Robert Pogson

This could be:

• a big DDOS on their servers ,
• a means to count FireFox 3 installations, and
• more good news for FLOSS

Enjoy. I have played with RC1 and it was pretty slick.

You can play with RC3 from this site, or play with the current stable release.

SJVN is claiming June 17 is the day. That would be good for me. I can download onto many computers that day because classes shut down.

UPDATE – They got over 8 million downloads. Wow!. I did two, one for XP and one for GNU/Linux. I even received a

.

Because most of the communication about the migration to GNU/Linux in Munich is in German, it is hard to keep track of progress in English. I found a brief summary here.

The Munich IT department deploys LiMux, a customised version of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. It offers the users the KDE desktop environment, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox and GIMP. Now a thousand work stations run LiMux. Some 6000 other PCs use OpenOffice. Of all the work stations in the Munich city council’s office, more than 90 percent uses Firefox and Thunderbird.

They are working on replacing 600 applications with web/platform-independent applications. It is the world’s slowest migration but it is still moving ahead.

The Fraunhofer institute has published a thorough article on thin clients in regard to environmental impact and consumption of energy. Unfortunately, they deal only in that other OS running on the terminal server and can max-out a server with 4 gB RAM with 35 users. The data is still remarkable, though.

Last week I had 24 students running in 2 gB happily. Here is an image of the system monitor with 21 Grade 1 students maxing out my 100 mbits/s network. With Gigabit/s I could run 40 easily. This image shows 1.7 gB RAM being used but does not show that hundreds of megabytes were used in cached files.

This means the report is ultra-conservative, because the energy savings reported are about half what is possible using GNU/Linux.

The report does have some other interesting bits:

“The market for thin clients is growing faster than that for desktop PCs ­ but ata much lower level. In the comparable regions of »EU-15« and »Western Europe« in 2008 more than 27 million new desktop PCs will be sold, compared to just 1.2 million thin clients. This is just 4.3 % of the number of PCs (cf. Table
8-5 and Figure 8-5).

“

Clearly, thin clients are catching on , growing much faster than PCs year over year. This trend is world-wide and is helpful to GNU/Linux because it is much less expensive to run GNU/Linux on a terminal server instead of that other OS with a hefty licence fee and a per-seat fee. It is all good. There is no technical reason that GNU/Linux should not continue such rapid growth for years and restore competition to the market.

The past year could have been better for GNU/Linux on the desktop but things are still going well:

Web Stats from W3Counter.com in % of hits by month.

MacOS rose 1%. GNU/Linux rose 0.7% and that other OS dropped 2.5%. I would say that looks disappointing for GNU/Linux except that W3Counter gives these stats for hits by country:

Thus, we can tell that the USA is over-represented in the stats. China has as many PCs on-line as the USA but are 15 times less in these stats. That is unavoidable for many reasons: language, regionalism and politics. Other web stats are similarly biased. If a scientific sampling were made with weighting by number of PCs in the region, for instance, I would expect China to have a large number of GNU/Linux machines and the USA fewer. The result would be something around 6% or more for GNU/Linux. We know that other OS is down near 90% in the USA so we expect it would be much lower elsewhere and GNU/Linux higher. Globally, we know MacOS is about 3% from unit sales published by Apple. We can estimate the prevalence of GNU/Linux outside the USA this way: If the USA has 30% of hits and GNU/Linux is around 1% in the USA, then 0.3 of the GNU/Linux number is in the USA. That leaves 1.65% from 70% of hits. If we looked only at hits from outside the USA, I expect that it would be something like 1.65/0.7=2.4%, still low.

We still have no good handle on GNU/Linux numbers. We do know that whether it is currently 1% or 3% or 6%, it is growing rapidly, perhaps by 50% per year. At that rate, in a few years, no one will be ignoring GNU/Linux and many will be using it or producing products and services for it.

The Dell moves, the ASUS moves and now HP and ACER are all contributing to the rapid availability of GNU/Linux-powered machines. I expect GNU/Linux to expand into more mainstream machines in the coming year. It is only a matter of time. Next year, many retailers will be selling GNU/Linux main-stream machines. Moore’s Law and competition will see to it.

This is really cool. ASUS is extending the eee line with a desktop model. Without a display, it is much less costly than the notebooks, so then they throw in

• GIGABIT/S NIC!!!
• 80 gB hard drive
• cool design
• DVI – only connection to the monitor
• 1 gB RAM
  

See the report on el Reg.

With the gigabit NIC, who needs the hard drive? That makes it portable, though. Could make a dandy high-end thin client or a portable for those of us who like full-sized monitors or projectors, mice and keyboards. This might be a good device for a consultant who normally uses a projector except he might need a rear-view mirror… For whatever you use these things they will save lots of power, money, space and weight. This site has more pictures and pretty girls.

Apparently these things will run GNU/Linux or some version of that other OS.

So many choices. I may have to buy one of each:

• power hungry server with 8 cores/16 gB
• bright yellow Dell Inspiron with Ubuntu
• one of these
• a few bolt-on-the-monitor thin clients

“We have shifted towards Linux because of Microsoft,” he said. “Microsoft has a lot of power and it is going to be difficult, but we will be working hard to develop the Linux market.”

