Currently, there’s a lot of hype around Android on ARM-based netbooks, a type of netbook arriving later this year. However, despite the obvious choice for Android and other Linux systems, NVIDIA has openly stated their preference for… Windows CE. ARM and Asus are also quite sceptical about Android on ARM netbooks.
Starting with NVIDIA first, Mike Rayfield, the company’s general manager for the mobile business unit, has stated that NVIDIA prefers Windows CE over Android because CE is more mature. Windows CE “is a rock-solid operating system that has been shipped billions of times.” Windows CE also has a “low memory footprint and a good collection of apps.” NVIDIA is working closely with Microsoft to improve Windows CE’s performance on Tegra, NVIDIA’s ARM platform. Windows Mobile is also being worked on.
Android, on the other hand, lags behind Windows CE in almost all areas, according to NVIDIA. The interface is rough and not at all ready for larger displays, and all video and graphics rendering is currently done by Android’s Java code, which is simply too slow for HD video – something the Tegra platform handles just fine on Windows CE.
“There’s no hardware acceleration. It’s all software,” Rayfield explained, “Everyone’s talking about Android for cell phones, but the reality doesn’t exist for the larger displays [of a smartbook].” NVIDIA is working with Google to improve Android for Tegra, but an acceptable state is at least one year away.
And what about more general Linux systems, such as Ubuntu and Moblin? NVIDIA has even less enthusiasm for them. “The world soundly rejected the first netbooks that came out with Linux,” Rayfield said, “Printers didn’t work, and devices didn’t get recognized. The whole thing was a mess.”
NVIDIA’s Tegra platform is a promising new ARM-based platform with a large number of specific processors, that delivers amazing functionality while giving exceptional battery life: 25 days of music or 10-hours of 1080p video playback on a single charge. That’s pretty amazing.
Earlier this month, both ARM and Asus also voiced concerns over Android’s suitability for ARM netbooks.
“The world soundly rejected the first netbooks that came out with Linux,”
And so did we, the Linux community, since the Linuxes netbooks came with was about as crap as you can get any Linux distro to be.
Do it right, then it might work.
Generally speaking, the early netbooks were crap regardless what OS was included by the OEM.
The primary advantage of Linux, the reason OEMs chose it early on, was the price. The marketing drive behind netbooks after all was affordability. Once Microsoft began licensing XP at competitive prices, that advantage evaporated.
Now it seems that most models are (Asus specifically) available in Linux or XP, and are priced very similarly. This is the best situation for consumers – the ability to choose whichever OS they prefer, and without being price-gouged or hardware-crippled.
http://event.asus.com/eeepc/comparison/eeepc_comparison.htm
Edited 2009-06-18 22:30 UTC
Why do most of these netbooks even need 1GB if they’re
only running Windows XP?
You’ve got that right; they could have chosen from Fedora, Ubuntu or even OpenSuSE. Heck, they could have gone one step further, created a relationship with Novell and bundled Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop along with a custom repository for extra hardware support.
From the layman’s position where I stand it is almost as though OEM’s deliberately sabotaged Linux through their incompetently choosing a know-nothing distribution and failing to mould the distribution to properly support the hardware.
Somehow I can barely believe this.
Windows CE is probably the shittiest OS ever made.
I have it on my Dell Axim x51v and I *swore* – notice I am not religious – not to ever buy a computer with Windows CE/Mobile/Whatever on it.
It is the crappiest of crap. From battery life to usability to interface to features.
Ok, Android is WAY behind, but has lot more future. I just can’t wait until I can install Android on my X51v
What the hell is going on NVIDIA? you just made this beautiful ION platform?
Even if the kernel is better than the OS all the BSD/Linux/Solaris and even QNX ae faaaaaaaaar better. More experience, more codebase, more apps, more drivers. NVIDIA wants to prison users without releasing code. Every person must avoid Tegra. Intel netbooks are more open and Intel releases code (save for GMA500 (avoid it also)). I also don’t like Android. Heck, they could use NetBSD.
But the problem is always the same, they want to hide the details of their platform because they are not proud of it and because they want people to buy whatever they throw them without asking, without information. Sounds fascist. I will stick to Intel and GMA900 (something like Mini10, I also have a 10″Acer / N280 with Ubuntu 8.10)
Open the source, bring back democracy.
WinCE on a netbook should be like running Win98 on a quad core; zoooOOOoomm!
Haven’t had it on my own devices since my old HP clamshell with chicklet keyboard though either. With any newer devices I’ve looked at, it has one glaring problem; it manages memory resources like Windows.
