Negroponte says Linux too 'Fat' 839
Cadef writes "According to a story on CNet News.com, Nicholas Negroponte says that Linux has gotten too fat, and will have to be slimmed down before it will be practical for the $100 laptop project. From the article: 'Suddenly it's like a very fat person [who] uses most of the energy to move the fat. And Linux is no exception. Linux has gotten fat, too.'"
Linux is NOT Fat (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Have those people compiled a kernel lately? Did they notice the modular design and the way you can strip out a lot of things you don't want?
I run Linux on a 206 MHz handheld with 32 megs of RAM, off a 512 MB flash-card. I use Familiar as a distro and Opie for a desktop environment. I have IR, Bluetooth, Ethernet and WiFi connectivity, I have Opera as a browser and a whole lot of software I can't even begin to name (ipkgfind [handhelds.org] counts 35,000+ packages).
So what's with this complete bullshit about Linux not being fit for a 500 MHz/ 128 MB RAM machine? Negroponte didn't even support his statement in any way, that phrase you see in the Slashdot summary is all he said in the article too (serves me right for RTFA).
Don't get tricked into thinking about the regular desktop distro and how to slim it down for the 100$ laptop. There are established handheld distro's out there for which the specs of the 100$ laptop would be an upgrade, that's what they should go with. Think bottom up, not the other way around.
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:3, Insightful)
I can still install a functional Linux system with a 2.6 kernel on that Pentium 100 with 64mb of RAM and make it a useful system. Maybe not Fedora's distribution, but it's a trivial undertaking. I'd like to see Windows XP make that box useful.
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:4, Insightful)
As to being "negative", I admit that yes, I've given up on GNU/Linux [at least for now], and now use Microsoft Windows XP again as my main workstation operating system - it suits my current needs and uses much better than Linux did in all honesty.
Linux required too many compromises, and too much time wasted due to fiddling to keep it all together and running. Linux has a long way to go before it's suitable for the masses, it has a variety of issues that are not being addressed, and until they are addressed, it'll get nowhere imho. That's just my personal opinion based on near 4 years of having Linux as my sole choice of operating system. I've been there, I've done it, so it's not like I'm just spouting an opinion that's unfounded or unbased.
Cheers,
Dave
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:3, Interesting)
Versatile != FAT [Who are these damn moderators?] (Score:5, Insightful)
The linux kernel is "versatile", not "fat".
What is the difference? You can compile the linux kernel without the stuff you on't want. You can easily adjust things like file system buffers, memory management, tcp buffers, etc, etc. A 300lb person can't decide each morning how much fat they want to take with them. But a Linux user can.
Are you absolutely sure you are making a fair comparison? (The apparent simplicity is not enough justification). Perhaps more recent redhat kernels either compile more things in (instead of modules) or they cause more modules to be autoloaded by default... And what about changes in default memory management policies (e.g. memory mapping, disk cache, etc)??? And you even go as far to compare different Distributions??? Were they using udev, devfs, or a manually configured
Also note a lot of "Free Memory" is not very desirable... Memory not being used by applications can used for disk-cache. I've noticed that recent kernels only keep a little memory free, probably to have some "on hand" without incurring the delay of flushing disk cache pages.... This makes a lot of sense. Thus, you cannot simply look at "MemFree:" and draw conclusions. The same applies to the results in "top".
And I would suspect even Windows does something similar (but Taskmgr.exe is probably rigged to only show memory used by apps).
Note to moderators: The parent post is truly nothing more than flamebait at best. Shame on you for modding otherwise.
Re:Versatile != FAT [Who are these damn moderators (Score:4, Informative)
find me a Linux distribution that lets you customer a Linux kernel at install time.
*Raises hand* Me me! that one is easy!
Gentoo [gentoo.org], slackware [slackware.com]
Or what about NeoMagiclux [linuxfromscratch.org]
Neat uh?
Look, the problem with the article and almost all the articles is that they try to add labels and properties to "Linux" as an operating system. Linux is not an operating system it is a kernel, Mandriva, Gentoo or whatever you want is an operating system, some of them are Fat, some of them are bloated, some or them are insecure and whatever.
But you can not say that "Linux is a fat operating system" because linux is not an operating system.
