Ubuntu running on the Kindle 2? Done. “What you see there is a Kindle 2 with the Ubuntu 9.04 port to ARM running in a chrooted environment. On the screen you see xdaliclock in front of an xterm with the remains of a top command and a few mildly embarrassing typos.”
This brings back memories of monochrome 386 lcd laptops running MS-DOS. Mmmmm
There are probably only a few people old enough on OSNews to remember the classic laptops with the real trackball mouse and screens that you could only read if you looked at them straight on.
My first laptop was 386 running Windows 3.1. I used it a lot as a word processor. It served me decently over the years.
Well that’s one way to make some of us feel ancient.
The current notion that Gigahertz machines with a gigabyte of RAM are under resourced still sticks in my throat. In the early days a 1MegaHertz machine (6800) with 16KiloBytes of RAM was regarded as fully respectable.
This anomaly also surfaces as a deep conviction that if software worked right: booting would take a couple of seconds and applications would open in similar time scales.
Every time we get near to good performance – some bright spark adds a layer of abstraction in. So the machine still takes about a minute to start up and 10 seconds to load an application just as was the case 15+ years ago. In some ways the wonder isn’t how much things have changed but how little.
For many purposes a mono display with ultra-low battery use would be a great compromise and I look forward to seeing what emerges from this niche environment.
Nice one, although NetBSD is *far* more suited for this kind of box. I don’t understand why popularity wins over quality, stability and extreme portability, but well … that’s just me. Maybe they have some really good reason to focus on “Da most popular yet annoyingly slow and misconfigured” linux distro on earth.
No offence to anyone reading this. I’m only expressing my mind, so don’t be upset.
If you can explain Linux vs *BSDs (OSX in there) or Beta vs VHS or WordPerfect vs Word or *ANY* of the arguably better/best solution vs the “good enough” solution, you will probably make $OMG_AMT of money for that.
“good enough” always wins, its because Hoo-Mahns are lazy and don’t want to have to learn *all* of it or change to something else.
That is why technically better *ANYTHING* typically doesn’t matter and only what sells does.
I’ll agree with you, its *VERY* frustrating. While there are people that WANT to do everything right, they will never be successful in business or life.
Hint: I’ve been “escorted” out of jobs over “best solutions” vs “good enough solutions” and sticking to my guns for the best solution. So that pretty much tells you what you need to know about me.