Recently in Xandros Category

Dell may not have the absolute best laptop deals available — you can often do better with the HP/Compaq/Acer/Gateway specials in Office Depot's Sunday newspaper circular (see, there IS a reason to subscribe to a genuine dead-tree newspaper like our own ever-lovin' Los Angeles Daily News).

But Dell is trying to earn your business, and right now (and through April 2) the company is running a "9 great systems under $499" laptop promotion.

True, the $399 Inspiron 13 is no great shakes specs-wise, with a measly 2.13 GHz single-core Celeron processor. But it does feature 1 GB of RAM (barely adequate for the included Windows Vista but quite enough for Linux distributions such as Ubuntu) and a fairly roomy 160 GB hard drive. A 2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor adds $100 to the price, and an extra gigabyte of RAM adds another $50 (yes, Dell SHOULD be ashamed to charge $50 for something that couldn't be costing them more than $10 wholesale), and for $550 you have a very respectable laptop that should serve you for at least three years (or 7-10 years if you're me).

What I'm much more excited about is Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 netbook (pictured above), the price of which has dropped to $249 for the basic Ubuntu Linux/512 MB RAM/8 GB solid-state drive model.

I had the pleasure of trying this very-small but quite usable netbook at the San Fernando Valley Linux Users Group booth at the recent SCALE 7x show, and I was quite impressed with it. I've seen quite a few ultra-small netbooks over the past couple of years -- the Asus Eee PC, the Everex Cloudbook, the HP 2133 Mini-Note, and this Dell is the best one I've encountered yet.

The smallish keyboard, while not super comfortable, is definitely usable, and unlike some other netbooks, the Dell Mini 9 doesn't run hot. It has a nice display and is fairly snappy with Ubuntu GNU/Linux 8.04 (the long-term support edition I'm using on the little girl's Gateway laptop and my extra Toshiba 1100-S101). It handled multimedia well when I saw it, and the small size makes it extremely convenient. It's easier to tuck it in a bag or backpack and open it up at will.

Battery life is supposed to be 4 hours. Not bad, but the talk recently of basing the netxt generation of netbooks on power-sipping ARM processors, like those used in cellphones,
and promising all-day battery life, is something to look forward to.

Anyhow, while the base Dell Mini 9 is $249, bringing the memory up to 1 GB adds only $25 to the cost. (Now you're talking, Dell ...) Going from the 8 GB solid-state hard drive to 16 GB adds an extra $50, but that isn't completely necessary (although I'd probably do it) because you can easily save to those miniature SD cards used in digital cameras — most netbooks have a slot for this — and keep your main drive fairly clean.

One catch with netbooks is that they don't have built-in CD/DVD drives, so you can pop for one from Dell for $89, or take your chances and pick one up for possibly less at Fry's or online from an outlet like TigerDirect.com, where USB-connected CD/DVD burners run from $60-80, or not much of a savings.

Again, if you fully embrace the "netbook concept," you won't need an optical drive or a even a huge main hard drive. These little notebooks are supposed to be for casual Web surfing, jotting down notes and the like.

But I still predict that the netbook will become a whole lot more ubiquitous than many hardware manufacturers and especially software giant Microsoft ever thought.

And while Microsoft is making moves to have an operating system other than Windows XP that will run on such lower-spec devices, I think it's just silently waiting and not-so-silently cajoling hardware makers to up the specs of these little laptops so they can more comfortably run not Windows Vista but the upcoming (and said-to-be-lighter-and-higher) Windows 7.

We'll see. The rumors of a shift from Intel-based processors like the netbook-aimed Atom to even-lower-power-using ARM CPUs could throw a considerable wrench into Microsoft's quest to move into the netbook market — a class of hardware the company didn't see coming.

Right now I still recommend running Ubuntu on those netbooks that ship with that version of the Linux operating system. I've heard less-than-glowing things about the netbooks that use modified versions of Xandros and Linpus, but I'll admit right now that I have nothing beyond the anecdotal to go by.

There are many people interested in running everything from Mandriva and Debian to OpenBSD and Novell's SUSE (either the OpenSUSE or SLED varieties) on their netbooks with the help in many cases of active projects porting these OSes to various netbooks.