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:5, Informative)
cat /proc/meminfo
I may be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure that's a bad way to measure memory usage. Modern Linux kernels just continue to keep stuff in memory until something else needs the RAM. The question is not how much RAM the kernel is using right now but how well it can juggle resources when they're limited. You can't figure that out without doing actual experiments on limited hardware.
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:5, Funny)
Yo listen, every OS be Phat at one time or 'notha. But 'fore you know it, some geek brotha's gonna write some crappy-ass P.O.S. code fo' yo momma's script kiddies to pop a cap through, you dig? Then da top dog homies gotta post patches, like, before security be worse than ma 'hood. When ya got too many security patches to hang with, yo homies start pointin' yo fingas at da mofos what like wrote da Operatin' System ta begin with, accusin' dem of being da Man and shit. Soon "da Man" is gotta atone by releasin' a pimped out kernel and it starts all ova again. Ain't long before all yas be dissin' Linus or Bill or Theo, demandin' dey pay ya yo props before their Operatin' Systems come crawlin' back on yas computas like last month's biatch. Word.
"'cept in France, it ain't called a 2.6 kernel... They call it Windows."
(apologies to Samuel L. Jackson)
Solomon Chang
In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not convinced that that was what he was saying at all — he was just stating that Linux, in its current state, is not suitable for the project. We know this. He knows this. He's not blaming anyone (would a "slim" Linux be suitable for a newer system?), he's just saying that this isn't where the crux of development will be, and stating that changes will need to be made for the project.
I don't think he's assigning blame, I think he's telling people what the challenges of the software side of his project are.
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (it's the apps) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:3, Informative)
Running X with a (novice) user friendly gui (read kde or gnome)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:5, Informative)
The heck it won't. Back in the day I happily ran Enlightenment--the notoriously graphics intensive Window Manager, versions 0.14, 0.15, with 2 virtual desktops, across two heads of monitors each running 1280x1024... And all of this was done on a Pentium I running at a blazing 133 Mhz, with a whopping 96MB RAM (and 6MB VRAM). It was perfectly suitable for coding, compiling, for checking and writing mail, for browsing the net, and even for experimenting with The Gimp.
As a matter of fact, that computer was still serving up files at my home, being a web server, mail host, fax server, and small database server for perl apps for a neighborhood association, and companion for my SGI O2 of the same vintage (1996), and it ran up until about two years ago when I retired it; and that was only because when I moved, Qwest started jacking around with my DSL service and myself, and I just decided that it would be easier to put that site on a shared hosting service, dump the commercial DSL service and move to cable internet.
Maybe it wasn't the fastest computer around, but it worked, and damit, it worked well. It never broke, and it never complained, unlike some modern computers. I learned very much plugging around with that old beast-and well after it was obsoleted by much, much newer technology. Maybe I kept it going out of romance because I had so much fun learning back when I was hacking around with Enlightenment, Linux, Gnome, etc. i.e. Back when I really just could not afford a better computer.
My P133 also dual booted to Win95 when I first installed RedHat4, and I learned the basics of 3D modeling, raytracing, and if I'm not mistaken, I also ran the very first betas of Rhinoceros 3D on it, too. I had one scene in truespace2 that took several days just to render, and did I have a problem with that? No.
So, lower spec computers might not play HD porno, run Windows Vista in Glass mode, play Counterstrike: Source, or other things... So what?! Like those things are going to be of great utility to third world children! I would have gladly accepted a 500Mhz notebook with 128MB, way back when. I think such a computer could be a great thing to third world children, because instead of learning how some slick GUI with gobs of eyecandy works, like our current generation, they might actually stand a chance to learn how a computer works.
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:5, Funny)
I believe the chronology was this:
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:3, Interesting)
It's amazing that even though we could do all that with a 10 MHz proc. and 2.8 Mb of disk space, now a 1 GHz computer is "pokey" with only 128 Mb.
Re:Linux is NOT Fat (Score:3)
What??? never heard of DSL then? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What??? never heard of DSL then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What??? never heard of DSL then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What??? never heard of DSL then? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess that what Negroponte was really trying to say is: "KDE an GNOME are too fat for a 500MHz computer with 128MB RAM and only 512MB of storage". And, lets face it, hes right.