Actually, since Win98 has no support for multi-processors, I doubt you would see much benefit from running it on a quad core…
Edited 2009-06-19 13:50 UTC
I should have specified processing speed. I said quad core to name the level of the processor rather than a specific count of cores. I’m living that limitation with NWN2 though as the game only takes up a single core when running.
“Win98 on a 2.1 Ghz” would have been more accurate.
There is a difference between Linux and Ubuntu. Linux is a kernel, Ubuntu is a distribution. So blaming the kernel for the failure of Xandros is a bit of a stretch !
Ok there are still compatibility issues (even though I killed my last issue by buying a new linux-friendly webcam) but I am not sure that Windows CE is all that better in terms of printing and stuff…I mean does it work???
WinCE (weather you like the mobile phone incarnation or not) is a good, solid, stable as hell OS. It is used for mission critcle applications due to it’s flexability, realiability, and small foot print (also many other reasons, veiwable source code for lots of stuff, etc…).
I am not talking about the version that was crafted to cell phones, that version has to many inconsistancies and random issues. But WinCE, and especially the WinCE 6 seriese (all phones are based on the 5 seriese, as far as I know) is amazing. It is easy to code for, it does what it’s suposed to, and, well, it just works very well. Also the battery life is off the charts. If you want to really know how I feel abouy it go through my old posts on the topic.
FUD aside, it’s a really good OS. I highly recommend checking it out, even playing with the Platform Builder and building your own WinCE image.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/windowsce/d…
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/embedded/aa731407.aspx
Gee, I have a completely different experience.
Let’s go through the motions:
-interface, what interface??
When you close an app, it doesn’t exit!! it somehow runs in the background but there is no standard user interface to control programs, you have to use another application to stop it using battery life, memory.
Why no standard task bar?
– every application is a trimmed down version of the standard Office suite/MS standard shite.
So you get an Office that isn’t Office, a browser that is so bad, it’s unusable compared to Opera Mobile or Nokia.
-Upto version 6.1 many essential stuff like Wifi didn’t work properly, you need to install 3rd party
-No standard support for SMB networks, yet another app
-No support for touch, the whole OS was made for people living in the 90s
I don’t think Windows Mobile has a chance in hell.
it’s 13 years and it didn’t make a dent deservingly
Linux will overrun it in some form (like Android, Palm WebOS and Ubuntu EEE) or else Darwin by Apple (iPhone)
Maybe even Symbian?
“I don’t think Windows Mobile has a chance in hell.”
agreed, that’s why I specifically mentioned not the mobile phone version but WinCE itself. WinCE is the core, and windows mobile is a pile of garbage that was put ontop of a good core. To help you understand I will use the Linux example: Linux as a kernel is good, now if you throw a bunch of garbage on it, well call it Xandros, it doesn’t really give Linux a chance to shine. make sense now?
Still, WinCE lacks even more drivers than Linux does. I don’t think I have a single device at all that ships with WinCE compatible drivers, but all of them work with Linux. As such it’s pretty stupid for the NVIDIA guy to complain about Linux’s lack of drivers when WinCE will do even worse in that regards. I seriously doubt he will find WinCE drivers for his fancy HP printers or scanners..
It has basic generic printing support for some stuff, less than linux though. NVIDIA does seem to imply it has more, but i think that was not what they intended to portray (though it sure ounds like it). Nvidia mentions music and video’s primarily, and this is what they are targeting. This is for the video and music lovers (and those who love some WinCE/Win mobile games) that want batterly life that lats for an ubsurdly long time and can go on the web and do basic other tasks. Hell it even has MS office avalible for it (yes i know linux has office suites too). Linux is a good choice, but I can see where WinCE would be a good choice too. it looks like we will have to wait and see how it plays out to know if Nvidia’s gambe was right. WinCE is used for other aplplication like this (though without the 3D graphics capability Nvidia’s platform has), here is my favorite example/toy http://www.mintpass.com/product/p_mp100_conc.asp
Windows CE does *NOT* run Microsoft Office. It does have something called MS Office Mobile that has so little functionality and is so far removed from the true MS Office that is makes Google Docs a virtual clone in comparison.
The CE kernel might be OK, but the GUI layer sucks so badly it is unbelievable.
