“Deliver us from Microsoft” – The Guardian headline
Stephen Fry introduces the open source platform that will see off Windows.
In recent weeks I have banged on about Open Source, expending two articles on Firefox alone. Open Source applications make their code available to everyone. Disagreements and rabid balkanisation within the Open Source community aside, for our purposes the term might as well refer to free software whose licence allows you to share the source code, alter it, use it, do with it what you will.
The two great pillars of Open Source are the GNU project and Linux. I shan’t burden you with too much detail, I’ll just make the outrageous claim that your computer will be running some descendant of those two within the next five years and that your life will be better and happier as a result.
I am writing this article on a kind of mini John the Baptist, a system that prepares the way of the software saviour whose coming will deliver the 90% of world computer users who suffer under Windows from the expensive, clumsy, costly, ugly, pricey toils of Microsoft.
The Asus EEE PC perched on my knee combines GNU software with a Linux kernel powered by an Intel Celeron Mobile Processor to produce a very extraordinary little laptop. It weighs less than a kilogram, starts up from cold in about 12 seconds and shuts down in five. It has no internal hard disk and no CD drive. It offers 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage and a seven-inch display; wireless, dial-out modem and ethernet adaptors are available for networking and internet connections, three USB ports, mini-jack sockets for headphones and microphone, a VGA out, an SD card slot and a built-in webcam. All for about £200 – less than the price of a show, dinner and taxi for two in London’s West End.
When you press the EEE’s power button, the lightning speed and quietness of boot-up tell you that you are in the hands of a solid state flash drive: no vulnerable moving parts and buzzing platters here. Within seconds a tabbed screen will appear on your display: the tabs are labelled Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings and Favourites. A click on each reveals a page containing bright, clear icons that relate to 40 separate applications and half a dozen or so selected web links. The applications include Skype, Firefox, Thunderbird (the Mozilla mail client) and OpenOffice.org, an Open Source suite of applications that allows you to create and edit Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents. One of the pre-installed web links is to Google Docs, which lets you do the same MS Office compatible work online. This combination of “server side” applications and Open Source software is, rightly, scaring the heck out of Microsoft which is in danger of relying, in a few years’ time, on its excellent Xbox games console for income and kudos, its domination of personal computing a rapidly diminishing memory. Well, I’m allowed to dream.
The EEE is far from perfect: system software claims two-thirds of its meagre 4GB of storage, the keyboard is sub-par, the trackpad worse; it seems a shame to boast a built-in webcam and a full field of IM clients, yet be incapable of videochat; the OS, a customised version of Linux, part Debian, part Asus’s own creation, makes downloading outside the bundled software updater uncertain. But these defects are minor compared with the machine’s astounding value and functionality – and to the future trends in computing it heralds.
This is a computer designed as an introductory machine for children or adults, as well as a simple cheap do-it-all machine along the “One Laptop Per Child” model but which is also absolutely ideal as a truly cheap, portable, resilient device to slam into a backpack or briefcase. Everything you could want is there in free, Open Source form. It does not pretend to cater for the power user but, while file management is basic for the average person, tuxheads (Linux experts) can go straight to terminal mode and do their stuff. Meanwhile, for the rest of us, this is a wonderful little friend who does all we need straight out of the box. And it is only the beginning…
© Stephen Fry 2008
[...] dem Video erklärt der bekennende Macuser und Linux-Unterstützer Stephen Fry die Idee und Philosophie hinter freier Software und der [...]
It’s really funny how the “software engineer” vested interests try to suggest that GNU/Linux will never supplant the Microsoft rubbish. These people make copious amounts of money trying to repair and patch Microsoft’s appallingly broken rubbish-ware.
Microsoft have no viable product, and are unlikely to have in the next few years. “Vista” is just a re-spin of XP with added eye-candy and DRM. It STILL uses the fundamentally broken NT kernel that was thrown together to “get something working” in 1991.
“Windows 7″ – their next attempt at world domination – is just vapourware at the moment. MS are in such dire need of real programmers that they are BUYING IN a kernel. No doubt “Windows 7″ will be outrageously expensive, require more hardware than anyone actually has (much to the continued delight of the hardware manufacturers), and still have all the restrictions and problems fundamental to MS’ closed-source rubbish.