Now, this raises a really good point. If he, or someone else, manages to fit a full desktop environment within this U$100 Notebook specs, Ill be using it on my desktop too!
Not that I dont like KDE or GNOME, quite the contrary, I found them better than Windows in many ways... But they just have grown fat, I remember being able to run KDE2 on a Pentium 166 MMX with 46MB RAM! And even back then, KDE was pretty capable... much more than Windows95 for example.
Of course now we have much better computers, and the programmers are just using this extra computer power and memory that otherwise would be wasted... But it wouldn't be cool if we managed to build a full featured desktop environment without depending on so much power? Because if we manage to do so, there will be much more remaining cpu cycles to waste with eye candy
Just my $0,02
Re:What??? never heard of DSL then? (Score:4, Informative)
Use XFCE. XFCE is a very fast desktop environment; I use it on my old system which has the following specs:
Thats around the same specs as the $100 laptop isn't it? The storage is very low but XFCE is barely 40-50 MB so that's ok too.
Or just put in Blackbox as the window manager for a completely stripped down Gnome or KDE subsystem. The whole point of the $100 laptop is to provide basic computing power for those who cannot afford it. So in that sense if the hardware is tuned down, even the software needs to obviously be tuned down.
WTF is DSL? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What??? never heard of DSL then? (Score:3, Insightful)
course it's not difficult, after all, they run Linux on phones with everything stripped out except what's actually needed for the phones' hardware... actually I'm getting worried about this $100 laptop thing... I think something's happening behind the
Re:What??? never heard of DSL then? (Score:3, Informative)
I'd certainly agree that rolling one's one distro for small hardware is a great idea; however, this case, one needn't even go to that extreme. Their specs - 512 MHz clock, 128 MB ram, 512 MB drive - aren't all that shabby. You could eas
Re:What??? never heard of DSL then? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am ignorant about a car's fuel system. That's just a fact.
Re:What??? never heard of DSL then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps Slashdot is not for you, or possibly you should read quietly before jumping into a discussion when you don't know what people are talking about. If you do jump in, and are corrected, i
Re:What??? never heard of DSL then? (Score:5, Funny)
DSL? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah (Score:3)
Standard distros, yes.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't say i wouldn't agree (Score:4, Insightful)
install something now, you'll see 10203 dependancy packages hanging around, and 20406 items in the kernel choices that you have to say N to. and when some packages in your linux distro are broken, well tough luck mofo.
sure expanding stuff is fun, but it is becoming a burden, one that consumes too much of my time and too much of my network. perhaps it's time to just cut things off into an "internal and external" layer in the kernel ? meaning move optional modules and stuff into other distribution methods ? there's no reason for 99% of users to download and disable the code for amateur radios etc.
i played around with freebsd for half a year, and it's default install cleanness and the ease of kernel configuration just amazed me.
i vot for a cleaner linux core and cleaner gnu/linux core packages. do you ?
Re:Can't say i wouldn't agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can't say i wouldn't agree (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm one of these screaming about choice.
If you feel that one app fits all for a given task (something that is rarely true in my experience), go along and install just one app per task. But leave us the choices 1)to decide WHICH app to install for a given task and 2)to install more than one, if I feel to. I agree with reasonable defaults for newbies, but I don't agree with self castration.
Re:Can't say i wouldn't agree (Score:3, Insightful)
Until recently I would have agreed. I was pretty consciencious about removing unused packages etc. Then recently at work a tech set up a RHEL laptop for me. I was surprised how few additional apps I had to install, and it was nice. Are there 1000s of unused apps on there? Yep. But I can't seem to remember why I should care. 5 GB of disk space is a few pennies, it isn't worth the
Re:Can't say i wouldn't agree (Score:3, Insightful)
Your response highlights the problem. The only distros that allow meaningful choice are the ones geared towards advanced users (Arch, Gentoo, Debain, etc.). The distros for regular users go ahead and install much more than is necessary (in the name of choice).
How about a distro that installs a set of sensible defaults. Example: either Gnome or KDE (but n
Re:Can't say i wouldn't agree (Score:5, Funny)
In my day, we had to download linux onto floppy disks over a 2400 baud modem connection. We'd start downloading 5 hours before we went to bed, eat a cup of cold gravel, work 32 hours down the mine, and when we got home our fathers would whip us within an inch of our lives, and then if we were lucky, the download was finished.