Maybe you don't want a netbooks. I understand. I do a whole lot of writing on laptops, and that smallish keyboard might not get such a glowing review when I'm cranking 500-word articles on deadline.

But then again, I do the majority of my work on a 7-year-old Toshiba laptop with a dead sound chip and the ultra-reliable OpenBSD operating system, now equipped with Java and Flash Player 7 (the "newest" Flash player available in the BSD world). Right now the Toshiba — with 1.2 GHz Celeron CPU, 768 MB of RAM and 20 GB hard drive split between OpenBSD and Windows XP, which for testing reasons I haven't killed out — is serving me quite well.

And I always have the Toshiba's "twin," running Ubuntu 8.04, at the ready. And that one even has working sound (and with Ubuntu I have Java and either Flash 9 or 10 – I can't remember). If I have to do more with video than currently (now = almost none), I'll have to move back to Linux both for the Flash capability and the availability of more video-editing software.

But for the basics — Firefox, Opera, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, the Geany text editor, the Xpdf and Adobe PDF readers, the GIMP image editor, Pidgin for IM, gFTP and the Rox-filer file manager — I have a pretty nice setup in OpenBSD. I've been using this OS on this hunk of hardware for about three months now, so I should be in a position soon to write yet another distro review, except this one will be based on that three months of use and not the "I installed it, here's how that went, and here's how it's different from what I usually run" reviews that I and many others find so easy to crank out.

Winding back around to netbooks, what I mean to say is that $250 is a better price than $300 for the basic model, and for that Dell deserves at least some praise (and more than a little business).

While Ubuntu is feverishly working on modifying its distro to work on small mobile PCs and other miniature devices, Debian has been working on making its GNU/Linux distribution easily installable on the Asus Eee PC.

Earlier models are better-supported, but the team involved is aiming to make every Eee Debian-friendly:

Naturally, the earliest DebianEeePC/Models are supported best, but full support for all models is not far off. In particular, the 701 is very well supported, the 900 is almost entirely supported and we have some users reporting success on our mailing list with the model 901. Aided by their participation, we will soon support the 901 and other Atom-based models (1000 and 1000H). When the 904HD and 1000HD become available to us, we will expand our support to include them too.

While the Eee's "original" OS, namely Xandros, is based on Debian, it's not of the same "free" ilk. Whatever that means to you, if anything is one thing, but I've found over the past year and a half that Debian runs pretty darn well on more systems than most Linux distributions and is very flexible, so it may be well worth trying on your Eee.

The biggest problem using Linux or BSDs on hardware they don't ship with is ACPI support (power management, turning the machine on and off via the menus, controlling the various fans) and networking (wired and wireless).

I read a while ago that the Eee might ship with Debian at some point, but talk about that has cooled considerably, and now it seems that Asus is more keen on shipping Eees with Windows and not even Xandros.

My lack of enthusiasm for the gOS Linux distribution notwithstanding, the Everex Cloudbook -- a light, small and relatively cheap laptop running the aforementioned gOS -- is coming to a Wal-Mart near you on Jan. 25.

It sure looks nice. Main competition? The ASUS EeePc. WARNING: don't click on this last link unless you enjoy annoying Flash-heavy trainwrecks). If you value not being annoyed by Flash, just go to Amazon, which is selling the ASUS for $399.

I thank Linuxdevices.com for the link, and for cluing me in to Everex's own site (I already know about the gOS Web page).

Here's everything Everex has to say about the laptop:

Think CloudBook

Experience the Ultimate in Mobility
9 Inches, 2 pounds, 5 hours of battery life. Surf, email, blog, IM, Skype, compute. Cloud computing makes it simple and easy for everyone.

Based on the latest gOS Rocket operating system, the ultra-mobile Everex PC comes with popular applications from Google, Mozilla, Skype, OpenOffice.org and more.

Find your $399 CloudBook at Walmart.com beginning 1/25/08.

