I don't see this getting traction with Google entering the market and Microsoft finally getting it's act together with Windows 7 (which works very nicely on my 1000He).
I'm not saying it looks bad. But using Linux requires a sacrifice from an average user and I don't see anything that makes this special enough to justify that sacrifice.
Consumer point of view: Moblin? A new OS? Scary and confusing!
Developer point of view: Moblin? A new OS with all components under the GPL? Developed by Intel and released to The Linux Foundation [1]? I can now port it from power hungry and inefficient Intel Atom hardware onto handheld ARM Cortex powered devices? Sign me up!
Not only is a new OS scary, a Linux OS is even scarier.
While I don't believe it's so true these days, Linux as a brand still has has this negative connotation with average consumers and is associated with engineers, tinkerers, and geeks. It's largely an unfair stereotype these days but it's hard changing consumer perceptions.
I'd bet it would be easier for me to convince my in-laws to install Intel Moblin on their notebook over Linux Moblin, although at this point, my in-laws know better than trust me with their computers.
For better or for worse, There's a significant amount of engineers, tinkerers and geeks out there who don't wish to see Linux loose its niche appeal with engineers, tinkerers and geeks. They like that Linux is by developers, for developers, that is its appeal to them in the first place.
I don't think it will ever go mainstream until non-geeks (or perhaps I should say designer-geeks as opposed to developer-geeks, if that makes sense) are heavily involved in at least the user interface aspects of the system. If that ever happens (and I think that's a big "if") I suspect that the engineers, tinkerers and geeks will be quite disappointed and go elsewhere.
I didn't vote you down by the way, because I'm not really disagreeing with you and what's more, I feel this tendency for people to vote down comments based solely on disagreement rather than voting down only inane/inappropriate/off-topic comments is a crappy phenomenon. Your comment was none of these things.
For the vast majority, consumers don't change OSs and will just live with what comes with their netbook when they buy it. The real battle is with the manufacturer and I don't see how Moblin can compete with those two giants trying to get bundling deals.
Actually, I would argue that manufacturers have recently given linux more of a shot then consumer demand implied.
Netbooks started on linux. By all accounts, it was nice. Users rejected it. Retailers took it out of the store. Many retailers refused it altogether because they got too many complaints. Consumer rejection coincided with MS making XP reasonably available and the steep growth part of the netbook market, so it's hard to say exactly what happened. Now linux on netbook is just an extremely low end product or a traditional linux niche market.
If there was any kind of demand for linux netbooks, there are (a) OEMs ready to go & (b) more OEMs ready to jump straight on.
I think up until now an OEM just had to weigh the costs of paying the microsoft tax or using linux. Now with Google entering the market, I think linux will quickly get squeezed out.
It is a real possibility that Google, if it needed to, would actually pay OEMs to get in the box, and if Google does make inroads, Microsoft is bound to lower its licensing fees. That makes free not look quite as nice as it once did.
It would also be nice if the complex enabled lower end netbooks a little more.
Anyway, it's still all early days. Chrome OS may not be that good. Google isn't proven in this area yet. Chrome browser is usually still a secondary browser for the minority that use it. Google docs are still not replacing desktop stuff at much of a pace. Most of the stuff I see it used for is sharing/publishing/collaborating which is great but doesn't mean I use MS Office or OO.org any less.
Google is very proven at letting you find stuff and make sense of a lot of information (search, maps, mail, rss, maybe docs) It's good at making things that you can see for the first time an immediately get it. They are becoming impressive in things like translation via being good at dealing with large amounts of information.
Anyway, I think it's far from a sure thing that chrome OS will do any better then ubuntu. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be doing it. It's just not a 99% shot. They're taking a chance. They are also going to be launching at the worst possible time, within a year of (the supposedly good) Windows 7, after three years of OS vacuum in the netbook OS market.
Every year since 2000 has been proclaimed that it will be the year for Linux to break into the mainstream. I don't see how Moblin is going to change this "winning" streak.
11 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 43.9 ms ] threadI'm not saying it looks bad. But using Linux requires a sacrifice from an average user and I don't see anything that makes this special enough to justify that sacrifice.
Developer point of view: Moblin? A new OS with all components under the GPL? Developed by Intel and released to The Linux Foundation [1]? I can now port it from power hungry and inefficient Intel Atom hardware onto handheld ARM Cortex powered devices? Sign me up!
[1]: http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/press/2009/04/02/linux-f...
Only if you think of it as a computer.
If you think of a netbook as web-browser/emailler/ebook reader then the user doesn't know/care about an OS.
Nobody refused to buy an iPod/iPhone because it had a new OS. Otherwise windows mobile devices would have won.
While I don't believe it's so true these days, Linux as a brand still has has this negative connotation with average consumers and is associated with engineers, tinkerers, and geeks. It's largely an unfair stereotype these days but it's hard changing consumer perceptions.
I'd bet it would be easier for me to convince my in-laws to install Intel Moblin on their notebook over Linux Moblin, although at this point, my in-laws know better than trust me with their computers.
I don't think it will ever go mainstream until non-geeks (or perhaps I should say designer-geeks as opposed to developer-geeks, if that makes sense) are heavily involved in at least the user interface aspects of the system. If that ever happens (and I think that's a big "if") I suspect that the engineers, tinkerers and geeks will be quite disappointed and go elsewhere.
I didn't vote you down by the way, because I'm not really disagreeing with you and what's more, I feel this tendency for people to vote down comments based solely on disagreement rather than voting down only inane/inappropriate/off-topic comments is a crappy phenomenon. Your comment was none of these things.
Netbooks started on linux. By all accounts, it was nice. Users rejected it. Retailers took it out of the store. Many retailers refused it altogether because they got too many complaints. Consumer rejection coincided with MS making XP reasonably available and the steep growth part of the netbook market, so it's hard to say exactly what happened. Now linux on netbook is just an extremely low end product or a traditional linux niche market.
If there was any kind of demand for linux netbooks, there are (a) OEMs ready to go & (b) more OEMs ready to jump straight on.
I think up until now an OEM just had to weigh the costs of paying the microsoft tax or using linux. Now with Google entering the market, I think linux will quickly get squeezed out.
It is a real possibility that Google, if it needed to, would actually pay OEMs to get in the box, and if Google does make inroads, Microsoft is bound to lower its licensing fees. That makes free not look quite as nice as it once did.
It would also be nice if the complex enabled lower end netbooks a little more.
Anyway, it's still all early days. Chrome OS may not be that good. Google isn't proven in this area yet. Chrome browser is usually still a secondary browser for the minority that use it. Google docs are still not replacing desktop stuff at much of a pace. Most of the stuff I see it used for is sharing/publishing/collaborating which is great but doesn't mean I use MS Office or OO.org any less.
Google is very proven at letting you find stuff and make sense of a lot of information (search, maps, mail, rss, maybe docs) It's good at making things that you can see for the first time an immediately get it. They are becoming impressive in things like translation via being good at dealing with large amounts of information.
Anyway, I think it's far from a sure thing that chrome OS will do any better then ubuntu. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be doing it. It's just not a 99% shot. They're taking a chance. They are also going to be launching at the worst possible time, within a year of (the supposedly good) Windows 7, after three years of OS vacuum in the netbook OS market.
We'll wait and see.