Re:Can't say i wouldn't agree (Score:5, Funny)
And it STILL got done before Gentoo.
Re:Can't say i wouldn't agree (Score:5, Insightful)
True, except lazy has nothing to do with it. They've quite repeatedly said they aren't going to make a stable API, because they a) want to be able to break it whenever they feel like and b) they want closed source modules, which is most modules outside the main kernel tree, to be a pain to maintain. Remember when one of the early 2.6 kernels (2.6.4 or thereabouts) broken nVidia's kernel module? Well, if closed source modules were the norm rather than the exception, you'd see that all the time. Unless the kernel devs had to keep old code around for backwards compatibility, which is roughly where Vista is at now. Not to mention they'd get a ton more problems they couldn't debug because it was some closed source module that went freakazoid. Not to mention that many old archs and new arch's like x64 would be crippled because the modules aren't available.
Yes, on the short-term it would be a gain. But seeing how far they've come with the current policy, I don't think there's any reason to stop now. As far as "system-level" things holding linux back, it's mostly that they can't ship patented stuff like mp3 decoding and DMCA-protected stuff like DVD playback out of the box. That is a much bigger issue to most people that the really odd piece of hardware that doesn't have a driver, I think.
That's easy enough (Score:5, Funny)
Now, where were we going to be sending these laptops again?
(Seriously, I don't see the problem... not only is the code open so you can delete what you want but nearly everything has a multitude of options to disable large chunks of functionality to make it smaller at will, modularity at it's best. There are a few things that it would be fair to level the criticism at (OO.o for example) but on the whole most Linux software is pretty good - good enough to cram the essentials onto a USB drive at least.)
Negroponte needs to be educated... (Score:4, Insightful)
As big as it is made (Score:3, Insightful)
Most needed in poor rural U.S. (Score:3, Insightful)
Where this might be useful though is parts of highly impoverished rural America like parts of say Alabama, West Virginia, inland Oregon, etc. These are areas where people are genuinely strapped for cash and a 100 dollar good to go laptop might be genuinely useful, most particularly for kids in school, being portable. Yes the geeks among the rural population might be able to build a better computer cheaper, but lets be realistic that's what maybe 10% of the population?
Don't think there aren't areas in the U.S. that don't look like the 3rd world with shacks, and trailer homes, there are, I've lived there and those people need help too.
Re:Most needed in poor rural U.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Most needed in poor rural U.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you wait for world hunger to be solved before you do anything, you're never going to do anything. Your argument is a cop-out.
Re:Most needed in poor rural U.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a project to relieve poverty in the poorest of the poor countries. It's a project to provide an educational laptop to children in developing countries.
There is a big difference, but Slashdot as a whole (if such a concept is valid) seems not grasp it yet.
sometimes we don't do this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, I think Nike is helping these people. Nike offers jobs. People voluntarily take these jobs because they see a good deal -- the pay is "good" and the work is "not bad", by 3rd world standards at least.
Re:sometimes we don't do this... (Score:3)
(I'm not normally quite this dismissive, but this post is so divorced from reality that it's unbelievable. If it hadn't been modded 'Insightful', I would have just tagged it Troll and left things at that....)
"A few years back, after much public outcry, one of these "sweatshops" was closed. Most of the girls ended up in prostitution."
Liar. Post proof or shut up.
"Really, I think Nike is helping these people. Nike offers jobs. People voluntarily take these jobs because they see a good deal -- the pay is
call me a liar, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to a UNICEF study an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 Nepalese children turned to prostitution after the US banned that country's carpet exports in the 1990s. Also, after the Child Labor Deterrence Act was introduced in the US, an estimated 50,000 children were dismissed from their garment industry jobs in Bangladesh, leaving many to resort to jobs such as "stone-crushing, street hustling, and prostitution," - "all of them more hazardous and exploitative than garment production" according to the UNICEF study.
Reference: http://www.unicef.org/sowc97/ [unicef.org]
His perspective has to be wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
look at his foundation (Score:3, Insightful)
So of course he's going to gripe about bloat. He's starting from one of the fattest Linux distributions around.
