freesoftwaremagazine.com — "The GNU/Linux and *BSD community needs an OEM to manufacture a product that works flawlessly. Such an OEM or company does not yet exist ... Perhaps we need to create one ... Consider this as a call to arms and a statement of intent ... so please let me hear your opinions and suggestions."
Dec 21, 2006 View in Crawl 4
jumangiDec 21, 2006
"Unfortunately these companies are very conservative and not very courageous by nature. Their businesses are built on cost reduction not innovation. This is probably one of the reasons that so much computer hardware is so poor."After seeing this retarded comment I stopped reading. Poor hardware? The advances that have happened in the PC arena in terms of capability and performance are flat out amazing, but because they all don't completely 100% support these guy precious "everything must be free and open" ideology then they get dumped on. I like the world of Linux and Open source in general but I really can't stand these purist preacher types.
jqp123Dec 21, 2006
@r121 "I'd certainly pay money for just such an open computer."Translation --- it probably won't be cost competitive with existing systems. In the electronics business, cost is inversely related to volume --- more volume = lower cost. Good luck reaching the critical volume needed to ever become competitive without somone to subsidize the product, at least initially. Unlike software where production and distribution costs can approach zero, hardware demands more good old-fashioned business skills. Ideology alone isn't enough.
donpmitchellDec 21, 2006
Part 3: The Free Pony
pantherxDec 21, 2006
Doesn't anyone remember Penguin Computing?
einfeldtDec 21, 2006
I have created a site that is free as in beer for people to exchange hardware locally. We encourage people to put Linux (GNU/Linux) on older hardware and exchange them locally. The problem with old hardware is that it costs more to ship than to buy new locally. Hence there is a growing mountain of heavy metals from computers showing up in landfills. Not a good situation.<a class="user" href="http://www.DIYparts.org">http://www.DIYparts.org</a>
numba1xclusiveDec 21, 2006
Lindows anyone? lol
geminitojanusDec 22, 2006
"Ok, so how much extra money do you figure Dell could earn by using a GPL'ed reference design instead of Intel's? And as they say, time is money. Six months from now when Intel releases a new processor, how long do you figure Dell would have to wait for a "free" GPL reference design to become available?"Well, the license for the boards is a license per-machine, not in bulk, so a lot of money could be theoretically saved. But even IF Dell didn't pick it up, it's perfectly fine, Open OEM would still be manufacturing them.Secondly, six months from now when Intel releases its next chip, it'll still be using the same bus design as the old chip. If they're going to change bus designs, then Intel pre-warns its OEM partners months in advance with copies of their new chipsets pin-outs and power requirements, many times even before the chips themselves are available (and if they are available, they're only available in sampling quantities). This way when the chips are ready to ship, you've got the board ready to go. Do you honestly think Intel would just make its OEM partners fend for themselves? Having boards available is necessary in order for Intel to sell its chips; without the boards there, they can't sell their next gen chips.Lastly, we wouldn't be using Intel's chips in all likelihood. The whole idea of an Open Computer is no influence from companies who are going to get in our way. This would mean going to either AMD which is very open with their chip specifications and HyperTransport, or Sun with their new SPARC chips, or one of the hundreds of companies building ARM SOICs, or Freescale/IBM with their PowerPC chips, or even using one of OpenCore's own designs such as the single-core SPARC, or OpenRISC. We'd go to wireless companies who were willing to work with us on writing Wireless firmware for their chips (Freescale or Atmel). We'd want to go with either a SOIC or a simple chipset that's well understood (again, not Intel), and we'd write our own firmware for it to boot Linux or one of the other Free operating systems from Flash.
nofxjunkeeDec 25, 2006
AGP? I still have a couple PCI graphics cards around. Great for a deal head setup when you only have one AGP slot. (can you guess I'm not a gamer?! ;-)
nofxjunkeeDec 25, 2006
And where do you think this Open Company will be able to get specs and drivers (or at least proper docs) for say a modern 3D graphics card? It's not going to be AMD/ATI or Nvidia. If the machines are used for gaming then Intel's integrated stuff won't cut it.