And once again, the news is saying that [a computer company (HP in this case)] is releasing the first Linux-based PC for the mass market. Hmm… This seems a bit un-news-worthy. IBM has been doing that for a long time, and it was big news back then, Dell has had a Linux PC for sale at WalMart for a while and it does well… the list is actually quite long these days of Linux offerings.
Calling a PC “Linux-based” is a little shallow anyway, since Windows supports most PCs, and Linux supports them almost just as well these days (at least in my experience, as a Red Hat/Fedora user). You can install whatever you want, or install both at once. So what’s the big hype about? I think the news is just trying to stir up more shit because its fun and sensation sells. Thanks, news.
This story just isn’t very sensational, so I’m a little puzzled. Of course, this article was written for a German audience about a product about to be released in Australia… but I can’t imagine in Germany that HP offering a system running RHEL 5 on Athlon 64 that offers email, multimedia, etc. services is that special. Since 2001 using Red Hat has been cake and offered all of those things. So I just don’t see this as news. Its weird… and makes me wonder if HP paid someone to have this story run.
Another late to-the-punch article from Germany is about the sloppy iPhone hack that that kid made. This article focuses on the idea that iPhones could be used on German services now, but that’s a pretty small step once you’ve allowed it to run on GSM services in the US… since they’re identical to the GSM services everywhere else. Of course, all the air time went to him because he’s young and smart, all the clean software-only hacks that are around don’t get any mention. Weird. The tech news world is weird. Is that an effect of so much money being tied up in public perception and hype? Probably… a lot the same way political news is ridiculous, as lots of money and power are tied up in it.
Blah… the news sucks today… but the pic I’ve got up top of a horse about to whip a dog’s ass is cool.