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  3. Cheap PCs give Linux more market?

Cheap PCs give Linux more market?

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  • R Offline
    R Offline
    Rocky Moore
    wrote on last edited by
    #1

    With a few machines having Windows licenses expire, forced me to take another look at Linux for cost reasons. From what I have seen so far, cost is relative as I have not found a Linux distro that really comes close to the richness of Windows. Some look closer to Windows but none seem to come close to the level of completeness you will find in the later versions of Windows. ( Fan boy waving the MS Flag back and forth with a slight jump of excitement ) But (yep there is one there), does the price of the OS justify that richness in every situation? Nope! I have an old laptop I purchased off of ebay which came with a pirated version of XP (as a large number of them do) and so it is an old 800 mhz machine with 256 MB RAM and a 10 GB HD. What can you use it for other than a boat anchor? Well, it works quite well for surfing the web, email and a few basic games running under Ubuntu, including handling my E-Sword bible software run under WINE. This is a case were the added cost of Windows is just not worth it. While I am currently using Windows 7 to run development under (and hopefully they will fix that huge array of bugs by release), I have no major plans of Linux other than a replacement for Windows when the added cost does not fit the need. Another example (and the point of the post) is with a "free" OS, virtualization really takes off since there is no licensing for each instance as there is with Windows. You can play around with many different VMs and not think about licensing issues and added fees. Beyond the VM's though is RM's.. That would be Real Machines. With the cost of a good functioning desktop box sub $100 on ebay, it sure can mean for a lot of computer power for the home. With those sub $100 PCs you have a free OS to hook them all together and with VNC, you are running headless machines for all kinds of tasks. You can have PC's in your workshop, garden house, by the pool, virtually all over your property to use as web browsers, audio/video streamming, or just playing multiplayer games with family members. They even work great with cheap web cames and cheap monitors for video intercoms around the house. I am not sure that the beginning of the potential of PCs around the home have even begun to be tapped for most people. What do you all think?

    Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Backup or Move Mozilla settings and data easily! Thinking about Silverlight?

    S R A L E 6 Replies Last reply
    0
    • R Rocky Moore

      With a few machines having Windows licenses expire, forced me to take another look at Linux for cost reasons. From what I have seen so far, cost is relative as I have not found a Linux distro that really comes close to the richness of Windows. Some look closer to Windows but none seem to come close to the level of completeness you will find in the later versions of Windows. ( Fan boy waving the MS Flag back and forth with a slight jump of excitement ) But (yep there is one there), does the price of the OS justify that richness in every situation? Nope! I have an old laptop I purchased off of ebay which came with a pirated version of XP (as a large number of them do) and so it is an old 800 mhz machine with 256 MB RAM and a 10 GB HD. What can you use it for other than a boat anchor? Well, it works quite well for surfing the web, email and a few basic games running under Ubuntu, including handling my E-Sword bible software run under WINE. This is a case were the added cost of Windows is just not worth it. While I am currently using Windows 7 to run development under (and hopefully they will fix that huge array of bugs by release), I have no major plans of Linux other than a replacement for Windows when the added cost does not fit the need. Another example (and the point of the post) is with a "free" OS, virtualization really takes off since there is no licensing for each instance as there is with Windows. You can play around with many different VMs and not think about licensing issues and added fees. Beyond the VM's though is RM's.. That would be Real Machines. With the cost of a good functioning desktop box sub $100 on ebay, it sure can mean for a lot of computer power for the home. With those sub $100 PCs you have a free OS to hook them all together and with VNC, you are running headless machines for all kinds of tasks. You can have PC's in your workshop, garden house, by the pool, virtually all over your property to use as web browsers, audio/video streamming, or just playing multiplayer games with family members. They even work great with cheap web cames and cheap monitors for video intercoms around the house. I am not sure that the beginning of the potential of PCs around the home have even begun to be tapped for most people. What do you all think?

      Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Backup or Move Mozilla settings and data easily! Thinking about Silverlight?

      S Offline
      S Offline
      Simon P Stevens
      wrote on last edited by
      #2

      I want to buy a cheap(ish) PC to use as a multimedia box. Most likely I'll pick something like MythTv[^] to run on it. I do use Linux (kbuntu) as my primary os at home though, so I am slightly on that side of the fence anyway.