Additional Preinstalled and Linked Software
Mozilla Firefox, gMail, Meebo, Skype, Wikipedia, GIMP, Blogger, YouTube, Xing Movie Player, RythemBox, Faqly, Facebook and OpenOffice.org 2.3 (includes WRITER, IMPRESS, DRAW, CALC, BASE)

Hardware Specifications
1.2GHz, VIA C7®-M Processor ULV, 512MB DDR2 533MHz, SDRAM, 30GB Hard Disk Drive, 7" WVGA TFT Display (800 x 480), VIA UniChrome Pro IGP Graphics, VIA High-Definition Audio, 802.11b/g, (1) 10/100 Ethernet Port, (1) DVI-I Port, (2) USB 2.0 Ports, (1) 4-in1 Media Card Reader, (1) 1.3MP Webcam, (1) Headphone/Line-Out Port, (1) Microphone/Line-In Port, (1) Set of Stereo Speaker, (1) Touchpad, (1) 4-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery

Curious aside: Both the Everex and ASUS notebooks feature an 800 x 480 screen. Hmmmmmm......

Personally, that's not enough screen for me. I'm chafing in 1024 x 768 and positively cramped in 800 x 600. I've read that the Xandros Linux OS in the ASUS has been optimized for the screen size. Given how unpolished gOS is right now, I can't believe they're going to do nearly as well.

Ars Technica lives up to its usual standards with the best Asus Eee PC (yep, it runs Linux) review I've seen.

It's long -- just keep hitting the "next page" button to see all six pages.

Writer Ryan Paul sums up:

The Asus Eee PC offers outstanding value for Linux enthusiasts and good value for a mainstream audience. The laptop brazenly defies the conventional standards of portable computing and delivers extreme mobility at an appealing price.

...

The hardware is impressive for the price, and the sheer portability of the system is mind-blowing. Despite the quality of the hardware, the cramped keyboard will be a deal-breaker for many consumers. ... The low screen resolution is also disappointing, but virtual desktops and font customization make it easier to tolerate.

...

The fact that the Eee lacks an optical drive might turn off some potential buyers, but I found that network file transfers and the SD card slot were more than sufficient for my needs. ... The bundled software is mostly pretty good, but the poor performance of OpenOffice.org is frustrating. Abiword provides a solid alternative, but it isn't officially supported by Asus on the Eee.

...

The Eee PC will likely have a noticeable influence on future mobile computing development. Companies are increasingly adopting Linux in the mobile space, and Linux developers and distributors are embracing this trend and accommodating rapid development.

...

The Eee PC is a stunning example of what a hardware maker can accomplish when mixing a highly compact form factor with a custom open-source Linux platform. With the Eee PC, consumers can get a taste of the future today.

My question: What else is coming into the Eee space? Everex is planning to release a $399 laptop based on the gOS variant of Ubuntu (I'm not so impressed with the OS ... review forthcoming). If only somebody can get a similar device priced at $300, then we'll be talking. And of course there's the Classmate PC from Intel and the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) ... but who knows if or when any of these will come to the legitimate market.

I got this comment on my Xandros-Microsoft editorial from a gentleman who left the name Bruce Layne (could be real, who knows?), and it's worth repeating here:

I purchased all four major releases of Xandros, starting with 1.0, and all the Premium versions when available. I received help from the great Xandros user forum and it was a real community. I paid it forward by helping others. I felt like I was contributing to a viable commercial alternative to Windows and the Microsoft monopoly. Now, after four and a half years, I learn it was a lie.

I'm currently installing PCLinuxOS 2007 on my computer and my wife's computer, and so far it looks better than the latest version of Xandros. http://www.pclinuxos.com

Overnight, I went from being a big advocate for Xandros to abandoning them after they stabbed me in the back. The programmers are good, it's apparently just some greedy executives who sold out the company, employees and users for a chunk of Microsoft monopoly money.

Lots more comments at forums.xandros.com, under Off Topic.

I've heard good things about PCLinux ... and I hope the transition goes smoothly. Before you commit, why not do a bit of distro hopping? Ubuntu, Debian (I recommend their desktop install very highly), Mepis -- and just about anything else near the top of Distrowatch, even Fedora, which just released a new version.

By making "intellectual property" deals with commercially oriented distributors of Linux, Microsoft isn't alienating anybody it hasn't turned off already.

So far, the two companies that have inked such deals -- Xandros and Novell -- are focused on selling server operating systems to large businesses. And while they may have community involvement, they're not community-oriented, like the Debian distro from which Xandros is derived, or even the wildly popular Ubuntu (itself a Debian derivative).

