| Windows 7 no threat to netbook Linux |
Nov. 10, 2008
I've been nonplussed the last few weeks as ordinarily sane compu-journalists opine that Windows 7 will somehow kill Linux on netbooks. This weekend, I had a chance to actually see XP running on an EEE 900, and I can tell you, Linux has nothing to fear from Redmond.
During my 13-year career as a compu-journalist, I have seen the pattern over and over. Microsoft pre-announces a product years before it will ship. Then, people who have built careers supporting Microsoft's products -- whether IT staff or journalists -- slavishly salivate, as if on cue. Purchase decisions are deferred, per recommendations of the trade press.
Next, the product is delayed. Purchase decisions are further deferred. Nothing can sway the devotion of the true Microsoft believers. And they think Linux "fanboys" are partisan!
Then, finally delivered, the Microsoft OS utterly fails to live up to its hype. And, the Microsoft ecosystem rejoices, secure in the knowledge that their help will still be needed to make Microsoft products usable.
Today, it turns out, XP is hardly usable on netbooks. What makes people think the next version of Windows will actually get better? Microsoft has never in its history delivered an OS upgrade that did not require SUBSTANTIALLY more resources than its predecessor. Is that really going to change? Really?
First XP netbook experience
I had a house guest this week who'd bought an EEE PC 900 with a solid-state drive and Windows XP. The thing took minutes to boot (some Linux netbook implementations boot in 15 seconds or less, I have heard). And, to my utter amazement, the machine took upwards of half an hour to open a folder with some large video files in it. Half an hour!
Fearing a virus or other problem, we took the machine in to a local shop specializing in fixing Windows OS installations. There, it was discovered that the problem only happened with the machine attached to a network with SMB/CIFS shares. Apparently, network conversations were completely saturating the little PC's processor, leading to massive slowdowns. XP is just not optimized for low-resource machines, it seems.
Returning home, we verified that leaving the machine disconnected fixed the problem. It is possible that my SMB/CIFs network is to blame. However, it comprises only a single Netgear NV+ NAS server, running a stock configuration, so that seems unlikely.
Meanwhile, with networking switched off, the EEE opened the folder fairly quickly. But, it still kind of crawled along. Everything works, but seems slow, slow, slow. That's a high price to pay for familiarity, if you ask me.
So, I couldn't resist trying ubuntu-eee, based on Canonical's "Netbook remix" release. Performance seemed a little bit better, with the pre-linked OpenOffice applications showing decent alacrity, and Firefox 3.0 dutifully rendering complex pages with decent speed. But the stack was missing crucial things like the wicd WiFi scanner (Ubuntu-eee is still based on 8.04, aka "Hardy Heron"). That means you have to carry a WiFi detector, or else ask those around you for the name of the cafe's network.
Also missing was a way to preserve root filesystem changes such as software additions across reboots. With only 16GB of space for XP, we were reluctant to install Ubuntu-eee as a dual-boot option.
So, in the brave new world of netbooks, the software is not really baked yet, neither on the community-supported Linux side nor on the pre-installed Windows side. If you buy a netbook preinstalled with Linpus or Xandros or another distro actually tuned for use on a netbook, chances are the experience will be very good. Heaven help those with XP versions, though, unless they know a lot more about Windows than I do (admittedly, I haven't really used Windows in 10 years).
Linux has a long history of working better on lower-powered machines. That is because at every level of the stack, from kernel and C library to productivity application layer, there are low-footprint alternatives that enable expert users and Linux system integrators to tune Linux for their needs. Given that flexibility, and netbook-specific builds from Debian, Ubuntu, Puppy, and others, I'm guessing that community Linux will get fixed for netbooks long before Windows does.
Not that Microsoft professionals are likely to take notice.
-- Henry Kingman
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