I hate to say it but... (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, come on, it's like, I don't know, based on Apple II or a pocket calculator processor with, uhmm, like 100-200kb RAM or something? dunno, but it was cheaper than $100 and it's friggin modem.
A friggin modem... a fri.. a fr..
Oh ok... I rest my case anyways.
Linux isn't fat, most popular distros are, but noone forces people to use them.
Patently untrue! (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time I see someone complaining "Linux is slow" or "Distribution Foo is bloated" I remind them that their system is bloated because they CHOSE to install unnecessary services (You're running MySQL, PostgreSQL, PostFix, Apache, Subversion, DHCPD, BIND. and everything else available in the distro? You have Composite enabled with KDE with ALL eye candy turned on and every SuperKaramba theme you could get your hands on? You're running a non-SMP kernel on that shiny dual core processor?
Let me tell you something: I still run dual Celeries and dual Pentium II Xeons at my office - and they're going to be wiped soon and be reinstalled with bare KDE installations for use as CSR workstations, probably with build server and 3D rendering daemons to take advantage of spare CPU cycles should we need it (those will be off by default of course). Even with full installations those machines are all mighty responsive. I don't turn on eye candy, Postfix, MySQL, apache, etc. remain turned off unless absolutely needed for testing a web or other application locally, and superkaramba is not installed.
Now, I've tried complete installations (installing EVERYTHING on Mandriva, SuSE, and other distributions) one weekend out of morbid curiousity and yes, it gets piggish, and composite made it absolutely unbearable, but I wanted to see just how much those boxes could take before Linux became unstable -- plus I wanted to have easy access to all apps because there are many, MANY Linux apps I've never even tried. And wouldn't you know it, the systems did not become unstable, but just painfully slow. That's an extreme case, but obviously it wasn't the fault of Linux that I chose to do something that many newbies do because they think it might be convenient.
Linux isn't bloated in and of itself. It's used in many embedded devices where CPU cycles, memory, and storage are all scarce. When designing embedded systems the engineers select only the bare essentials to get the job done - check out Snapgear (now Cyberguard SG) routers, some of LinkSys' routers, and Zaurus PDAs. Check out any number of the latest-generation cellular telephones, most notably Nokia's and Motorola's. Check out Tivo.
Not a lot of CPU power in many of those, and yet they do their jobs very, VERY well.
My own desktop is a little slow due to the ATI video card (video is a big bottleneck on ATI with Xinerama - I keep sticking with the AiW card in the hope that X.org's integrated Gato drivers will eventually work) but the other desktop boxes in the office are NVidia and they absolutely fly (in terms of responsiveness), despite having more toys enabled than my box, and all having slower CPUs than my system. Heck, even the dual Pentium II Xeon with NVidia card is more responsive than my system. When I switch to a single-head configuration my system is plenty fast. Even with Xinerama, Linux is more responsive than Windows is on my box.
Linux isn't bloated. It all comes down to configuration, user error, and to a lesser extent, hardware choices (imho, ATI cards should be avoided if you run a dual-head system).
By your argument, Windows bloated if you base your judgement on an OEM who installed a ton of eye candy, or if you installed something like WinFX, Desktop Sidebar, SpyderBar, or other CPU-sucking toys. Windows by itself with unnecessary services disabled is not bloated, and on the same token neither is Linux.
Want a nice responsive system? Install what you need, and either disable or don't install what you don't need. Forget about eye candy. SuperKaramba isn't a necessity. Install the right kernel for your processor (in the case of dual core systems, the SMP kernel is the right choice - or for a single-core processor with hyperthreading, an SMT-aware SMP kernel is the right choice).
not the subject (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:not the subject (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's talk substance.
The Simputer also began as a well-hyped charitable project, an attempt to bring the computer to the third-world masses. It didn't quite work out that way.
I think it is fair to ask whether Negroponte's estimates are realistic.
The lap
Re:not the subject (Score:5, Informative)
W.T.F? (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as you're not running Eclipse or OpenOffice, it's Good Enough (TM) to get work done.
problem with Negroponte (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe what he means is that Gnome and KDE require more memory and CPU power than that; well, they do: the features users apparently demand (vector graphics, theming, animation, translucency, etc.) just require a lot of CPU power. That's not Linux getting "too fat", it's Linux following the desktop mainstream, which is what a lot of people apparently want.
