Netbooks and the Death of x86 Computing | Hacker News Reader

Netbooks and the Death of x86 Computing

gigaom.com

7 pointsqhoxie7 comments

The end of the x86 architecture has been announced a couple of times now, even by intel itself. (keyword: IA-64) I'd be surprised to see non-x86 chips succeed in the netbook arena. There's a MIPS netbook you can already buy, I don't even know of anyone who has one. (Richard Stallman is rumoured to use a MIPS laptop of some kind though)

To be honest, I suspect a lot of the netbooks sold with Linux today actually end up running Windows. I think current Linux Netbooks are actually damaging the reputation of Linux, because the manufacturers install shitty niche distros. Why they can't just band together and pay Canonical some money to optimise Ubuntu to small resolutions I will never know. (or do that for any other mainstream desktop distro)

If there's no way to install Windows, then I suspect they're going to be a tough sale. Also, no flash player and therefore no YouTube. Fail. (don't talk to me about the YouTube apps on the various Apple devices. Apple "get it" a lot more than ASUS, MSI, etc ever will)

Btw Flash 9 does run on ARM devices.

cough cough eeebuntu cough cough

> The end of the x86 architecture has been announced a couple of times now, even by intel itself. (keyword: IA-64) I'd be surprised to see non-x86 chips succeed in the netbook arena. There's a MIPS netbook you can already buy, I don't even know of anyone who has one.

Seeing an article about this now really surprises me, because for the longest time, Macs were the hold-outs against the x86 architecture on personal computers. The first ones used 68k chips, and the late PowerPC systems was introduced with much of the same design characteristics regarding low power consumption, small die size, and potential scalable architecture that MIPS and ARM processors are now attributed to having. It was just that PPC lost the R&D war to Intel... /-:

Canonical have done it, so have Mandriva, the netbook vendors are just making crap choices.

For example, Gimp is not in the repos that the Eee PC comes configured to use, presumably because they think it is not powerful enough for the job. However a lot of photographers (especially amateurs) seem to disagree (because they do not really want to carry a full size laptop around in addition to their cameras etc.

They got their users needs wrong. They may also lack experience with Linux.

The end result is that they think that its really hard to install software that matters on Linux.

The article lacks focus in a big way.

Freescale introduces new low-power cpu for netbooks ... signals the death of x86 architecture... ... love my full size keyboard... personalized hardware (for my dad)... gestures... so in fact freescale cpu may not succeed for netbook but might for (reaching for hat to pull rabbit out of) tablet for inventory management...

By the end, I'm left feeling that x86 computing is looking pretty damn healthy.

Actually, Linux distros can be the key to a successful non-x86 workstation. RISC workstations more or less failed when Windows did not properly support them - most people didn't care how fast their Alphas or PPCs are if they can't run Office.

Now, if you have an ARM netbook that runs OpenOffice, Evolution and Firefox as well as a x86 in a laptop that costs you $200 for a 8-hour battery life, I say you have a major market changer. You are only bound to the x86 as long as you are bound to Microsoft software.

I work under Linux most of the time (actually, I use Windows for 9-5 work and Linux for the 5-9 stuff). As long as Emacs, PostgreSQL, Python, Plone and Django are available, I really don't care about what architecture I am using. Performance being adequate, it could be an ARM-based chip, an Intel 432 or a zSeries mainframe and I would not notice the difference until I did a "uname -a".

I would probably find the zSeries somewhat bulky...

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