Hacker News Reader

Comment by igravious | Hacker News Reader

Do you know what I'd love to see? Somebody building gorgeous Linux laptops and desktops. As in Apple-gorgeous. With all the drivers working fine and dandy. With awesome specs, with half-yearly updates or even rolling updates. I thought Canonical might do it but they seem intent on partnering with hardware vendors. Why is this not doable? I think there is System 76 but they are not drool- and lust-worthy and I don't now why. It must be possible. Android shows that it can be done for a certain class of devices, why is it not possible in the laptop and desktop space? All you'd want is say 5% of the dwindling PC market to make an absolute bundle.

Oh yeah, the Microsoft reorg. Yay, go Ballmer, yay!

View on HN

Linux 'is free'. Very difficult to get people to pay a premium for 'free'. You have to charge less for a PC with Linux on it, since there's no Windows license it should cost less, right?

Without getting people to pay a premium, it isn't possible to make things that are 'Apple-gorgeous'. Not to mention the Linux market is so small to begin with...

But Android proves it can be done.

You just have to make the hardware very very desirable and do the integration right. Like what Sony does with consoles, Microsoft does with consoles, Apple does with nearly everything, and most Android phones do now.

A big part of these products is the software. You would have to create desktop software to deliver this, and that is not cheap.

Linux has a lot of high quality desktop software. What is needed is polishing.

Android proves nothing of the sort. People don't necessarily buy Android because they like it, but more because because it is pushed to them by the parties that directly make money off it: the carriers and their data plans and contracts. Google makes money from the ads people see on those phones (which, apparently, it shares with the carriers, so you can see how the incentives line up.) The hardware makers get the scraps (which are still plenty, as Samsung demonstrates).

Note that the parent is also wrong: Linux PCs typically cost more than their Windows equivalents because there's no crapware to subsidize the cost.

Good design does not have to cost much.

> Do you know what I'd love to see? Somebody building gorgeous Linux laptops and desktops. As in Apple-gorgeous. With all the drivers working fine and dandy. With awesome specs, with half-yearly updates or even rolling updates.

You've just described Windows.

dell tried something similar with the xps13 developer edition

Which is a very nice piece of kit by all accounts.

The article is wrong by the way. It says, "has not articulated a unique and compelling vision for the future of computing since Apple’s iPhone rocked it to its core in 2007"

Yes, the iPhone was a big deal but Linux is and has always been a far bigger deal. Microsoft can out-spend and out-compete anyone on their own turf. They cannot do this with Linux as Android shows. This really does seem to signal that Microsoft may have to become a lot more like Apple in the hardware/software integration stakes. If you think of the very log view (30 years) there is no way any company can build and maintain a monopoly in any one sector indefinitely. What other company has ever been able to do that? The PC market is dwindling. And eventually there will be a third player and then a fourth player. Eventually Microsoft is going to have to port Office to Linux.

My impression was that thing had a really low res screen.

I think it would be even better for PC manufacturers to have a mechanism for all OS vendors to report BIOS bugs and similar where all of them are treated equally.

Isn't that the chromebook pixel?

Bit of a song and dance getting a full featured OS (like Debian) onto it to make it developer ready. Unless you are suggesting always using the Pixel for remote development.

Not as long as the Chromebook Pixel is shipping with ChromeOS instead of a full GNU/Linux distribution.

But it seems like a nice reseller opportunity if Google would allow it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com