It's a serious problem when the self-styled designer of a $100 laptop can't figure out how to even pick an existing Linux distribution that runs on a 500MHz ARM with 128M of memory. But Negroponte's skill has always been more talk than technology, I suppose.
Don't run modern software on old hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
He's wrong.
Both software and hardware grow. Software grows in terms of functionality, hardware grows in terms of speed, memory size, etc. Software and hardware need to match. Don't run slackware 2.0 on your shiny new dual core athlon 64. Don't run KDE or gnome on that old 486 you found in the basement.
So Negroponte creates a low cost laptop. Good. Now he tries to fit contemporary software on it. He finds it doesn't work. Does that make the software bloated? No. The software just doesn't match the hardware.
People tend to forget how slow old hardware really was. Don't you remember visible slowness in scrolling on 8086 hardware in text mode? Don't you remember how long Wordperfect took to start up? Big&bloated Microsoft Word starts in under 2 seconds on modern hardware.
You probably don't remember. That's why modern software seems so incredibly slow on old hardware. That's just because the hardware is old.
Of course some software is bloated. Openoffice is extremely slow in comparison to Microsoft Office, while even lacking features (wether you want those features is open to another debate). KDE applicates take too long to start up (while their speed when stated up is good).
My point is: software is not bloated. Software is designed to run on contemporary software. Which in this day and age is >= 2 Ghz, >= 512 MB ram, >= 200 GB harddisk, fast GPU w/ >= 64 MB ram. That's a lot faster than the $100 laptop.
Re:Don't run modern software on old hardware (Score:5, Informative)
I remember screwing around with MP3s not too long after they came out. I had done some upgrades at that point and was tinkering with Windows 95 and it turned out that it ate too much power for me to play MP3s. Mono was ok, but stereo skipped. I had to drop to DOS and use Cubic Player to get full stereo 128k MP3s. It was just all my system could handle. Now I play them in the background when I want, and they use maybe 10 seconds of CPU time per hour on one of my cores, it's just not even significant.
I could go on and on, but in essence it's changed from me sitting and waiting on my computer to it always waiting on me. There are very, very few tasks I do that take enough time I need to sit and wait, and even then it still multi-tasks fine and I can surf the web while that happens.
The problem is that Negroponte seems to have billed this thing as a legit replacement to a normal laptop. On the page it says:
"What can a $1000 laptop do that the $100 version can't?
Not much. The plan is for the $100 Laptop to do almost everything. What it will not do is store a massive amount of data."
Ok well that's pretty clearly BS. Store large amounts of data is ONE OF the things the $100 laptop won't do, but there's plenty of others. Run a fancy GUI like KDE would be another one, have 10 apps open multitasking would be another. Now it's perfectly legit to say these things aren't necessary in a cheap laptop, but they ARE things that people expect out of computers these days.
I figured it was just over-marketing (I mean who doesn't do that) but it's possible that he really thought he could get a full featured Linux distro on his little laptop and is now finding out that's not the case. His statement of "Today's laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other third" just isn't the case. He may be finding that out, to his disappointment.
Re:Don't run modern software on old hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't run modern software on old hardware (Score:3)
Re:Don't run modern software on old hardware (Score:3, Interesting)
This mentality, while pervasive among supposed computer experts, is entirely untrue. Software is bloated. These days, hardware is getting so big and fast that programmers don't have to optimize their software to cram functionality into something that will run decently (resulting in a better program). We don't need this new hardware; there simply isn't enough human need for functionality to take advantage of it. Instead of cramming functionality, the programmers take up every ounce of system resources they c
Re:Don't run modern software on old hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
More to the point, Java isn't slow!
Not the point at all. His point is that we're not being taught how to write good Java programs.
the programmers take up every ounce of system resources they can now by being lazy
Not true. At least, only partly true.
Yes, there's often an attitude of developer time vs. hardware cost. Obviously, no one expects a CGI to be written in C and assembly -- the amount of time that would take simply isn't worth it when a Perl version would run almost as fas
I agree with Nicholas here. (Score:3, Informative)
Too many applications are hemmorraging memory. e.g. Firefox, skype,
Too many applications are just plain huge; e.g. Open Office.