It is astonishing that Nvidia have the nerve to say that Linux is a disaster because it won’t recognize printers, and then propose CE as an alternative, when I’m not sure it can print at all. They say that it is stable (false) and that there are lots of fine software available (false — theres a lot of shitty ugly, unstable and expensive miniprograms). They say Android is slow because it is all done in Java with processor brute force, but that is a lie: Android sports fine 3D accelerated graphics — just not with Nvidia chips.
Nvidia have never been good friends to Linux; their PC Linux drivers are OK, but they’ve never approached free drivers in any way. They designed Tegra for CE, actively turning their back on Linux, and now they find they are driving into a closed alley. So now we find them doing the talk while their engineers walk the walk (to the Linux).
In five years time, half their revenue might come from Tegra, but with their current attitude and plans, it will be very little revenue at all.
uggg, ok people stop posting about things you don’t understand. First off, Nvidia is developing drivers for linux AND Android for the Tegra platform, they didn’t turn their back on it. Secondly one of the reasons they are picking WinCE is due to the fact that it is tried and trusted. It has been around for a while and Nvidia knows what to expect. Android doesn’t have that kind of existing track record due to it being fairly new. Also the waranty for WinCE from Microsoft is 10 years, 10 years! Anyone know what, if any, Android has? I don’t know personally.
Here are the features of the WinCE OS: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb158484.aspx
Here is it’s printing suport and driver that is included for USB printers (since some people don’t think it can at all): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa929632.aspx
This is the standard shell that comes with CE and can be chosen when building your image. Note that it looks exactly like the desktop shell from 98 and ME: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb905634.aspx
Or you can build your own, it’s easy. Also QT is suported on WinCE so you could make a KDE style shell if you wanted: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc440279.aspx
I could go on all day and night about all its features and subsystems that are all execently documented and supported, but I won’t. As is I keep getting modded down by people who have likely never don’t any of this and just don’t like my opinion. All I put up were facts, and that I like WinCE.
Also the mobile version of office is using the mobile shell, it can use the standard shell and then it becomes usable in a desktop style environment.
So I am sorry that I seem to have offended enough people with suported information information. I forgot that if you say anything in suport of an MS product you get obliterated by people who don’t know any better. I am not bashing android or linux, I am just trying to explain why, a company with a lot of money riding on mobile offerenings, would want to possibly choose WinCE for their device.
So if you have expereince with WinCE on a build to order level and have done so, feel free to mod me down to 0 and beyond. But if your only experience is through end use of a Windows Mobile powered phone, please ACTUALLY research it a bit BEFORE giving your opinion on something that is not infact a custome built netbook tailered version of WinCE. Thanks.
Sorry Mr. Know All About CE, I thought you had no clue since you stated it ran Office, which is blatantly not true. It is not true either that they did not turn their back on Linux with Tegra. When they launched, all the web pages where carpeted with pictures of WCE software and written references and eulogies, while the word “Linux” failed to appear a single time, which was very unusual.
As a kernel, CE might be OK, although it is far from impressive. However, there is hardly any general-interest software of note that runs on it. Where CE is successful is in embedded industrial applications with graphical interfaces, custom apps for restricted markets. Oh, and the Windows Mobile ecosystem, which everybody around here, seemingly including you, agrees is a stinking pile of crap.
The non-WM GUI does look like W95, but is such an ugly and antiquated looking piece of software it is amazing you have the courage to defend it over and over. It looks like it has not been updated since far before 2000. Possibly nobody demands much from it, since practically all non WM apps for CE load on boot and take over the system, which is built to revolve around them.
The development system for CE is indeed very good, an makes it very easy to put a GUI in your custom device. That used to be much more difficult for Linux, which tended to own the market in non-gui industrial apps. With Android providing a more easily identifiable target, this is bound to change, though.
I have not modded you down, nor have any plans of doing so. Your victimism is laughable, though.
If it makes it into netbooks, the Microsoft brand will oblige the hardware vendor to produce drivers. It’s the one benefit of the OS family; hardware vendors will always spooge out drivers for it while they leave the rest of us consumers out int he cold.
You are so funny!
Anything that runs mission critical applications are call Unix, not Win CE.
If you don’t trust my words, ask mum when you get home.
Windows CE is not Windows Mobile which is shipped on most PDAs and Smartphones. Windows Mobile uses CE as its base, but CE is the lowest system level–the kernel, and the most basic userland, and is meant to be completely customized for the device on which it is being deployed. A device using CE does not need to share any similarities with Windows Mobile at all. It’s typical Microsoft, great kernel (CE) awful userland (WM). Fortunately, unlike desktop Windows, vendors are free to put their own userland on top of CE.