So Microsoft is sticking with business-centric companies for these deals, and I suspect the corporate customers of Xandros and Novell will, for the most part, applaud anything that keeps them from being harassed by Microsoft. And that legal pledge of non-harassment now becomes a marketing peg that Novell and Xandros can use to sell more server software. It's dirty business, it alienates the very people who are most passionate about your products, but it just might work for those involved.

That is, unless the GPLv3 -- the new free-software license designed to stop this kind of activity -- keeps it all from happening.

Author and free-software guru Richard Stallman puts it this way:

"Software patents are a vicious and absurd system that puts all software developers in danger of being sued by companies they have never heard of, as well as by all the megacorporations in the field. Large programs typically combine thousands of ideas, so it is no surprise if they implement ideas covered by hundreds of patents. Megacorporations collect thousands of patents, and use those patents to bully smaller developers. Patents already obstruct free software development."

As this story develops, keep an eye on Red Hat and Canonical. Red Hat, the biggest and probably longest-standing seller of commercial Linux product, has not entered into any such deal with Microsoft, and it's not for lack of trying on Microsoft's part (they go for the bigger fish first). And Canonical -- maker of the ultra-popular Ubuntu distro (you know, the one now being shipped with Dell PCs) -- risks alienating its large, active community if it made any deal with MS.

The problem with this whole can of worms is that Microsoft is gambling on never going to court. Once proceedings do start -- and I predict they eventually will -- Microsoft will have to name the patents it claims Linux and the other open-source programs are infringing upon, and then the advocates of free software will be able to challenge those patents in court. That won't be good PR for MS. And the legitimacy of many of these patents -- of which Microsoft is amassing thousands -- is questionable, if experts are to be believed. Among those who think Microsoft has overstepped is Linus Torvalds, the man who began the Linux project back in the '90s.

Where this all leaves the desktop -- i.e. the non-server segment of the market-- is more of a mystery. While corporations all around the world are paying big bucks for supported Linux and for Windows server products, too, the desktop market for operation systems in is a state of extreme flux.

Microsoft is doing all it can to discontinue sales of Windows XP to push the new Windows Vista, even though most of the hardware out there today isn't ready for it. And while Linux is sufficiently mature on the desktop for most users (marshaling more over with the huge amounts of free software that are relatively easy to install and very easy to maintain), there's no real retail market for Linux desktops, meaning anything that Red Hat or Novell is selling is not looking any better than Ubuntu, Mepis or any of the dozens of other top distros that have a desktop focus and which are totally, completely free for users.

At this point, even Ubuntu-maker Canonical knows the money is not in boxed, shrink-wrapped software but in the support of that software -- something Red Hat has been doing successfully and profitably for years now.

That's probably why Microsoft is making its move. It can probably handle shareing the server market with Linux because there are many, many enterprise users who not only won't but can't afford to pay Microsoft server software prices, even if they wanted to move over from Linux. And for the most part, such a move is not something these businesses and other entities are even contemplating.

But on the desktop, the MS Office suite has been under attack from the free Open Office for quite some time. And Open Office can run just as well under Windows as it does on Linux. (If it ever comes to Mac in a form that's as easy to install as it is on PC, look out!) Open Office, the Mozilla-created Thunderbird mail client and even the GNOME and KDE office suites just keep chipping away at the Microsoft revenue base. (And that's why Microsoft is fighting Open Office's open document format in favor of its own "open" standard.)

Once you lose the apps, next thing to go is the OS.

I do a lot of testing of operating systems -- many versions of Windows, many more of Linux -- and I'm not one who says Linux is better 100 percent of the time. Windows has its strengths, along with many weaknesses, and the claims made for Linux are often overblown. I can boot Windows 2000 on machines of questionable vintage and get a lot of things done, seldom crashing (the opposite of the crash-tastic Windows 98), with very forgiving video and audio support. Pity that MS isn't selling Windows 2000 for $20 a disc. I'd love to get XP and do more testing with it ... but one thing remains ...