Too many applications do plain stupid things, like leak pixmaps in the X Window server.
Too many applications link against libraries they don't even use, causing
gratuitous references to them, and slower startup times.
People have become downright sloppy. Our systems, even with
If you ever wondered why our intereactive response is unpredictable, just consider what happens if you have to start waiting on disk drives to page things out and in.
This is (mostly) fixable, if we just buckle down and realize we have a problem
that needs to be fixed.
Jim Gettys
OLPC
Argh no handcrank! (Score:3, Insightful)
Mozilla is the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
There are alternative windowing system to X. The problem is, last I looked, none of them have gained much traction, and I believe this is because Mozilla won't work on them. So, someone needs to port Mozilla to their favorite X alternative. This is something that someone with tons of money, publicity, and connections like Negro Ponte can do.
Re:Mozilla is the problem (Score:3, Informative)
The oft trotted out complaint that X is behind all the problems. I hate to break it to you but X is actually quite small if required, and highly adaptable. X is actually used for embedded systems, precisely because it is small (or can be made small). Here's a nice article on X and GTK+ [bluemug.com]
It's an excuse. (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that this is just the preliminary announcement and the real anouncement forthcoming is that Microsoft will be providing the operating system.
System specs (Score:3, Interesting)
Before RTFA, I thought they were talking about the kernel. Clearly based on the flash drive size, what they mean is just the size of having so many libraries that often do the same thing!
I am somewhat skeptical of there being a real problem, though. Knoppix fits many, many things on 700MB using compression. Many of the things that Knoppix includes would probably not be much use for the laptops, such a development tools. The nice thing about "Linux" (being purposely vague as the article) is that you can choose what "Linux" is. If you don't like something, take it out!
It is interesting to note that they mentioned they are currently working with Microsoft to modify Windows CE to operate on the laptop.
Is Negroponte a total moron? (Score:4, Informative)
I am rather asking, why is Negroponte saying such nonsense that Linux is fat? $100 project has 128MB RAM/512MB flash. I believe I could seriously run xen with 20 linuxes on it.
Instead of slimming down something fat... (Score:3, Informative)
I've regularly gotten OpenBSD to fit very nicely into a 500MB drive with room to spare. I'm sure it could be squeezed down to about 200M or so if you left out the compilers.
If it's too big, try something else (Score:5, Interesting)
MINIX 3 is initially targeted at the following areas:
* Applications where very high reliability is required
* Single-chip, small-RAM, low-power, $100 laptops for Third-World children
* Embedded systems (e.g., cameras, DVD recorders, cell phones)
* Applications where the GPL is too restrictive (MINIX 3 uses a BSD-type license)
* Education (e.g., operating systems courses at universities)
Re:If it's too big, try something else (Score:3, Funny)
Re:If it's too big, try something else (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If it's too big, try something else (Score:3, Funny)
The Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
http://wiki.laptop.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#
Their software partner is RedHat. I have much respect for RedHat - they have done amazing things for enterprise grade support of our beloved Penguin. But they are not lightweight. RedHat hasn't ever been about lightweight. That's not a condemnation, it's just not their area of expertise. I don't know if it's possible to break that tie to RedHat, or to get RedHat to agree to base the distro on something other than RedHat, but as long as square one is RedHat/Fedora, it is not going to work.
biword (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, commercial Linux distributions are fat (although not in comparison to any other mainstream user OS)....if you go with default installs and the most bloated applications avaliable. However for his project it is entirely possible to trim down and remain highly functional. A lightweight, yet attractive and relatively easy to use WM like windowmaker, or icewm, are perfectly capable and work well for what he wants to do.There are lightweight yet capable word processing and other standalone office applications, like Abiword...which can take the place of Open Office in most cases. Email, basic photo viewing and manipulation, web browsing....all have light weight applications avaliable for them that'll do a fair job.
He's just bitching because his $100 laptop can't use the cool eyecandy filled environments with the exact same application base as most modern expensive computers....and still fit the hardware footprint and budget. He wants the magic GNU Fairy to come and sprinkle pixy dust and wave a magic wand and instantly make Firefox, OO, KDE, and GNOME run on his hardware requirements.
