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On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:14:47 +0000 tom <tompotts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Wait... You need Arm in order to boot into Linux? Wow... That told > > me! > Not quite! - Arm will run linux and use practically no power so you > can have a Netbook you can carry around and not lurk by power sockets. Sadly, Windows is still doing a better job of extending battery life compared to GNU/Linux - as long as the device being tested is powerful enough to run Windows in the first place. Mobile GNU/Linux can be very very low power; standard desktop GNU/Linux is a bad choice but ends up being compared in tests like this because Windows is "standard desktop" and does a better job (currently). Choosing the wrong OS is not a good start for comparative tests. > Windows will not run on ARM - so (to answer Henry) don't expect it > for 8 or 9 either. > I've been watching MS closely for a long while and I'm convinced that > Windows will NEVER run on ARM - I think its got so bloated (and badly > managed) that they can never get it to run useably on ARM and call it > windows. > Which is why there is so much effort to stop Netbooks.... Umm, I'm positive that I replaced Windows Mobile on my old iPAQ with GPE using openembedded for ARM and that was ARM, not armel. ARM is so ancient that Debian dropped support with the Lenny release. Windows has had ARM/armel support for years and years, it just isn't desktop Windows. The problem here is the same as with Debian: ***Mobile devices don't need a desktop OS!*** Windows (as in XP etc.) is the wrong choice for nearly every device that could be ARM (more accurately armel). It's also the wrong choice for netbooks IMHO. It's a problem of the Windows monoculture - desktop Windows needs to be stripped down to something a bit bigger than Windows Mobile but that seems impossible and Windows Mobile isn't compatible with desktop Windows. Users appear to want the same bloated software on their netbooks as on their desktops when what most really want is the same core functionality as the desktop equivalent but without the bloat that nobody uses. What should have happened is that netbooks had a selection of Lite versions that were compatible with their desktop equivalents. (Sufficiently compatible that selected users can upgrade selected apps to the full version without needing the entire OS - kinda like running some GNOME apps under XFCE as I do on my notebook running Emdebian Grip.) Instead, what happens is that MS cannot scale down so the hardware has to scale up, defeating the original objective. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ http://e-mail.is-not-s.ms/
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