Robert Pogson

‘The combination of ARM-based chipsets and Android has taken computing devices to new, lower price points. If Microsoft and Intel are serious about capitalizing on this exploding market, both will need to ensure that their OEMs can remain competitive on price.’
see Smart mobile device shipments exceed 300 million in Q1 2013

More than a decade ago, M$ was worried when the price of an ATX PC box was ~$1K. Well, that capability is now available for ~$100. It’s time to rethink everything. Trying to raise the price of PCs as “Ultra”-somethings won’t cut it. Even an ARMed smartphone is absolutely wonderful… Trying to spread FUD won’t cut it as even the consumers on the street and the news media can see that the emperor has no clothes. Remember, every middle-aged user on the Earth has seen enough BSODs and malware to last a lifetime. Now that they can see a price-difference between Android/Linux on ARM and Wintel, large numbers are choosing the less costly and better-performing option.

If you want an alternative to Android/Linux or M$’s OS on your PC, consider Debian GNU/Linux, “the universal operating system”.

By this time next year, Android/Linux will be the giant of tablet OS.

It’s not just the current performance that matters. It’s the growth rate, 247% year over year. iOS with a much smaller share has growth of only 65%. That other OS has a spectacular 700% growth rate, but even if they could duplicate that this year, they would have a smaller share than iOS…

This comes after M$ pulled out all the stops and dictated how UEFI would work and spent hundreds of $millions on advertising. They could not even come close with all their restrictions and leverage. In the last year, the monopoly has died. There are just a few retail shelves to be swept clean of M$’s OS. By next year, */Linux will be swarming all over and M$ will have to pay people to listen.

see Worldwide Tablet Market Surges Ahead on Strong First Quarter Sales, Says IDC

Sometimes I get things right. Last year, I predicted that 2013 would see lots of */Linux notebooks shipped and sold.
(“I expect 2013 will see more widespread adoption of GNU/Linux as well as prices of desktop/notebook PCs plunge in order to compete on price/performance.”)
That appears to be a winner…“Expect to see Intel-based Android laptops and hybrids priced between, let’s say, $200 to $500 in the coming months. (Likely, at first, from companies such as erstwhile Netbook vendors Asus and Acer.)
see 'Wintel' on the wane: Intel goes Google

From the user’s point of view the small cheap computers have huge advantages like price, performance, portability, and running FLOSS operating systems. Underneath that, in the chip itself is a magical combination that used to fill an ATX box with components. For x86/amd64 all of those components were managed well except the graphics which were closely guarded secret places where FLOSS was often second best because the manufacturers did not produce FLOSS drivers and were often not cooperative.

With the ARMed CPUs and integrated graphics on the chip in small cheap computers a FLOSS OS was often running on Day One. It no longer takes a year or so to “catch up” by reverse-engineering after release to market. The chip-makers are mostly members of the Linux Foundation and contribute “binary blobs” to load proper software for the Linux kernel and the particular GPUs. Combine that with devices like Raspberry Pi and Beagle Boards that are very accessible for all and the passions of developers to find out how things work and this happens:
“First off, after the RadeonHD project, it was clear that i did not want to waste further time on the x86 linux desktop. It’s a political swamp, where correct insights, hard labour, and actual results are all irrelevant if you do not belong to the right political group. And the lengths this group would go to to affirm their own supposed awesomeness shocked even me. The consolidation that happened in the x86 desktop graphics market, with the few remaining players now sticking hard to their respective position towards open source software, gives little option to do real work and achieve results outside of what is dictated by corporate politics. It was time to move to something new, and the completely level and open playing field of ARM GPUs was exactly that.

Finally, while I have covered most sides of graphics driver development in the meantime, I had not done any real 3D driver development before. When I was the only person who cared about boring modesetting, I often had to hear how difficult 3D graphics hardware is. Some part of me always knew that that was an excuse to not deal with the boring but highly important bits, but now I got to prove that this is not the case. If the hardware is sane, a 3D driver is sane as well, but even when the hardware is sane, the sheer number of combinations possible make display driver development impossible to get absolutely right for everyone. A few FPS less is not the end of the world, a display that does not show any image means that the user will turn and walk away. And it indeed was an excuse for not dealing with what people really needed at the time.”
see The SoC GPU driver interview – Architecture Logicielle & Développement

The result is we are on the verge of having complete access to graphics on the small cheap computers for every purpose, HPC, servery, auxilliary computing, and, oh yes, graphics in 3D. Since the graphics unit does most of the work in this, the ARM processor is out of the way entirely. Some of these units actually use the GPU to boot the SoC. How refreshing. Because of FLOSS users will now have all the performance of their hardware without limits by hardware manufacturers or “partners” of M$, small cheap computers have rapidly evolved to be on the forefront of innovation rather than being auxiliary computing devices.

From my point of view, that IT is best done without any involvement by M$, this is the best opportunity to escape bondage that we have seen in many decades. The world can make its own software cooperatively without any “help” from the slave-masters.

From early on M$ leveraged the lock-in of ISVs (“Independent” Software Vendors) and file-formats to keep customers plodding along the Wintel treadmill, having to replace PCs every few years while paying for yet another licensing fee. Lock-in works both ways:

• Consumers and businesses are finding ever more ways to use small cheap computers not using that other OS. There’s a reason smartphones are moving to larger screens. People are actually using them for more than talking… Continue reading ‘The New Lock-in’

“The number of Internet subscribers increased by 75.1 percent in the quarter compared to same period in 2011.

However, the number of broadband subscribers declined to 1,002,701 from 1,006,071 posted during the previous period, mainly due to a reduction in the number of fixed terrestrial broadband subscribers.”
see allAfrica.com: Kenya's Internet Users Hit 16.2 Million

What a difference a decade makes! Ten years ago, Wintel would have been the only way to go for the IT ecosystem but it was too expensive. Now Kenyans have the choice of small cheap computers running */Linux and are loving it. Wintel need not apply.