From now on, I’ll be (hopefully) doing more blog posts on both technology and the web that are more engaging and interesting than the usual “tgorg updates” I’ve been doing every once in awhile. Hope you like it!
Acer just recently announced that they will be putting Linux in more of it’s boxes (the complete article here: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2218172/acer-pushes-linux-hard). The report mentions that Acer will be using it’s own distro, which got me thinking “what if all PC manufactures did this and created their own distro for their PCs?”.
The possibility is there. Since Linux is freely changed, manufacturers could change it to fit their hardware, and make it so it will run faster and better than Windows. Here then lies an even better competitive edge than just cost; now manufacturers can compete based on how fast Linux software runs on their version of Linux. It’s like Apple, except for the fact that everything from the software down to the hardware level would be open.
If the trend goes this way, however, there will have to be a more universal way of packaging, especially if the manufacturers try to change any distribution significantly, or even build something from the ground up. Nobody wants to compile sources, especially home users who have a manufacturer-supplied version of Linux and they have software that was only packaged in RPM or DEB format.
Feel free to sound off on this.