ACER was a bit tentative, just starting a bit in the pacific region last year, but now this.

see http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2218172/acer-pushes-linux-hard

That is not equivocal to say the least. All the OEMs had a great ride with M$ but they do not want to miss out on emerging markets which are going to accept GNU/Linux widely because it works for them. The emerging markets can be as large as the established market in seats but the uptake will be slow unless inexpensive and easy to maintain boxes are sold. Hence, GNU/Linux on small things.

Update:

At the recent Computex 2008 in Taipei, the world’s second biggest computer trade show, Acer debuted its new low-cost computer Aspire one, which the company claims as an all-new communication device designed to provide a true mobile and wireless experience through continuous access to the Internet no matter where you are.

During the product’s launching held at the Far Eastern Hotel said, Acer chairman Jeng-tang Wang said that after a long and comprehensive study of the market trend, Acer’s findings confirmed that a product like the Aspire one would be welcomed by customers ranging from professional users to beginners, predicting that this segment will become one of the main-stream segments of the PC market in the coming few years.

The chairman of the world’s third largest vendor in the global PC market is optimistic that this new form factor design may be the long-awaited element that will hit the sweet spot needed to reboost the growth of the whole PC market in terms of revenue, which has shown very little growth in recent years because of limited growth in new users.

Wang expects about 15 to 20 percent of notebook shipments worldwide next year would be low-cost notebooks, if the key component suppliers are willing to give a strong support to the few serious players. “A notebook with optimized specification may lower the end user’s price to the turning point that attracts a huge number of first time buyers,” Wang said.

Currently there are one billion PC users in the world and he anticipates this to grow to another billion via a commercial approach that he is proposing, and if industrial leaders and market leaders change their from the current strategy.

“From now on, Wang said,” I call on all key component suppliers to fully support the requirement of all segments, instead of trying to keep certain predefined average selling prices of notebook PCs.” “It’s time to listen to the requirements and demands of the market instead of controlling it.”

http://www.mb.com.ph/INFO20080609126833.html

Boy, does ACER get it. They are predicting 45 million such boxed to ship in 2009 and they want half! They want to ship 7 million this year… If half of those go to GNU/Linux (easy) on top of migrations going to regular desktops and laptops, 2009 will be another big year for GNU/Linux on the desktop.

Some twit wrote an article recounting five myths about why one should not migrate to Ubuntu (read GNU/Linux). 73 comments and counting, he is blown away. The article is full of innuendo and half-truth and irrelevant information. Skip it and go to the comments directly. That part is more informative. The volume, intensity and clarity of the comments is illuminating. The trolls are out-numbered by the sincere users of GNU/Linux. It’s all good.

Drew: 2. the Command Line
Helooooo welcome to the 21rst century! I’ve got my LAPTOP working fine and I have not *had* to go to the command line even once!

leftystrat:I tried Vista This is one of the reasons my company will not use it. They did such a great job making a pretty interface useful that we can’t FIND anything. Those must have been some expensive consultants.

Otoh, linux occasionally goes on our production floor as a loaner unit and there hasn’t been a single usability issue. That says something.

Omar:I operate Photoshop 9 under Wine and it works very well

revdjenk:After three weeks, I reinstalled Kubuntu to be the solo OS.
built in cam-works,
media buttons-work
audio- works
wifi-works
command line-works, I guess, I’m too lazy to learn to use!

JEDEDIAH:2001 called. It wants it’s Linux review back.

Anyone that attempts to review Ubuntu and brings up “configure” clearly hasn’t touched the thing. I don’t care if others think you have. You’re clearly someone parroting other people’s talking points.

…………..
And on it goes… In the real world, real people are finding GNU/Linux works for them. That other OS can work, too, for M$’s bottom line and for you, too, if you do not rely on some feature or application M$ decides to kill. I switched long ago because their OS just did not want to live on our PCs.

For the first time ever, Dell’s overseas sales accounted for the majority of its revenues. The major contributors to the number two computer maker’s coffers were Brazil, Russia, India and China — dishing out almost 9 per cent of Dell’s total revenue.

see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/29/dell_earnings_q1_2009/

A search of Google for <”notebook” +india (linux OR ubuntu) > gives 155000 hits.

GNU/Linux is hot in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) where it appeals to first-time buyers, schools and businesses needing a lowest-cost solution. If Dell gets into pushing GNU/Linux boxes there they will be much less dependent on M$ for income.

AP has an interesting piece about the insight of Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel:

Intel Corp.’s push to create and boost new categories of small, cheap Internet-connected devices is taking the world’s largest chip maker in some unusual directions.

It’s investing in wireless networks, or even buying them outright. It’s relying on software that isn’t from Microsoft. And it’s looking at making processors cheaper and smaller rather than faster and faster.

To Chief Executive Paul Otellini, it’s all part of bringing the Internet to new places and people, and computer makers are responding.

“I’ve not seen energy like this from our customers in a long, long time,” Otellini told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “Everyone views this as being sort of hyperexpansive to the existing market.”