Windows CE has various build options, but there is a shell that looks and feels exactly like Windows Explorer – Desktop, short cuts, start menu, notification tray etc. The API is the similar enough to Win32 (except it only uses the Unicode version of the API) and so porting Apps is sort of not all that hard, in a “kind of” type of way. Also has a DotNet runtime, so even simpler if you drink that brand of Cola.
In any case, the GUI in Linux is infinitely more powerful and mature than the ugly native CE GUI. Hardware support is infinitely better and more mature than CE. There are TONS of FREELY available software for Linux that just don’t exist for CE.
There is almost nothing in MSWCE that can hold a candle to the equivalent in Linux, and that’s before you look at the price. The only good thing I can think of for CE is the development platform which, MS-style, is remarkably comprehensive and well done. But that won’t matter with the rise of Android, that provides a well-defined platform for chip manufacturers to provide the adaptation layer, and a strong development IDE in Eclipse.
Everything Nvidia has said in this communication is a mixture of blatant lies, disinformation and misinformation. They placed their bet on the wrong horse, and they are now trying to look good. I suspect money and Microsoft must be involved: when Tegra was launched, CE was prominently featured in all their communications and web pages, while Linux was not even mentioned anywhere. And that is VERY weird, because if you spend a ton of money designing a chip for embedded applications, blindly ignoring half the market (we’re not talking the PC market here, in embedded apps Linux is very, very strong) is very, very strange. And more so when all of your competition is happily riding the Linux horse.
Saying that XP’s kernel is “Great” is stretching the imagination a great way. And saying that it is a great kernel “in typical Microsoft style” is high-comedy stuff.
FTA:
So, this criticism insinuates that Windows CE *does have* drivers for everything? I think perhaps someone is a little confused about Windows CE here – if this guy believes that Windows CE will be able to access all devices and printers just like its big brothers Windows XP and Vista – I suspect he’s in for a bit of a surprise.
So he says windows CE is better hardware wise. There are even fewer drivers for ce than in the linux kernel (ce is after all designed to be customised for specific uses).
Android has a user interface but no graphics drivers for acceleration. Win CE has graphics drivers but no user interface. So which is further behind? Are nvidia planning to make a user interface? How crappy is it going to be?
You can see a glimpse of that interface here:
http://www.osnews.com/story/21601/NVIDIA_s_Tegra_650_ARM_Platform_S…
“glimpse” is about right. Is there something more substantial than opening a DVD video? Something that might give us a hint about usability?
Android does have accelerated 3D drivers and uses OpenGL throughout. There aren’t any nVidia drivers, because nVidia has neglected writing them as well as providing the information for other parties to write them.
Linux has far more accelerated video drivers than WCE. And printer drivers, come to think of it. And any kind of drivers, really. Only XP is may be better supported (and then not out of the box)
The supoert for 3D and accelerated Drivers is in WinCE: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa921056.aspx
If you were reffereing to existing vendors and suporting it, then yes less vendors have written WinCE drivers by a long shot. But you can write a driver with full directX capabilities and 3D acceleration for WinCE as well. Those who would build platforms using it will do that themselves.
Microsoft meeting with the chip makers:
MS$: Want to use us instead of GNU/Linux/Android?
Chip makers: No
MS$: (brings out the coke and hookers)
Chip makers: /party
MS$: How about now?
Chip makers: ok!
I don’t know about chip makers but I do know that the CEO of Broadcom seems to like a good old fashioned coke fuelled orgy – not that there is anything wrong with that. Maybe if Sun and Linux vendors pooled some money together to bring in some high class Columbian blow – it might convince the CEO to give up the ‘stuck up prick’ attitude towards opensource.
Edited 2009-06-19 12:38 UTC
nVidia has obviously never been a friend of Open Source. But ignoring the open source politics for a moment, this is just a bit more proof that they are _not_ a friend of Linux in general. Makes me feel more justified for rejecting their products and choosing those from other companies over the last few years. Wish more people who are fond of Linux made fewer excuses for these people.
Well, they probably got the best OpenGL drivers for Linux in terms of features and performance… Sure, there are corporations that are definitely more friendly with open-source, but at least I’m not stuck with 3D performance from 2003/2004.
Sometimes, you have to be pragmatic. It’s not because they don’t completely embrace your cause that they are “evil”.
Sometimes being “pragmatic” means realizing that the fastest implementation isn’t the “best” and unused features don’t contribute to somethings “bestness”. I have been completely pragmatic in my purchasing decisions and recognized that my needs could be met elsewhere.