Windows costs money, especially when you're not using the version that shipped with your PC. And Microsoft structures Windows to, shall we say, suggest that you purchase even more software from them, as well as software from other vendors, for such tasks as security, virus-prevention, file compression, graphic design, backup, recovery, disk maintenance and more.

In contrast, Linux is almost always free, with free upgrades, free utilities and applications (although some do cost money and are often worth it), open sources (letting you see what it's made out of, and letting you and others help fix what's wrong with it) -- and you can make one, 50 or 1,000 copies and do what you wish with them.

The power to try out hundreds of distributions and thousands of applications without paying anything is key. I'm not saying that everything in the world ought to be free, but for software the free way appears to be working just fine.

And if you're a corporation or individual who is uncomfortable with free software (and, presumably, just as uncomfortable stealing it from Microsoft, Adobe, etc.), there are boxed Linux (and other open-source) products out there at retail. And when you do pay, as I've said, you're often paying for technical support, which could very well be worth the money.

All Microsoft needs to do to "beat" Linux is to be better, to do what its customers -- current and future -- want. And isn't being "better" a whole lot better than issuing threats via technology reporters?

Microsoft should cast its eye toward Apple -- a company that uses better design, functionality and, well, Apple-ness to sell more stuff.

Being better -- it's what should be for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's dinner.

Before the Microsoft-Xandros deal was announced today, I hadn't thought much about Xandros, but a quick look at the company's Web page offers "free trial downloads," but also lets potential customers know that its products are for sale at Office Depot, Tiger Direct, Comp USA, "and other retailers near you."

Prices start with $39.99 for the home edition to $899 for the server edition with a year of "basic" support to $3,848 for three years of "premium" support.

And you still have to download and burn your own CD. Who's paying these kinds of prices?

For those who want to read the official Xandros press release on the Microsoft deal, please do.

eWeek delves further into the Microsoft-Xandros deal:

The (intellectual-property) assurance deal comes hot on the heels of the release of the fourth, and final, draft of the GNU General Public License Version 3.0 on May 31, which says that distributors that make discriminatory patent deals after March 28 may not convey software under GPLv3.

But that provision, which was designed in large part to stop similar patent deals to the controversial Microsoft-Novell one, does not stop Novell from distributing software under GPLv3 "because the patent protection they arranged with Microsoft last November can be turned against Microsoft to the community's benefit," Free Software Foundation Executive Director Peter Brown said.

When asked about this, Microsoft's (David) Kaefer (General Manager for IP and Licensing) told eWeek that this was the same legal structure used to clear patents in the Novell deal, and the IP assurances given to Xandros were almost identical to the covenant not to sue that it signed with Novell.

"This agreement was negotiated between the parties based on the current version of the GPL. Both Microsoft and Xandros will be flexible should new market developments require us to adjust. As a design principle we do our best to make certain our agreements comply with the legal obligations on both companies. GPLv3 is not yet finalized and there are probably others better positioned to comment" Kaefer said.

Following Microsoft's patent/payment pact with Novell the Redmond, Wash., computer OS and application giant has made yet another deal with a Linux company, this time with Xandros.

Xandros produces a Debian-based distribution for desktops and servers that already strives to be comforting and comfortable to Windows users, and in the current climate of Microsoft sabre-rattling would seemingbly be comforting itself and its own customers with assurances that they won't be sued for possible patent infringement.

From CNet:

Over the next five years, the two companies said, they will work on improving interoperability between their servers to improve systems management.

The pact calls for Microsoft to provide patent covenants for Xandros customers that ensure they are not infringing on Microsoft's intellectual property, according to the companies.

Xandros will also ship software for desktop productivity applications that translates between the Open Document Format and OpenXML, which is Microsoft's own document format.

The agreement will make it easier for Xandros customers to run a mix of Xandros and Microsoft software, Andreas Typaldos, CEO of Xandros, said in a statement.

Easier from a legal sense? Or a technical sense?

While Xandros isn't one of the Linux fanboy favorites (though it holds the No. 28 spot on Distrowatch, it is based on the non-commercial, totally free Debian, a company that will not be getting into bed with Microsoft, I assure you.

Microsoft might not be fond of going to court, preferring to partner up with its enemies, real and imagined, but I have a good feeling that this one is eventually going to end up right where MS doesn't want to be -- in court.