…

The push into smaller gadgets is set to take Intel further away from Microsoft. “Netbooks” generally run Linux or Windows XP, which Microsoft has been trying to discontinue in favor of its flagship, Vista.

“Vista has a larger memory footprint, a larger graphics requirement and a higher price point. This is all about low-cost computing,” Otellini said.

He noted that Microsoft has an operating system for smart phones, but it runs only on chips designed by Intel competitor ARM Holdings PLC.

“I see much of the activity in Mobile Internet Devices, sort of the evolution of the handset, being centered around Linux,” he said.

see Intel CEO: Smaller gadgets will expand market (AP)

There you have it. This is the thin edge of the wedge. OEMs producing GNU/Linux boxes and tiny machines running GNU/Linux are the future and form the commodity of a rapidly expanding market. The low cost of entry is ideal for emerging markets in BRIC and Africa. Low power and low RAM are all a big advantage to GNU/Linux which can do more for less thanks to powerful file caching, shared memory and a minimal, and modular, design. That matches the hardware design whereas that other OS is inappropriate technology because of the licence fee, the bloat and the unnecessary “services”.

It looks like “Wintel” could become M$-on-its-own fighting it out in a niche (although huge) market. M$ is out of the MID after XP is killed. What OEM wants to use XP if they know it is going to be killed? How long will M$’s private domain of high-end machines last once OEMs realize they can make more money using GNU/Linux? M$ has raised prices for the high end so Vista is a big chunk of money even for a $1000+ machine. How long before OEMs cut M$ out? The new market does not need M$, although there are claims (dubious ones) that OLPC was not successful because it did not have XP. The kids have no problem with GNU/Linux. It is the governments that want XP even if it costs $10 more and 5% fewer kids get a notebook PC.

More good news. Intel does not need M$ to ride the wave. We don’t need M$ because we have GNU/Linux. The emerging markets do not need M$ because they are not locked-in to that other OS. While TFA notes the small machines are a small market that is growing fast, they have it wrong to say it will remain a niche. In the emerging markets, small and efficient is appropriate, mainstream technology. Bloated software requiring quad-core/gigabytes is not. In the current mainstream markets, everyone knows Vista is a hog. They are thinking that a smaller, more efficient operating system is the way to go. It makes sense.

Bit Torrent is a distributed file sharing system highly desirable in the GNU/Linux community for sharing the load on servers. Even a small outfit can distribute a huge volume by distributing it via BT. Here is a story about a company legitimately using BT to serve its property. Much to their surprise they received a denial of service (DOS) attack on their BT tracking server by MediaDefender who are supposed to be in the business of protecting legitimate distribution of copyright material. They had infiltrated Revision3′s server and were planting bait for their collection of evidence of illegal file sharing. When Revision3 blocked MediaDefender’s traffic to Revision3, MediaDefender let loose a SYN attack ( a DOS caused by making the servers too busy to handle legitimate business). This shut down Revision3 for a weekend.

How many laws were broken in this? How much damage was done to Revision3? Should society tolerate criminal activity from a corporation just because it has a legitimate basis? No! Lots of time, energy and money were wasted and another business, in competition with MediaDefender’s clients, was harmed. This is outrageous behaviour and we should not tolerate it. Write to those companies that do business with MediaDefender and let them know how you feel. Give them a message where it will hurt, their cash registers.

MediaDefender, Inc. is the leading provider of anti-piracy solutions in the emerging Internet-Piracy-Prevention (IPP) industry. We provide services that stop the spread of illegally traded copyrighted material over the Internet and Peer-to-Peer networks. Our solutions have been adopted as practical, proven methods to thwart Internet piracy and to drive consumers to pay for digitized content distributed through authorized channels.

see http://www.mediadefender.com/

MediaDefender uses a range of non-invasive technological countermeasures employed on P2P networks to frustrate users’ attempts to steal/trade copyrighted content. We have a proven track record of adapting to challenges and successfully protecting our customers as new technologies and networks arise.

Decoying and Spoofing are the most commonly known techniques that we employ. We send blank files and data noise that look exactly like a real response to an initiated search requests for a particular title. Pirated files will no doubt be on the networks, but with our protection applied it would be easier to find a needle in a hay stack than a real file amongst our countermeasures.

MediaDefender is not alone in this business: see MediaSentry

MediaDefender uses very aggressive tactics far beyond the law as I see it because they go far beyond finding law breakers but break the law themselves by attacking computers and networks without legal basis.

Revision3 should sue the pants of these guys. A jury trial in the USA would likely get them a bonus, too. The FBI may shut them down for all the federal regulations/statutes broken. Some people have a lot of gall. They think they are doing something good so they do something wrong to make it more effective. It is a lot like M$. They had a good idea, were in the right place at the right time and rode the wave of popularity of the PC. Where they went wrong was in believing they could do whatever they wanted with their monopoly power. They got that one wrong. Unfortunately, the law has been impotent in reining them in but the market is now correcting itself as M$ became to big to compete effectively with the small rodents, us.