This had the added benefit that I didn’t have to support a company who undermines the very foundations on which Linux has achieved its modest successes. But for the record, I never said this made them “evil”. Please have that discussion with someone who actually called them evil.
In closing, shooting yourself in the foot in the name of pragmatism is neither smart, nor pragmatic.
No, they don’t. Your information is sadly quite out of date. nVidia proprietary drivers for Linux have been horrible for at least two years now. KDE4 exposed dreadful performance of nVidia Linux drivers for 2D hardware acceleration … nVidia’s Linux drivers were decelerators. For most of this year, nVidia have been pushing out new versions of their Linux driver on average every couple of weeks trying to fix their myriad problems, and sometimes there have been up to three or four versions in a single week.
Perhaps, if you have a nVidia card and you wish to run Linux, then you could possibly use the Nouveau Driver.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_904_nouve…
The Nouveau Driver is the default for nVidia cards in fedora 11.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzE3OA
This driver is hopefully about to become supported for kernel mode setting:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzMzMA
thanks to the efforts of the open source ATI driver development teams.
Edited 2009-06-19 02:53 UTC
Well, my information is out of date as well, but the GP’s post is I remember it as well. The fact that KDE4 revealed a low performance case doesn’t invalidate the rest of the generally really great performance the drivers have.
Put another way: can you name the drivers faster with more features than the NVidia ones?
My infomation is out of date? Yeah, tell me about it. Right now, my main rig is running Ubuntu Linux 64-bit with a brand new GTX 260. Guess what? Everything is fine. The driver got some quirks, but it’s good enough for 3D development.
Using the Nouveau driver? Sure, I am really looking for its 3D rendering capabilities. People must have rated up your comment as “funny”.
Many people are cheering for ATI because of their support for open-source. I must admit that I have considered their hardware before getting my new card. Unfortunately, there’s no FOSS driver with OpenGL 2.0 capabilities. We’re in 2009, not 1997. Sure, they are working on it, but when will it be ready? I don’t want GLSL in 2012.
Well, they probably got the best OpenGL drivers for Linux in terms of features and performance… Sure, there are corporations that are definitely more friendly with open-source, but at least I’m not stuck with 3D performance from 2003/2004.
It might be true that NVIDIA delivers the best binary blobs for Linux. If raw power is something you really need (other than the brag factor), then there may be no way around NVIDIA, but…
Sometimes, you have to be pragmatic. It’s not because they don’t completely embrace your cause that they are “evil”.
…sometimes being pragmatic is also looking at long term effects. NVIDIA isn’t evil, they just don’t care about FOSS. When you do care about FOSS, you’d see that NVIDIA isn’t advancing the platform. At best they are dead weight. At worst they are slowing progress in free and open graphics, because their closed drivers diminish the pool of users who use free drivers and therefore there is less of a population to push the open solutions forward.
A few years back, there was no easy way around NVIDIA. The only open solution was Intel and that required buying a completely new computer for the IGP (not particularly economic when you already have a decent machine). Now that AMD/ATI opened up and Intel is also working on discrete graphics, it might be that supporting NVIDIA isn’t that pragmatic anymore.
In light of recent developments, NVIDIA only supports Linux nominally by glueing Windows drivers on top of the Linux kernel. This does nothing to support long term Linux/X.org development. That is why my recent purchases are ATI based cards. Even if the whole Linux/X.org and ATI drivers thing is in heavy flux right now and 3D is virtually non-existent, I know when things calm down, I’ll be better off with my open infrastructure.
Perhaps that’s not a bad idea, because pushing immature solutions would only frustrate people…
You’re absolutely right. The keyword is when. Like I mentioned previously, the current infrastructure doesn’t support OpenGL 2.0, let alone 3.0. It might be supported tomorrow, like it could be supported in three years. If you’re happy with virtually “non-existent 3D”, that’s cool. Obviously, that’s not my case.
Getting back on topic, I wonder why some fanatics claim that nVidia don’t give a flying duck about Linux when they are providing a driver that is quite usable for (some? many? most?) users. If they really didn’t cared about it, there would be no driver at all.