It’s good to see prominent people promoting FOSS. It’s not going to take long to persuade the thinking public that they shouldn’t squander their money with MS!
The next five years?
I disagree, for a few reasons. Firstly, Linux still has serious problems in terms of user friendliness. I love it, but I’m a geek. Secondly, Windows has a huge advantage in DirectX, which is one of the things Microsoft has gotten right – if you exclude DX10( which actually is pretty nice, but more of a bridge between 9 and 11 than anything substantial – certainly very little the end-user would notice ). Especially since OpenGL3 has been introduced to as much public loathing as the Millenium Dome. I know die hard OpenGL programmers who have installed Windows, in spite of their hatred for it, as a dual-boot for when OpenGL3 kicks in purely so they can use DirectX instead. That’s how big a problem alternative systems have with OpenGL right now. This combined with the fact that for a mere 60 quid MS will provide you with an API to write games for your 360 console, which even as an avid hater of the .NET platform I must concede is exceptionally nice( and curiously easy ) to play around with.
This doesn’t mean much to the average home user, sure. But lots of people play games and Windows is vastly more viable a gaming platform than any Unix/OGL variant.
I also kind of disagree with the OS rants of the MAC users here. Apple operating systems are hugely proprietary. The only really OS systems are linux based – which again, brings a user friendly issue – they are so OS that they refuse to include proprietary drivers for hardware( ATI/NVIDIA chipsets being the most notable ). This also ties into gaming again. Basically, any fledgling newbie has to find their graphics driver and install it manually – this isn’t as hard as it used to be, but it’s still not as simple as running a file and clicking “next” a few times.
I guess my opinion is pretty much. I love using Unix based systems. But I very much prefer the DirectX API to the straggling mess that is OpenGL2 and with the current temperature surrounding OpenGL3 I suspect that, at the very least, indie/basement OS graphics applications are going to become more prevalant on Windows systems.
The rest is really down to choice. You don’t have to install Microsoft Office, or any other closed source software. The internet is full of open-source Windows applications. The difference is in distribution I think. Most Linux variants have in-built distribution systems and package managers – Windows does not.
[...] one famous tall person, Stephen Fry, whose hands are presumably large if not Brobdingnagian, has publicly announced his delight with his Asus EEE PC. Those of us with weak eyes and stubbornly unretrainable fingers, [...]
I don’t think at teh end of the day, peoples choice of operating system will come down to which one is actually “the best”. Betamax video recorders were considered to be technically superior to VHS and we all know who won that battle. People will choose operating system on various factors such as affordability, familiarity, convenience and open source software has a heck of a way to go to catch up with windows on anything but affordability.
Dislike it as you will, but most people are familiar with windows, they use it at work, in schools even on a range of smartphones and pda’s, I have just bought my 10 year old daughter a laptop and it came preinstalled with Vista, which she is quite happy to use as both my desktops run it and the PC’s she is learning on at school all run XP so this system is one she can use straight out of the box.
Linux for all its potential isn’t going to supplant Windows until our kids begin learning on it at school and our employers decide to switch to it at work. The one advantage of Linux is price, but microsoft can always cut prices to the bone, and sheer sales volumes will keep it in profit.
Then again I could be wrong, and Lord Lucan could come riding down Kensington high street brandishing his new Sinclair PC with Linux preinstalled!
Top’O the marnin to ya!
I thought the entire article and all the replies a very worthy read…
And at 3.30am with a sudden rude awakening [due to Sydney's unfairly HOT weather at the moment] it was timely to be able to come on over and pull up a chair and begin studying this very interesting news…
I’ve downloaded and played around with Firefox (Mozella), Avant, Internet Explorer 8 (and then deleted it and returned to IE7), Google Chrome (and then deleted it) and finally went back to the usual.
Sometimes, computers and me, we just don’t get along!
I want `instant’ and I get long, tedious lags….. Enough to turn you grey while you wait…. and wait….!
So, I thought the article was most interesting indeed…
Thanks for sharing!
[I would say 'goodnight' but I fear the heat and humidity will keep me wide awake for some time to come]
Cheers!
[...] was spurred to write this blogpost after reading Stephen Fry’s take on the open source movement last year, so I thought I’d add my own take on [...]