using OpenOffice since 1.0, and I'm now on 3.0. I don't think I've used Microsoft Word in the last year, although I still have a valid copy of Word 97 around.
OpenOffice actually works now; it doesn't crash or garble documents. But its interface is painful and amateurish.
With enough effort, you can work around these problems. But this is just a word processor. It should just work. And this is version 3; they've been at this for a decade now.
This is a generic problem with open source user applications. They need real usability testing, where naive users are videoed doing various tasks while commenting on what bugs them. They seldom get it.
Weird advice (Score:4, Interesting)
I just got an Acer Aspire One with 8GB SSD and their bizarre Linpus Lite distro installed. It runs fine, but I torched it in favor of Win XP by the end of the evening, simply because XP was the only other OS that fully supported the hardware. As far as performance goes, the thing actually runs OK under XP (format as FAT32). The big drawback is that the Intel SSD is brutally slow when writing, so the trick to getting good performance is to disable unnecessary writes and caching wherever possible in the OS.
Honestly, it makes more sense to spend the extra $50 to get the Asipre One with larger battery, 160GB HD and pre-installed Windows for almost everybody. The keyboard is 89%, which is large enough for me to touch type on without issues, although the touchpad has to be one of the most craptacular pointing devices ever incorporated in a notebook - the buttons are located beside it - one on the left, one on the right. Nasty.
Don't tell this to Dell (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm the tech director for a small girls' school and we've decided to experiment with the Dell Mini 9s... That is, until our rep at Dell informed us that we couldn't purchase the mini's in quantity as a school with Linux installed.
Now, we want Linux because I don't want the girls filling these things up with crap software, slowing them down, killing them with viruses, etc.
In addition, there's something to be said for such a quick startup time. Teachers want their students ready to be taught as soon as possible. What we don't need is little Ashley's Facebook virus-laden netbook taking 5 minutes to get to a usable state.
The end result (after some complaining) was that they would offer the netbook to us for the same cost as the XP version - which smells pretty suspicious to me, no?
Dell is not as serious about Linux as people seem to think they are. Just because consumer models are available does not mean corporate and educational versions are as well.
Re:It's right for you. Will you be allowed to buy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's right for you. Will you be allowed to buy (Score:4, Interesting)
I have it in black, with 160 GB disk. They had the unit at Fry's, with Windows, for USD$350. No Linux. Amazon is fine, but IMO retail stores count for more.
I'm not a big fan of Limpus (pun indended). It's handicapped. Someone had to make it even dumber than Windows. It doesn't represent Linux as well as something like Ubuntu or Debian. Certainly someone used to Windows would not have much trouble with the Ubuntu menu.
Re:Linux is unusable for Businessuse (Score:3, Interesting)
I much prefer Impress 3. I put the current slide, next slide, and speakers notes on the built-in screen, and the current slide on the projector. It has a built-in clock.
Big enough on the 8.9" screen for me to see.
Works better than delivering with PowerPoint, so I prefer to use it; even when delivering PowerPoint sourced presentations.
I likewise prefer Writer to Word. Spreadsheets are a bit of a wash for me. (I use Perl, Octave and other tools to reduce data to CSV form, which is then imported into a spreadsheet for final formatting; application of colour, etc). OpenOffice.org3 does VBA for more compatibility (hasn't yet been an issue), and can edit PDFs (major feature for me).
All in all, I view OpenOffice.org3 as a plus. Along with that, I use FireFox, and Evolution, so why would I bother with Windows(tm)? Linux (or any other base) that can support these applications is just fine.
Pick the one that works well and is least expensive. Would be BSD or Linux -- Windows(tm) isn't even in the running.
More for less, sounds good to me. I do save in Microsoft Office(tm) 97 formats for external presentation, which (so far) hasn't been a problem.
So, "Linux is usable for Business" for me.
Re:No compatibility problems? (Score:3, Interesting)
There are tons of /b/tards spouting all kinds of 4chan shit here. "[citation needed]" is probably the only thing that became a meme outside of Wikipedia through being mentioned in xkcd, so I don't think, it's fair to blame it.
Re:Don't tell this to Dell (Score:5, Interesting)
Tell your Dell rep you've decided to go with the Asus EeePC instead. Linux friendly and cheap.
Re:It's right for you. Will you be allowed to buy (Score:2, Interesting)
Ironically, Express Gate needs a working Windows XP or Vista installation on the same machine, otherwise it can't run and can't be installed.
There are rumors that Microsoft simply does not want any quickly booting GNU/Linux installations anywhere, and they will put the thumbscrews to the right people to get that.
And just to add something to another part of this thread: None of the Linux-based ASUS 1000H models are available in Switzerland, for example. I can't get them even though I'm a reseller and stock ASUS products. Behind the scenes negotiations can accomplish a lot in this market :(
From a writing teacher (Score:4, Interesting)
Even when people email me their work, I still print it out and mark it up. A few reasons:
1) The markup tools in Word, etc., are much more suited to what they're designed for: collaboration. I use them all the time when I'm working with colleagues on joint research papers. But for paper comments, they are slow and kludgy.