      Simon

      R J 2 Replies Last reply
      0
      • R Rocky Moore

        With a few machines having Windows licenses expire, forced me to take another look at Linux for cost reasons. From what I have seen so far, cost is relative as I have not found a Linux distro that really comes close to the richness of Windows. Some look closer to Windows but none seem to come close to the level of completeness you will find in the later versions of Windows. ( Fan boy waving the MS Flag back and forth with a slight jump of excitement ) But (yep there is one there), does the price of the OS justify that richness in every situation? Nope! I have an old laptop I purchased off of ebay which came with a pirated version of XP (as a large number of them do) and so it is an old 800 mhz machine with 256 MB RAM and a 10 GB HD. What can you use it for other than a boat anchor? Well, it works quite well for surfing the web, email and a few basic games running under Ubuntu, including handling my E-Sword bible software run under WINE. This is a case were the added cost of Windows is just not worth it. While I am currently using Windows 7 to run development under (and hopefully they will fix that huge array of bugs by release), I have no major plans of Linux other than a replacement for Windows when the added cost does not fit the need. Another example (and the point of the post) is with a "free" OS, virtualization really takes off since there is no licensing for each instance as there is with Windows. You can play around with many different VMs and not think about licensing issues and added fees. Beyond the VM's though is RM's.. That would be Real Machines. With the cost of a good functioning desktop box sub $100 on ebay, it sure can mean for a lot of computer power for the home. With those sub $100 PCs you have a free OS to hook them all together and with VNC, you are running headless machines for all kinds of tasks. You can have PC's in your workshop, garden house, by the pool, virtually all over your property to use as web browsers, audio/video streamming, or just playing multiplayer games with family members. They even work great with cheap web cames and cheap monitors for video intercoms around the house. I am not sure that the beginning of the potential of PCs around the home have even begun to be tapped for most people. What do you all think?

        Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Backup or Move Mozilla settings and data easily! Thinking about Silverlight?

        R Offline
        R Offline
        Rajesh R Subramanian
        wrote on last edited by
        #3

        Rocky Moore wrote:

        You can have PC's in your workshop, garden house, by the pool, virtually all over your property

        Pr0n everywhere!

        It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini

        1 Reply Last reply
        0
        • S Simon P Stevens

          I want to buy a cheap(ish) PC to use as a multimedia box. Most likely I'll pick something like MythTv[^] to run on it. I do use Linux (kbuntu) as my primary os at home though, so I am slightly on that side of the fence anyway.

          Simon

          R Offline
          R Offline
          Rocky Moore
          wrote on last edited by
          #4

          Yeah, I have an old 1.7 ghz machine here I plan to run MythTV or some form of digital recorder to off-load my DirecTV TiVo.

          Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Backup or Move Mozilla settings and data easily! Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com

          1 Reply Last reply
          0
          • R Rocky Moore

            With a few machines having Windows licenses expire, forced me to take another look at Linux for cost reasons. From what I have seen so far, cost is relative as I have not found a Linux distro that really comes close to the richness of Windows. Some look closer to Windows but none seem to come close to the level of completeness you will find in the later versions of Windows. ( Fan boy waving the MS Flag back and forth with a slight jump of excitement ) But (yep there is one there), does the price of the OS justify that richness in every situation? Nope! I have an old laptop I purchased off of ebay which came with a pirated version of XP (as a large number of them do) and so it is an old 800 mhz machine with 256 MB RAM and a 10 GB HD. What can you use it for other than a boat anchor? Well, it works quite well for surfing the web, email and a few basic games running under Ubuntu, including handling my E-Sword bible software run under WINE. This is a case were the added cost of Windows is just not worth it. While I am currently using Windows 7 to run development under (and hopefully they will fix that huge array of bugs by release), I have no major plans of Linux other than a replacement for Windows when the added cost does not fit the need. Another example (and the point of the post) is with a "free" OS, virtualization really takes off since there is no licensing for each instance as there is with Windows. You can play around with many different VMs and not think about licensing issues and added fees. Beyond the VM's though is RM's.. That would be Real Machines. With the cost of a good functioning desktop box sub $100 on ebay, it sure can mean for a lot of computer power for the home. With those sub $100 PCs you have a free OS to hook them all together and with VNC, you are running headless machines for all kinds of tasks. You can have PC's in your workshop, garden house, by the pool, virtually all over your property to use as web browsers, audio/video streamming, or just playing multiplayer games with family members. They even work great with cheap web cames and cheap monitors for video intercoms around the house. I am not sure that the beginning of the potential of PCs around the home have even begun to be tapped for most people. What do you all think?

            Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Backup or Move Mozilla settings and data easily! Thinking about Silverlight?

            A Offline
            A Offline
            andy_pagin
            wrote on last edited by
            #5

            Not just cheap new pcs, but those old Windows95 & NT boxes we all seem to have cluttering up the attic nowadays. Just slap Linux on them and you have an instant, modern, up to date web browser/word processing box. Example, at work I took an old 2.8gig single-core desktop pc and set it up as a Samba server to do my development work on, its almost as fast as the live Win2008 quad-core server.

            1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • R Rocky Moore

              With a few machines having Windows licenses expire, forced me to take another look at Linux for cost reasons. From what I have seen so far, cost is relative as I have not found a Linux distro that really comes close to the richness of Windows. Some look closer to Windows but none seem to come close to the level of completeness you will find in the later versions of Windows. ( Fan boy waving the MS Flag back and forth with a slight jump of excitement ) But (yep there is one there), does the price of the OS justify that richness in every situation? Nope! I have an old laptop I purchased off of ebay which came with a pirated version of XP (as a large number of them do) and so it is an old 800 mhz machine with 256 MB RAM and a 10 GB HD. What can you use it for other than a boat anchor? Well, it works quite well for surfing the web, email and a few basic games running under Ubuntu, including handling my E-Sword bible software run under WINE. This is a case were the added cost of Windows is just not worth it. While I am currently using Windows 7 to run development under (and hopefully they will fix that huge array of bugs by release), I have no major plans of Linux other than a replacement for Windows when the added cost does not fit the need. Another example (and the point of the post) is with a "free" OS, virtualization really takes off since there is no licensing for each instance as there is with Windows. You can play around with many different VMs and not think about licensing issues and added fees. Beyond the VM's though is RM's.. That would be Real Machines. With the cost of a good functioning desktop box sub $100 on ebay, it sure can mean for a lot of computer power for the home. With those sub $100 PCs you have a free OS to hook them all together and with VNC, you are running headless machines for all kinds of tasks. You can have PC's in your workshop, garden house, by the pool, virtually all over your property to use as web browsers, audio/video streamming, or just playing multiplayer games with family members. They even work great with cheap web cames and cheap monitors for video intercoms around the house. I am not sure that the beginning of the potential of PCs around the home have even begun to be tapped for most people. What do you all think?

              Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Backup or Move Mozilla settings and data easily! Thinking about Silverlight?

              L Offline
              L Offline
              leppie
              wrote on last edited by
              #6

              Rocky Moore wrote:

              as I have not found a Linux distro that really comes close to the richness of Windows

              Ubuntu 9.04 is getting pretty close, especially in the eye-candy department.

              xacc.ide
              IronScheme - 1.0 beta 3 - out now!
              ((lambda (x) `((lambda (x) ,x) ',x)) '`((lambda (x) ,x) ',x))

              R 1 Reply Last reply
              0
              • R Rocky Moore

                With a few machines having Windows licenses expire, forced me to take another look at Linux for cost reasons. From what I have seen so far, cost is relative as I have not found a Linux distro that really comes close to the richness of Windows. Some look closer to Windows but none seem to come close to the level of completeness you will find in the later versions of Windows. ( Fan boy waving the MS Flag back and forth with a slight jump of excitement ) But (yep there is one there), does the price of the OS justify that richness in every situation? Nope! I have an old laptop I purchased off of ebay which came with a pirated version of XP (as a large number of them do) and so it is an old 800 mhz machine with 256 MB RAM and a 10 GB HD. What can you use it for other than a boat anchor? Well, it works quite well for surfing the web, email and a few basic games running under Ubuntu, including handling my E-Sword bible software run under WINE. This is a case were the added cost of Windows is just not worth it. While I am currently using Windows 7 to run development under (and hopefully they will fix that huge array of bugs by release), I have no major plans of Linux other than a replacement for Windows when the added cost does not fit the need. Another example (and the point of the post) is with a "free" OS, virtualization really takes off since there is no licensing for each instance as there is with Windows. You can play around with many different VMs and not think about licensing issues and added fees. Beyond the VM's though is RM's.. That would be Real Machines. With the cost of a good functioning desktop box sub $100 on ebay, it sure can mean for a lot of computer power for the home. With those sub $100 PCs you have a free OS to hook them all together and with VNC, you are running headless machines for all kinds of tasks. You can have PC's in your workshop, garden house, by the pool, virtually all over your property to use as web browsers, audio/video streamming, or just playing multiplayer games with family members. They even work great with cheap web cames and cheap monitors for video intercoms around the house. I am not sure that the beginning of the potential of PCs around the home have even begun to be tapped for most people. What do you all think?

                Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Backup or Move Mozilla settings and data easily! Thinking about Silverlight?

                E Offline
                E Offline
                Electron Shepherd
                wrote on last edited by
                #7

                Rocky Moore wrote:

                With a few machines having Windows licenses expire

                Huh? Windows is a perpetual licence...

                Server and Network Monitoring

                H R 2 Replies Last reply
                0
                • E Electron Shepherd

                  Rocky Moore wrote:

                  With a few machines having Windows licenses expire

                  Huh? Windows is a perpetual licence...

                  Server and Network Monitoring

                  H Offline
                  H Offline
                  Henry Minute
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #8

                  Electron Shepherd wrote:

                  Windows is a perpetual licence...

                  Well, sort of. OEM licenses are only perpetual as long as the machine they come on is.

                  Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • S Simon P Stevens

                    I want to buy a cheap(ish) PC to use as a multimedia box. Most likely I'll pick something like MythTv[^] to run on it. I do use Linux (kbuntu) as my primary os at home though, so I am slightly on that side of the fence anyway.

                    Simon

                    J Offline
                    J Offline
                    John M Drescher
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #9

                    My main desktop at home is my master backend.

                    Number of shows:
                    183
                    Number of episodes:
                    2354
                    First recording:
                    Sunday May 30th, 2004
                    Last recording:
                    Thursday June 25th, 2009
                    Total Running Time:
                    5 years 26 days 4 hrs 52 mins
                    Total Recorded:
                    3 months 19 days 16 hrs 37 mins
                    Percent of time spent recording:
                    5%

                    John

                    1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • R Rocky Moore

                      With a few machines having Windows licenses expire, forced me to take another look at Linux for cost reasons. From what I have seen so far, cost is relative as I have not found a Linux distro that really comes close to the richness of Windows. Some look closer to Windows but none seem to come close to the level of completeness you will find in the later versions of Windows. ( Fan boy waving the MS Flag back and forth with a slight jump of excitement ) But (yep there is one there), does the price of the OS justify that richness in every situation? Nope! I have an old laptop I purchased off of ebay which came with a pirated version of XP (as a large number of them do) and so it is an old 800 mhz machine with 256 MB RAM and a 10 GB HD. What can you use it for other than a boat anchor? Well, it works quite well for surfing the web, email and a few basic games running under Ubuntu, including handling my E-Sword bible software run under WINE. This is a case were the added cost of Windows is just not worth it. While I am currently using Windows 7 to run development under (and hopefully they will fix that huge array of bugs by release), I have no major plans of Linux other than a replacement for Windows when the added cost does not fit the need. Another example (and the point of the post) is with a "free" OS, virtualization really takes off since there is no licensing for each instance as there is with Windows. You can play around with many different VMs and not think about licensing issues and added fees. Beyond the VM's though is RM's.. That would be Real Machines. With the cost of a good functioning desktop box sub $100 on ebay, it sure can mean for a lot of computer power for the home. With those sub $100 PCs you have a free OS to hook them all together and with VNC, you are running headless machines for all kinds of tasks. You can have PC's in your workshop, garden house, by the pool, virtually all over your property to use as web browsers, audio/video streamming, or just playing multiplayer games with family members. They even work great with cheap web cames and cheap monitors for video intercoms around the house. I am not sure that the beginning of the potential of PCs around the home have even begun to be tapped for most people. What do you all think?

                      Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Backup or Move Mozilla settings and data easily! Thinking about Silverlight?

                      J Offline
                      J Offline
                      Joe Woodbury
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #10

                      In reply to the subject, the answer is apparently no. Linux has been losing market share overall.

