“ARM comes of age with a major PC design breakthrough this week. The Cambridge-based company will see a microprocessor based on one of its low power cores sitting side-by-side with an Intel Core Duo in a Dell laptop PC. The key to ARM’s success is Dell’s plan to run Linux as a second rapid boot operating system on its Windows latptop… The high-end laptop called the Latitude Z will use the ARM-based processor to run a second Linux based operating system which will allow the machine to boot up quickly for specific applications such as music and video playing. The PC runs Windows 7 on a 1.4GHz Intel Core Duo processor as its main CPU. Still this marks a significant design win for ARM which finds itself sitting side-by-side with its main processor rival in a big brand name PC.”
Isn’t dual-boot of Windows/Linux usually forbidden by microsoft?
There have been laptops shipping with instant On OS for a while now, so its certainly doable.Maybe it wasn’t in the 90s, but its doable now. These aren’t really full dual-booting systems though, we aren’t talking about buying something with Ubuntu and Win7 side by side, this is a stripped down linux. It is fairly interesting that they are shipping a system with both ARM and Intel chips with a flavor of linux booting on the ARM and Windows on the Intel, I never really expected to see that.
It’s not really dual boot, you basically have 2 machines (1 linux, 1 windows) in 1 box with common resources.
On what planet does Microsoft get to say what non-Microsoft software one is “forbidden” to run on ones machine?
OEM agreement – I suggest you look at the Be Inc. Versus Microsoft case. I am unsure what the situation is today but as so far as what has happened in the past – Microsoft has placed restrictions within the large OEM contracts. Restrictions included not replacing or offering an alternative to Internet Explorer icon on the desktop with an alternative browser, providing a dual boot system. The list goes on and on with the number of restrictions – which is what sparked the whole DOJ case off.
Too bad Judge Jackson opened his mouth and started blabbering on about Bill Gates having a Nepoleonic complex which Microsoft lawyers used to claim that the judge was biased an had an agenda against Microsoft. Had Judge Jackson kept his big trap shut – we’d be talking about Microsoft Operating Systems Ltd. and Microsoft Applications Ltd. – and the new copy of Microsoft Office running on Linux.
Edited 2009-09-30 03:22 UTC
I still smell an anti-trust case coming on. This has GOT to be an antitrust violation, regardless of whatever lobbying Microsoft may have done.
Microsoft I don’t think are doing the same sorts of restrictive OEM contracts but what ever the case maybe – the damage has already been done; the EU and DOJ have failed to even do the most basic thing and force Microsoft to full disclose all the specifications for their technology (video, audio, file etc) free of charge and royalty free – past, present and future. If they did that – it would go along way to levelling the playing field after over 10 years of using anticompetitive contracts to get to their dominant position and exerting their muscle to stay there. It would allow them to keep their source closed but force them to open up the specifications to allow compatible products to be created so customers can easily migrate from one platform to another or maintain a heterogeneous network easily.
The problem is that the EU simply fine instead of forcing Microsoft do something that will actually change their business practices; the DOJ like the rest of the US government is hook, line and sinker with the business lobby – customers protected as long as it doesn’t hurt the bottom line of the big party financiers.
I think they still have a stranglehold on the OEM’s, but it seems not in legal documents anymore. So maybe it’s less strong as it used to be.
They were all ready tried and convicted. As mentioned elsewhere, the plan was to separate out the OS and Application components of Microsoft into separate companies to prevent this. Instead, the U.S. let them off the hook and it’s pretty much back to Business as usual. The EU has been more strict in their rulings, but I not sure it still has had much impact.
MS ruthlessly took over the PC world – they worked onerous backroom OEM deals. People may not remember how scary MS was about 10-15 years ago. No one in the PC industry, including OEM’s, Journalists, etc. dared say anything negative about MS without risk of serious consequences. They a much more benign company today, but most of the damage has already been done. They are just riding out the wave as long as they can.
http://www.begroovy.com/wordpress/?p=415
I believe that was the main point of Be’s lawsuit against Microsoft – although Microsoft settled out of court for about $23 million (and, IIRC, it was one of those “we don’t have to change our practices or admit any wrongdoing” settlements).
I’ve read about that laptop earlier today on Ars Technica, and another great innovation worth mentioning is that Dell is also selling an induction power supply for the laptop as well as a wireless dock.
Unfortunately that stuff comes at a cost, the laptop starts at $2000
This is such a waste. Two processors, but only one of them can be active at any time! It would have been a lot more useful if you could have the OS dedicate certain amount of memory for the second processor and power it on and off as needed; you could use Linux on ARM when you need long battery-life but you could power up the Core 2 Duo if you are doing something that temporarily requires lots of horse-power. I can’t think of any good examples of use for the ARM processor if Core 2 Duo was the main one in use, but I can bet someone else would come up with some neat uses for it, too. Maybe run some analysis software which requires lots of time and not that high performance?