Seriously the number of times Micro-Soft has f–ked Nvida over (every other version of Direct X, Xbox payments, Xbox 360, etc) and the problems they’ve had dealing with Microsoft’s partner Intel locking them out of future Atom chips… but Nvidia keeps going back on their knees like a well-battered bitch (dog or woman)
The only drivers needed for Android (for their netbooks) are drivers for Tegra chips…. Nvidia already has good solid Linux Kernel driver experience in house, hell they probably used Linux as the test platform. I’d bet Google is giving hardware devs more control over the end product not to mention credit. What interesting apps run under CE? that don’t run under Linux? If you’re expecting devs to flock to your platform, why not choose the forward thinking platform, not one that’s had 10 years and never made it. Microsoft has already chosen Intel/Atom as the platform to support Win7 and Intel shut Nvidia out of that game next round. Microsoft’s already said “netbooks” run Windows so what Nvidia’s selling won’t get any help from trying to sell CE on it.
Like a smooth talking wife beater Microsoft “really loves” Nvidia this time and Nvidia is sure things will be way better.
Friend? Nvidia is a business, in the “business” to make money, not friends.
It’s a figure of speech. Concentrating on such a pedantic point really doesn’t add anything to the debate. Everyone understands they’re a business. The discussion is about their less than ideal corporate stance towards Linux.
There the goes the little bit of remaining good will that the Linux community had for nVidia. So long.
Yeah… but I still keep searching for a good NVidia graphics enabled notebook, so I can use my desktop effects that are now broken on the Intel X3100 open source driver.
Most of the time, I prefer Open Source. Not because of idealism or morality, but simply because I can get involved in the process, contribute patches and bugfixes, and get in touch with the devs to propose new features and ways to implement them.
But there is a time when open source simply doesn’t deliver what I want. When that time comes, I couldn’t care less who I support. I want my features and I want them to work correctly.
I’m forced to use my home notebook on Windows for months now, because my notebook’s shitty screen is unusable at Linux and, the only thing that made it useable — colour correction features of Compiz — is no longer supported in my graphics card driver.
Luckily Windows sucks so bad (for my usage) that I can’t see myself switching off linux permanently, but I guess another user with less things to complain about windows would have forgotten about Linux a long time ago, after months without being able to use it.
nVidia are a very secretive company. They guard their trade secrets with steel bars. Thus, Linux, with constant demands from users to release documentation, have been a thorn in nVidia’s side since day one. They hate Linux with a passion and want to see it die.
The only reason they bother to release binary drivers is to shut up the vast majority of Linux users who are content with “good enough”, who wouldn’t be interested in writing device drivers if they had the opportunity. Now, nVidia only has to deal with a much smaller minority of “whiners” who, from nVidia’s perspective, would still be unhappy, even if they did release full chipset documentation.
Interestingly, nVidia’s binary drivers are reportedly not nearly as bad as ATI’s. Even ATI’s most recent Linux drivers are rife with bugs that cause system crashed and data corruption. Fortunately, ATI has wisened up and release documentation, and the Free ATI drivers have gotten to the point where they’re really quite usable.
For those who are interested in taking this a step further, google “Open Graphics Project.” Their FPGA board is ready to be built, and they’ve started work on their rendering engine.
Sadly (or happily depending on your point of view) there doesn’t seem to be much point any more to the “Open Graphics Project”.
Both the Nouveau Driver project for nVidia cards and the radeon driver project for ATI cards appear to be on track for a release of a fully functional, open source, hardware accelerated, 2D and 3D graphics driver, along with kernel mode setting support, memory management support and much improved integration throughout the entire Xorg stack, by the end of this year.
The Intel open source graphics drivers should be over their difficult transition period by that time also.
The “Open Graphics Project” won’t have any chance to compete on that timescale.
Edited 2009-06-19 03:19 UTC
For small values of “on-track”
These drivers are not trivial to get right, I think it’s not fair to their developers to expect this in such a time-frame. However, your optimism is cute 
.
For quite large values of “on track” actually.
Both of them have working code right (now that is suitable for developers only at this time), and they are both in the “getting the kinks out” stages of development.
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ati_radeon_rewri…
I think your smug attitude is decidedly not cute.
You should read those links. They don’t say what you think they do. Actually they go so far to say that there is NO schedule (for nouveau). So how do you know they’re on-track for year’s end when they won’t even commit to it?
Also, I said you were cute because you’re practically promising the world to people in terms of what the drivers will be capable of, and doing it on behalf of projects I get the feeling you’re not involved in.
Really? I would be interested to read more on that.
Right now, the radeon driver isn’t too bad. I have used it with a Radeon 9250 and it did the job. However, I don’t expect a fully-working driver until next year. As for the Nouveau driver, it cannot even render 3D properly; how could it be finished before the end of the year? At least the radeon driver can!