2) On paper, I can do things like circle a phrase and draw an angry red arrow back to where it should actually be. I can do a lot more than just add margin notes, and I can communicate state of mind better. A typed "Huh?" on a comment does not communicate my total inability to work out what the student is trying to say the way a big, red one with a giant question mark and an underline or two does.
3) Turning things in electronically is great for the student, not for the teacher. See, for this to work, I have to have all my students in my address book. This is a lot harder than you'd imagine, especially with people who have the same names, people who don't use their university mail, etc. When it's paper, I look at it, comment it, rate it, put the grade in my computer, and move on. It gets back to you the next class, when I'm going to see you anyway. Mailing them back to each person is akin to me having to put printed copies in a student's pigeon hole. It's an extra clerical task that takes time from doing more important things and is failure-prone (and here in Japan, sending the wrong paper to the wrong student can get you sued/fired--privacy law).
4) There's been a lot of research on corrective feedback for writing. Guess what? It's useless. You give it, some students get better, some don't. You don't, same thing. Now, as a student, no one wants to just turn in something that took them hours and hours and get nothing back, and, as a teacher, I don't want people to think I'm not even reading them, because, truthfully, I read every word, all the time (I like to see what people have to say), so we comment them, knowing full well that people either won't read them or will read them but not take them to heart. So, what I'm saying is that there's no reason for these comments to live on forever on our hard drives. Paper will get read and tossed. That's the appropriate life cycle for that exchange.
5) Finally, you can't search a paper to speed up grading. If there's fluff in there, I'm going to nail your ass. Every sentence is important, and if it's not, I need to read it anyway to tell you that it's not. No one wants to get a grade on a paper based on a couple sentences.
Basically, as a student, turning things in electronically is great. As a teacher, in my personal opinion and experience, not so much.
Re:No compatibility problems? (Score:4, Interesting)
You know I've seen the same problems *within* Word.
I use Word 97 at home, and Word 2003 at work, and I often see formatting problems during the conversion. Sometimes even just moving from my computer to my bosses' computer causes problems (varying width of the document), even though we are running the same 2003 edition. How can we "blame" OpenOffice for compatibility problems, if even Microsoft can't keep its own suite of software compatible?
Overall I think OpenOffice does okay. Certainly better than WordPerfect's reading of Word files (which was a giant fail).
Re:Bought the EEE, Switched to XP (Score:3, Interesting)
Vim is available for Windows [vim.org], both as a console mode application and native Win32 GUI. Quite a few programmers I know actually use it as their primary editor.
Perl is absolutely there. Don't bother with ActiveState, go for Strawberry Perl [strawberryperl.com] for maximum portability.
Regarding CLI in general, I'd suggest looking into PowerShell. MS is investing pretty heavily into it and seem determined to move all Windows admins to it (oh, those poor MCSEs!). It is in general pretty nicely done, and logically extends and generalizes the original concept of the Unix shell in a way that makes more sense for some use cases (raw byte streams are not always the best way of passing data around).
If you're just feeling nostalgic for bash and zsh, you have several options. The GNU-Win32 [sourceforge.net] project provides native (MinGW-based) ports for a lot of Unix utilities, including bash. Cygwin is a popular alternative that provides more faithful emulation of Unix environment on top of Win32 - including fork(), symlinks, and so on. Finally, there's Microsoft SUA ("Subsystem for Unix Applications"), which is a WinNT POSIX-compatible subsystem. Note that, unlike Cygwin, it's not build on top of Win32 - it's another subsystem, working in parallel to Win32, directly on top of the NT kernel. It has quite a few Unix utilities ported to it, including bash and Perl. This one actually comes for free in Win2008, and also Vista Enterprise and Ultimate editions.
Re:No compatibility problems? (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux is generally not "snappy" as you call it because things aren't programmed that way.
Linux is very "snappy", do not mistake the Linux OS to complete software system. It is not Linux OS fault if there is preinstalled application on system what slows things down, or the application itselfs are slow. OS can be damn fast and powerfull but applications slow and terrible. Still unwise persons believe that OS is slow then. I dont blame Windows NT from being slow if the Crysis does not work as fast on my computer as on highend computer of my friend!
The reality is that an OS is useless without applications, so people naturally think of the entire setup when using words like slow, unstable, unreliable, Vista (-1 redundant).
An OS can be the fastest, most reliable and stable one out there but unless it has applications that preserve those features than it has no inherent advantage over other OS's; at least not from a users point of view.
Technical arguments and benchmarks are nice; but what counts is how it performs in the user environment. Users don't care about the underlying beauty of the OS; they only want their computer to do what they need to do without frustrating them.