Exactly – and how interesting that this comes two days after an article describing a Microsoft research OS that does exactly this… Helios was designed to run the same “binaries” (bytecode) over multiple processor architectures in the same OS…
I know Helios is only research, but perhaps someone saw this kind of hardware arrangement coming? Imagine that Win32-written code could be compiled direct to Helios-compatible bytecode (or that there was something like WINE for Helios), and then run on a system such as this Dell…
I have to wonder how much of the separation between the ARM and x86 is enforced by the BIOS. Perhaps if there was a custom BIOS, like Coreboot, the ARM could access the hard drive, then put a boot loader in the flash that boots the ARM, and its now a fully Linux ARM notebook.
Yes, you could configure a kind of vm environment which booted on the core2 chip as needed, and was shut off when not required…
You could also use something like wine that executed on the core2 chip.
Yes, you could configure a kind of vm environment which booted on the core2 chip as needed, and was shut off when not required… Like the SunPCI cards you used to get for Sparc systems, an entire x86 system on a card which would run in a window on your solaris system when you booted it up.
You could also use something like wine that executed on the core2 chip.
Concur – not really a dual-boot (or multi-boot) system as the expression has been defined over the last decade or so.
This is an interesting concept given that Dell has traditionally used a reduced version of Windows XP to provide an almost instant-on experience for delivery of audio and video content through its desktop and portable systems.
Thinking a bit about it, there might be very simple reasons underlying this development:
#1) Approaching the wave of mass-introduction of reasonably priced Blu-Ray Disc drives in mass marketed computers.
A frequent complaint in all reviews of Blu-Ray Disc players is the “awfully long” power-on-boot sequence compared to their predecessors (DVD and CD players). The time interval time from insertion of a BD into the player and the on-screen display of its menu is also felt to be snail-paced. Things have improved since the first BD players have hit the market yet still below what has become expectations.
Windows 7 is claimed to have a faster boot sequence than Vista and XP (I still have to verify this one personally). Nevertheless, it will take a number of years for Windows 7 to acquire acceptance for use in a corporate environment.
Another aspect too is that computer systems in a corporate environment have their OSs locked-down and/or severely impeded by multiply redundant security services. In such environment, it does not matter if an optical drive is 10X, 25X, or even 100X speed…..it is still felt that the media delivery is slow to get going and keep going.
It would not be surprising to see rapid acceptance of the hybrid Windows XP on X86 — “Linux Media” on ARM as a secured concept for corporate environment especially when Blu-Ray drives becomes the new standard both in the corporate world and in the general market.
#2) Circumventing the dual-boot barriers (restrictions?) imposed by Microsoft on OEMs.
With Haiku having just reached alpha status this will likely bring a refresh in the user community of the media delivery capabilities of its ancestor (BeOS). The financial impedements for dual-boot BeOS – Windows computers sold to the general market have been cited as one of the four/five key causes for the demise of Be, Inc.
Of the major OEMs with world-wide brand recognition, Dell has been one of the most vocable Linxu advocate by acting the speech and providing Linux based desktops and portables. As such, they may have the most experience in testing the limits of the OEM licensing agreement with Microsoft and faced un-destroyable walls.
#3) How about the coming of the ARM-based netbook?
Gaining traction with a new product in a forever changing market is a risky business. Going head-on with a ARM-based hardware jointly with Linux-based software might be suicidal given the initial responses…..unless one has Steve Jobs as CEO….:)
See the Sharp NetWalker. 100% arm. 100% Ubuntu.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartbook#Sharp_Netwalker
Sure it’s only sold in Japan IIRC, but it seems to be doing quite well even though it has not been officially launched yet.
Ubuntu doesn’t fit very well, I wonder if it really is the netbook version(in that case the netbook version sucks) or they went with a regular outdated version(8.04), because the characters and the menu surface are too small while the icons are well endowed.
In any case the only thing that keeps me from getting one is that they are a bit to expensive to justify an ARM only PC with little storage. If they had priced it a bit cheaper like the dictionaries it is based on, I would have bought one for sure.
That is the real netbook format I was waiting for.
On thing is sure, they are doing a lot of promotion for the OOo suite and what’s better, they are honest about its shortcomings.
Acorn had dual processor computers in the 80s and 90s, so not really that hard to do.
You just had to make sure that the ARM wasn’t fried by the PC Processor 🙂
I actually read the Vista OEM license yesterday. It actually says that you are allowed to use non-Microsoft hardware or software on the same computer as Vista.
So it looks like things have come far since the BeOS days; either that or there was never an anti-dual-boot clause in the OEM license agreements.
Fortunately Microsoft does not own your computer and can not by any means dictate with you run on it other than Vista. I’m sure they’d like to try though.
That was only for the reseller. What you did with after you purchased it Ms had no say in.