                      Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke

                      D 1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • J Joe Woodbury

                        In reply to the subject, the answer is apparently no. Linux has been losing market share overall.

                        Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke

                        D Offline
                        D Offline
                        Dan Neely
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #11

                        citation?

                        It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

                        J 1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • D Dan Neely

                          citation?

                          It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

                          J Offline
                          J Offline
                          Joe Woodbury
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #12

                          Don't have that one at hand (should have since it surprised me. One speculation was that the Mac was taking market share largely at the expense of Linux.) A quick search found this, but I'm skeptical this is reflective of the market as a whole since other numbers I've seen has the overall Mac market share at half listed here (though that in itself is interesting; it suggests that people who buy Macs really like going online.) This does show Linux climbed to over 1% and then dipped in May. Again, I've seen other numbers that contradict this--especially on the server side. (I've also found that the Linux crowd is really pissed off and defensive about even these numbers.) http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=8&qpmr=100&qpdt=1&qpct=3&qptimeframe=Y&qpsp=2009&qpnp=1[^] Then there's this: http://blogs.computerworld.com/study_windows_clobbers_linux_on_netbooks_with_over_90_share[^]

                          Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke

                          D 1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • J Joe Woodbury

                            Don't have that one at hand (should have since it surprised me. One speculation was that the Mac was taking market share largely at the expense of Linux.) A quick search found this, but I'm skeptical this is reflective of the market as a whole since other numbers I've seen has the overall Mac market share at half listed here (though that in itself is interesting; it suggests that people who buy Macs really like going online.) This does show Linux climbed to over 1% and then dipped in May. Again, I've seen other numbers that contradict this--especially on the server side. (I've also found that the Linux crowd is really pissed off and defensive about even these numbers.) http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=8&qpmr=100&qpdt=1&qpct=3&qptimeframe=Y&qpsp=2009&qpnp=1[^] Then there's this: http://blogs.computerworld.com/study_windows_clobbers_linux_on_netbooks_with_over_90_share[^]

                            Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke

                            D Offline
                            D Offline
                            Dan Neely
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #13

                            Does hitslink provide any way to graph multiple platforms on a time axis? I saw the linux routing from the netbook market article when it first came out, but didn't consider it indicative since the original situation made it impossible for a non geek to get windows on a netbook, and because current config options make it mostly impossible to get a better netbook config without win.

                            It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

                            J 1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • D Dan Neely

                              Does hitslink provide any way to graph multiple platforms on a time axis? I saw the linux routing from the netbook market article when it first came out, but didn't consider it indicative since the original situation made it impossible for a non geek to get windows on a netbook, and because current config options make it mostly impossible to get a better netbook config without win.

                              It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

                              J Offline
                              J Offline
                              Joe Woodbury
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #14

                              dan neely wrote:

                              Does hitslink provide any way to graph multiple platforms on a time axis?

                              Don't know. I wanted to do the same thing, but didn't have the time or patience to keep trying.

                              Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke

                              1 Reply Last reply
                              0
                              • L leppie

                                Rocky Moore wrote:

                                as I have not found a Linux distro that really comes close to the richness of Windows

                                Ubuntu 9.04 is getting pretty close, especially in the eye-candy department.

                                xacc.ide
                                IronScheme - 1.0 beta 3 - out now!
                                ((lambda (x) `((lambda (x) ,x) ',x)) '`((lambda (x) ,x) ',x))

                                R Offline
                                R Offline
                                Rocky Moore
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #15

                                Still really quite primative in its user interface. While it all looks okay, it is like Windows 95 without some features. (I am setting up E-Sword bible software under WINE on Ubuntu 9 via VCN -- their remote desktop -- really primative compared to terminal services). They are heading the right direction but the still have years ahead to get up-to-date with Windows. Still for a lot of people who do not really need to run Windows software, Linux can work for them.

                                Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Backup or Move Mozilla settings and data easily! Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com

                                1 Reply Last reply
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                                • E Electron Shepherd

                                  Rocky Moore wrote:

                                  With a few machines having Windows licenses expire

                                  Huh? Windows is a perpetual licence...

                                  Server and Network Monitoring

                                  R Offline
                                  R Offline
                                  Rocky Moore
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #16

                                  THere are other programs in the Microsoft partner program which are annual.

                                  Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Backup or Move Mozilla settings and data easily! Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com

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