I was kicking around on the web and found the trends are good for GNU/Linux in Malaysia, particularly in Prai Poking further, I find a site which advertises the price of the OS separate from the PC!. At the low end, Vista Ultimate costs 50% of the price of the box.At the high end it’s about 10%. The result may be that folks appreciate the price of GNU/Linux in Malaysia more that where I am. Even Dell sells some identical hardware side by side with Ubuntu and that other OS.
This is not a sudden development. The government of Malaysia developed a Master Plan to spark development and it is working. Desktop use of GNU/Linux has risen from 15 to 37 % from 2004 to 2006. Recent data shows the trend is still growing.
Wow! Isn’t that a model for adoption? Lead, follow, or get out of the way. I like it.
- Robert Pogson
The death of a behemoth can be quick or it can be slow. It seems we will see the slow version. That other OS for the moment is XP on about 60% of PCs. M$ will cut off support for XP SP2 in July. Some fraction of those PCs are still decent machines but for one reason or another will not move to SP3. Others will come to see XP as deprecated and examine choices. We know business is seriously looking at MacOS and GNU/Linux. Consumers and OEMs will be looking at choices too. The OEMs are in a pickle. If they switch suddenly to GNU/Linux they risk profitability in the tight hardware market. If they don’t OEMs that are efficient enough to ship GNU/Linux and profit will erode share/volume. M$ has OEMs over a barrel. OEMs depend on M$ for their margin.
The writing is on the wall. More OEMs are producing low-end stuff that is good enough for most of the world and consumers are having more choices. Those who shop on the web are free to buy inexpensive PCs running GNU/Linux. That market will grow rapidly. Businesses and governments will be able to buy naked PCs and supply their distro of choice. Since they have to re-image and all that anyway, they can save money by buying naked PCs. Better, they can buy thin clients.
- Robert Pogson
Both AMD and Intel are increasing the cores per CPU this year. This will be particularly useful in high performance computing (HPC) and servers but is kind of silly for most desktop users. For the consumer this will be one way to increase the unit price when the technology should allow adequate processing power to fall in cost. Consumers should beware and stick to the multicore technology for servers and multimedia stations but use lower-end devices in their terminals/netbooks/smartphones. The advantages of Moore’s Law are lost if one keeps ramping up the cores for all applications.
Here are some cost per MIPS calculations:
| Processor |
Clock (MHz) |
Power (W) |
Price |
Price per MIPS |
Watts per MIPS |
| AMD64 X2 5200 |
2700 |
65 |
$60.00 |
$0.01 |
0.012 |
| AMD64 X4 955 |
3200 |
125 |
180 |
0.03 |
0.020 |
| AMD64 X8 6136 |
2400 |
80 |
850 |
0.18 |
0.017 |
| AMD64 X12 6176 |
2300 |
105 |
1600 |
0.35 |
0.023 |
See? The sweet spot for CPU performance per dollar and watts per MIPS is near the low end. That is the place for client PCs. Use the hot stuff only where it is needed by the end-user, not the marketing department of Wintel who are desperately trying to keep up the average selling price of PCs. Be a wise shopper. If you don’t use that other OS and you use thin clients, you will have the best performing system at the lowest cost.
- Robert Pogson
