Yet another reason to get angry with Bill...

[Eric Dunbar]

On 18/03/06, Duncan Anderson <duncangareth at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On Friday, 17 March 2006 16:56, Jan Claeys wrote:
> > Op vr, 17-03-2006 te 14:41 +0000, schreef john levin:
> > > Jan Claeys wrote:
> > > >> I wonder how long it'll take before someone ports Ubuntu to run on it.
> > > >
> > > > Isn't the hardware too low-spec for a real Ubuntu port?
> > >
> > > Well, they're putting a version of Red Hat / Fedora on it, so some sort
> > > of stripped down version of Ubuntu should be possible.
> >
> > Red Hat is making the OS, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a
> > normal Red Hat system.  Ideally, this laptop needs a special minimal
> > kernel, a simple init system (not sysv init), something like XDirectFB
> > or another low-fat X-server, etc.  I think Ubuntu & Fedora have more in
> > common with each other than with such an OS...   ;-)
>
> According to the laptop.org website, the machine will have 128MB RAM and have
> a 500MHz processor. That is more than adequate to run a standard Linux
> kernel. It would be better if the GUI was icewm or xfce or fluxbox or wmaker
> based rather than GNome or KDE, though.
>
> The storage is only half a GB, as well, so the amount of software is severely
> limited.
>
> I don't see why it can't use sysv init, though.

At the risk of saying something blasphemous (and, I'm so respectful of
convention ;-):

On a 500 MHz x86 CPU with 128 MB of RAM Windows 95 or NT 4 would
absolutely SCREAM. GNOME would be left in the dust. The interface
would be as responsive as what you get nowadays with "modern" OSes on
multi-GHz machines and the GUI would conform to Windows standards ;-).

If MS were smart, they'd rework NT 4 a little (remove all the
networking components for e.g.) and repackage it this for these
machines at little or no cost. What's better for them? Having eyeballs
using OSS or having eyeballs on Windows, even if it's an earlier
version of Windows ;-) (plus, their R&D costs would be minimal since
Windows NT 4.0 SP 6 has undergone about a decade of refinement and is
used by a significant portion of the world's IT).

Plus... MS would have eyeballs using Internet Explorer which would be
good for their long term marketing department (10 years+ when those
current $100 computer users will be upgrading to $300 computers,
perhaps with a commercial operating system on it... what do you think
they'll pick? The latest, greatest F/L OSS-based commercial OS that's
similar to the "free" one they've been using for 10 years or Windows).