Of course, it depends on your interpretation of “fully functional”. When I read this, I am expecting advanced 3D features for chipsets of the current or the previous generation. Complete support for R300 might be cool, but it’s useless for newer computers.
As a fan of Linux this saddens me; another avenue cut off by “oh, the Windows version is better”. I’m still not convinced Linux sales on Netbooks were really that poor only due to Linux. Those machines were typically lower spec than the cost difference justified, and had specialized distros at worst crippled or at best without the experience of the more time-tested popular distros, and they got harder and harder to find… Still, these endorsements are not very surprising, since Microsoft has a vested interest in making Windows CE look better than a full-blown Linux distribution and these companies are valued industry partners.
In the end it doesn’t matter much to me; if the nice high-spec ARM netbook I want doesn’t come with Linux, I’ll buy it and install Linux myself. I’d rather support a manufacturer doing it the right way, but I won’t buy something subpar just to stay on my high horse.
Edited 2009-06-19 04:34 UTC
When netbooks started one could only buy them with Linux, and the sales were not poor at all. Indeed, these Linux-only machines started the whole netbook thing.
When XP was made available by Microsoft for netbooks, sales of Linux did not diminish because of that, but rather because retailers suddenly withdrew the Linux machines from the shelves so that no-one could buy them even when they wanted to.
Edited 2009-06-19 04:46 UTC
But a horrible slap in the face would be to pay the Microsoft tax on yet *another* hardware platform.
IMHO this is a gigantic problem that should have already been fixed a long time ago with the anti trust rulings against Microsoft’s abuses of their position in the marketplace.
This is the only goal for Nvidia.
But the problem with Nvidia is they think that Microsoft will always view them as their number one girl – the reality is that Microsoft is promiscuous and quite happy to break up a relationship if a better one comes along. If nVidia is banking on loyalty or some degree of partnership – they’re sorely mistaken. In the world of Microsoft there is no such thing as partnerships – only you being subservient to Microsoft.
I don’t care if they deliver them with linux as long as they offer the optinon of not buying them with WinCE, as I’m not willing to spend money on that horrible crap.
Netbook makers already demonstrated their disabillity to offer a good Linux distribution, so all i want them is to ensure driver availability.
My guess is though, that the content mafia wants a Windows variant to offer HD content.
I find it disturbing to say the least, that no note/net/dailybuzzword/book seller/partner is able to install a usable Linux distro on a hardware with whatever CPU. They simply don’t want to. That’d be ok with me, I install it myself. But I find it stupid to make broad conclusions about Linux on ARM based on their own inability to provide a usable pre-installed version. Idiots.
That’s not exactly true… HP had/has OpenSUSE, Dell has Ubuntu; System76 has (as always) Ubuntu. Both are real mainstream Linux distributions. But for the most part you’re right. Acer and Asus have installed lower-profile simplistic versions of things, and I don’t even recall if MSI actually offered any WindPC with Linux.
Saying that anything is rubbish for ARM based netbooks is not constructive.
* Android is currently a new kid on the block and I think that with the right resources Android can be developed into a nice netbook OS.
* Linux is an excellent choice because there are some polished distros out there which would be polished for netbooks quite nicely. Linux also has good hardware support, with wider usage of Linux that good support will evolve into “great” hardware support.
* Windows CE is ages old, and is very solid, and will be ideal for ARM netbooks.
I think all 3 choices suffer from problems with the UI.
Think about it:
* Linux suffers from typical open source syndrome, the applications have nice buttons GUI. But Linux is also full of annoying usability issues and stupid application design decisions.
* Windows CE is something that you use as a foundation and build a nicely presented set of applications on top of it. You’d be crazy to use the default explorer style UI (or even to include it at all), you’d be better off deisgning a suite of applications that runs on top of CE.
* Android is pretty much a version 1.5 OS, its applications are currently targeted for mobile phones, not netbooks but with work I think it can be adapted quite well for ARM netbooks.
Anyway that’s my 2c worth, I am willing to bet on all 3 as likely contenders and I think that all 3 have the potential to be widely used. Which one reigns supreme depends on the effort that the associated developers (whether it be corporations or hobbyists) are prepared to put into each platform.
Lets just stand back for a second, Linux is the kernel, GNU/Linux is the base – but it is up to the distributor as to what they use for the UI, the UI server and so forth. There is nothing stopping a vendor from having a GNU/Linux base and building a completely new framework on top; fully replacing HAL with DeviceKit, replace Xorg with something designed not only for modern hardware but mobility and all the concerns that come with it.