Re:biword (Score:3, Insightful)
The truth is his hardware will all be IDENTICAL
Now think about that, Linux puts every single driver you could need INTO it's DISTROs.
That has to go, the graphics will always be (vga? Whatever low colour) 800x600 so no scaling or fancy fonts etc.
It might be faster to run a rendered jpg as the desktop
I think they'll probably end up with something like enlightenment, good performance and pretty (once you get it working).
Just think of all th
Negroponte is joking, right? (Score:3, Funny)
Evidently he's not complaining about just kernel being fat...
He hasn't seen OE, has he? (Score:3, Informative)
If I was interested in a lightweight, maintainable Linux distro for this project, I'd make sure that the OE devs got hooked up with a development system (or
That depends... (Score:3, Informative)
If on the other hand he already knows a thing or two, (or isn't afraid of learning) then he will find that minimalistic systems are actually one of Linux's primary strengths, at least in my observation. He could probably use this [damnsmalllinux.org] as a base, and then for X use apt-get to install ROX [sourceforge.net] Filer, metacity [gnome.org], (as a background for ROX) and fbpanel [sourceforge.net] as his start menu. Or, if he wants most of that done for him, he could install FVWM [fvwm.org] instead of metacity and fbpanel, and still use ROX as an explorer clone. Mind you, this is only one possible option, and most people reading this would probably think I'm insane and ask why I don't simply advocate fluxbox/xfce etc. This is a problem with myriad possible solutions.
He'd probably also need to install gtk for Abiword etc, but that doesn't necessarily have to be a problem. There are also any number of lightweight image viewers around as well...he should check freshmeat [freshmeat.net]. For web browsing, there's also dillo [dillo.org].
Hence, what he wants is more than possible. He might have to do a bit of surfing, but then again, with the magic of apt-get, he probably doesn't even need to do that.
Opposites attract (Score:3, Insightful)
I get a kick out of these stories. If this were Microsoft talking about a $100 laptop, everyone in Slashdot would be downing them because its vaporware at this point. But since its *not* Microsoft, its Way Cool and everyone acts like its the discovery of the fucking Holy Grail, the Second Coming of Christ, and secret documents about aliens stored at Roswell all rolled in to one.
Re:i still think the whole idea is pretty stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
Poverty isn't a boolean variable, and you can't generalise the rest of the world into rural Ethiopia.
Nor can you just 'take' effort from one project and 'put' it into another. Tech experts can provide cheap hardware for educational purposes. They can't, at the whim of a Slashdot poster, become experts in manipulating the political forces of the world into providing basic infrastructure in other countries.
And besides, those things are the responsibility of governments. Governm
Re:Self-correcting system (Score:4, Insightful)
Precisely, and it explains perfectly why Vista is taking so long to get here.
Re:Why $100? They can't afford them anyways. (Score:3, Informative)
The architecture (AMD Geode 2) was chosen because of its *extremely* low power consumption--The whole thing takes up around ten watts to operate if memory serves (About six for the mainboard, RAM, and CPU and four for the rest). You simply cannot buy a goo
Re:Why $100? They can't afford them anyways. (Score:3, Interesting)
Similarly for memory, there is no reason this has to be CL2 PC3200 memory. I'll bet there is quite a bit of spoilage memory that gets marked down [or written off] because it's not up to speed. Call it CL2.5 PC2100 and be use that, etc, etc.
There are a lot of things around already that could lend them
Re:Oh, here we go again with senseless analogies. (Score:4, Interesting)
A full WinXP install is roughly 3/4th the size of a full Gentoo desktop workstation [with build/edit/programming tools + WM + xmms + mplayer + openoffice + tetex +
MSFT "bloat" is on a whole other level of bloat that most OSS doesn't even approach. The only exception that rings a bell is KDE where they are acting very much like MSFT in terms of doing everything in house, etc, etc, etc. [Gnome fan]
Fact of the matter is getting sub 2MB kernels is not too hard. Getting larger than 3MB kernels is hard. So Linux on it's own is fairly tight. Now if you put KDE [or even to a certain extent Gnome] on a laptop meant to run a slow processor with little ram
Tom
Re:Oh, here we go again with senseless analogies. (Score:4, Informative)