The problem is that vendors don’t want to invest money; they want a solution to drop out of the sky so that they can do the least amount humanly possible; welcome to the horizontal market where the lack of integration between the software and hardware results in a constant power struggle between the OEM and software vendors.
Edited 2009-06-19 13:14 UTC
Most win ce devices might be just as the first linux netbooks: crappy because of the applications running on it or the way everything is configured.
Since I have seen multiple linux versions running very well and not a single device with win ce that ran like it should I really prefer the linux option. (professional devices and pda/smartphones with win ce that is)
If all vendor choose something else I am sure there will be someone that tries to install a mature linux version and others will follow if that works fine.
I haven’t any experience with android so no opinion on that one.
“Anything that runs mission critical applications are call Unix, not Win CE.”
No my friend. We’re talking about embedded OSes here, and I can pretty much guarantee you a ****ton of these don’t run Unix. They don’t all run WinCE though, but it truely is a very nice kernel.
As is the NT kernel btw. Just because you like and support Linux doesn’t make you obligated to disdain alternatives. You can, like the non-vocal majority, like and use everything
I dunno. I have limited experience with both OSes.
But it’s dreaming of ponies and rainbows about ARM CPUs making a dent in very small laptops (aka NetBooks). Most people want to run the same software they’re familiar with on their NetBooks.
Intel ATOM CPUs is where the action is for NetBooks.
Maybe with the launch of iPhoneOS 3.0, that we’ll see a hand held device akin to something like a Netbook from Apple some time soon. What would tempt me is if Apple provided a 64gb iPod Touch it would be a good Netbook replacement – but I don’t see if happening anytime soon.
So nobody’s attempting to stick Symbian OS on a netbook?
Ironic considering it’s the descendant of the fantastic EPOC32 mobile OS that ran on Psion’s original Netbook.
Back then it made Windows CE look like a bad joke. I’m not sure how Symbian holds up today.
Back then it made Windows CE look like a bad joke. I’m not sure how Symbian holds up today.
Atleast on my phone it is ridiculously slow. I’ve been playing around on my phone quite a lot and know what it is capable of, hell, it can even run real-time emulation of Sega MegaDrive, yet browsing around the Symbian menus, launching any single app and so on is slow like hell. As such I doubt Symbian would be a good choice for a netbook..
I wonder what happened?
As EPOC32 it was fast on an 18Mhz Psion 5 PDA. Even multitasking all of its applications didn’t render its UI unresponsive. In comparison Windows CE crawled while running its vastly inferior applications on a significantly faster processor.
I’d have thought that it would run like greased lightning on any modern mobile phone.
I wonder what happened?
Nokia got its hand on Symbian. Unfortunately.
Nokia got it’s hands on QT, and all is still well in QT land (knocks on wood)
I don’t think synbian is slow…The ui response is probably s60
well now that it is official I will post as to one of the reasons why Nvidia likes CE so much. http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/19/zune-hd-has-a-tegra-processor-co…
also while i am on that, proof that Nvidia has not abondond android: http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/17/nvidias-tegra-in-the-flesh-booti…
and read the second one here http://www.nvidia.com/object/handheld_devpartners.html
Edited 2009-06-19 22:48 UTC
I was just looking at Engadget and Nvidia’s site, and it is quite impressive hardware wise that you can have such a small device play HD video and games like Quake 3. I know this is somewhat off topic from the current rants, but it does seem the a device like this married with cell service and flex LCD should (not could) be the future of portable computing. Thing how great it would be to have the power of a duo-core laptop that fits in a shirt pocket, with a 20″ rollout flex LCD and keyboard.
Then again, I am still waiting on my personal jetpack.
Asus is the one that sold Linpus in the first place that poisoned “Linux on the netbook”. Remember it’s “derived from” Xandros… not actually Xandros as they were too cheap to pay a small portion of what they pay for Windows to do a good job. It’s like expecting people to pay for Fedora 9 or CentOS 4 instead of a supported version of RHLE. Asus cheaped out from the start, I wouldn’t expect them to make anything but a worthless version of Android that doesn’t ship with drivers for all the included hardware…again.
This whole netbook thing separated the boys from the men in the computer industry… those who repackage and those who move forward. Look who’s using Ubuntu or Android willing to put in effort and build something with a partner rather than looking for a cheap jab to score some bucks from the big kids.