Next Gen Netbooks
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THIS ISSUE: Red Hat thrives OPLC cuts Linux FreeBSD HyperSpace NetBookS Next gennetbooks New technologies could lead to even more users on Facebook. hip manufacturer Freescale has i.MX515 processorand related solutions introduced a reference design will dramatically accelerate the C of itsnew i.MX515 processor evolution of this exciting new space.” foruse in netbooks. It’sbeen createdto It doesn’t look like the netbook DigitalMeda. powerdevices with screen sizes of up to market is showing any signs of slowing 8.9inchesand it’sbuilt around an ARM down either; data from ABI Research Beat ure Cortex-A8 CPU, Freescale’s power suggests growth to 140million usersby nt management and audio codec systems, Ve of Ubuntu and Adobe’s Flash Lite. “Systemsusingthe tesy The processor scales from 600MHz to 1GHz and features a dedicated video designcouldoffereight Cour block to reduce the need for power Google’s Android operating system hungry fans and bulky heat sinks. This hoursofconstantuse.” on the (relatively) big screen. means that systems using the design could retail forless than $200 and offer 2013.Principal analyst,Philip Solis,said called android_policy_mid, where MID around eight hoursofconstant use. The the sector is driven by costand the stands forMobile Internet Device. The graphics processor is also one of the demand fordevices to accesssocial acronym is Intel’sname fordevices that first to offer both OpenVG and OpenGL networking applications and email. use its Atom processors,which are cores, while Flash Liteprovidessupport most commonly found in netbooks. for video sharing sites out of the box. They’re on the phone Writing up their experiment, the pair Lisa Su, Freescale’s senior vice Elsewhere, two hackersdiscovered said: “Imagine the billion dollar market president of networking and some interesting code when porting at stake here if Google can make good multimedia, said there were huge Google’s mobile phone-based Android on this vision. Foramyriad of software opportunitiesinthe netbook market: operating system to the Asus Eee PC. companies, it means a well-backed OS “We believe the combination of the They uncovered a policy document that’s open and ripe for exploitation.” more crossovers While Android looks set to make it on to Android-running MoveIt,which offers a netbooks, JohnnyShih, CEOofnetbook 7-inch screen of picture frame-like pioneer Asus,told journalists at the proportions for use around the home. annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that the company was looking into building its own smartphone based on Google’s Android. GiiNii also made waves at CES 2009,demonstrating an Android-based internet device called the MoveIt Mini. The machine features a 4.3-inch touchscreen, 480x272 resolution, 256MB RAM, a built-in mic and a Freescale has traditionally been associated with the camera for Skype use. The MoveIt Mini embedded market,but it’s now seen an opportunity to will soon be joined on the market by the build power-efficient processors for netbooks. 8 Linux Format March 2009 LXF116.news 8 19/1/09 3:48:24 pm Newsdesk CommuNity OLPC dropsLinux Negroponte puts laptop on Sugar-free diet. fter years of development effort other non-profit companiesinthe and advocacy, the OneLaptop current economic climateand needed A PerChild (OLPC)project has to refocus for the future. “While we’re elected to abandon itscommitment to saddened by this development, we Linux and shed half of its workforce. remain firmly committed to our mission OLPC,the brainchild of techno- of getting laptopstochildren in evangelistNicholas Negroponte, was developing countries,”hesaid. “The intended to create ahardwareand futurebringswith it some uncertainty The design of the OLPC device has varied over the years, software combination that could be sold and difficulty, but alsothe excitement but it’s never quite hit the magic $100 price point. forunder $100,enabling governments that comeswith the rededication to a in Africa, South sight of itsaims,demoralising manyof America and Asia to “thedevelopmentof the developers who remained. provide the devices The smaller teamof32contributors for school children. Sugarwillbepassed to the project will nowbeasked to take So far500,000 pay cutsastheywork towardsthe unitshavebeen overtothecommunity.” second generation of the device, while shipped, but the the development of Sugar will be passed organisation has failed to achieve its causeand anew path that will allowus overtothe community. The latter may intended sub-$100 price point. to realise the moral purpose of OLPC.” mean that Windows will become the Negroponte told the OLPC The move away from Linux isn’t only platform officially supported on the communitythat the organisation was entirely unexpected. The project initially device and the commitment to a child- facing the same problems as many attracted awidespreadcommunityof centred user interfacewill be dropped in open source developerskeen to favour of the standard XP/Windows 7 UI. seeitsucceed. However, in April The project also faces competition 2008 it wasannounced that the from manufacturerssuch as Asus,Acer device would become multi- and Elonex, who are competing with platform and that Microsoftwas low-cost laptops of their own. working on a version of Windows XP that runs the Sugar user interface. An The second generation of OLPC spokesman said at the time OLPC machines that Linux wasn’tbeing dropped, but areexpected that an ‘open’ platform shouldn’tbe to feature dual closed to a particular vendor.The touch screens. move led to the departureofa number of high-profile contributorswho worried that the project had lost Will the focus on aWindows operating system really help OLPC to achieve its laudable moral goals? March 2009 Linux Format 9 LXF116.news 9 19/1/09 3:48:25 pm Newsdesk eNterpriSe Comment Flashby Red Hat bucks the economic trends name Thecompanysaysbelt-tighteninginthe MichaelMeeks enterprise market has favoured open source. efying the current economic in terms of operating income,net This monthI conditions,Red Hat continues income and cash flow. “While significant hadsomefun D to post increasing quarterly devaluations in most foreign currencies results. It shows, the companysaid, that depressedour reported revenue,a playingwitha itsfocus on low-cost and high-quality combination of cost management and drop-in SATA has left it in a great position to ride out natural currencyhedging enabled the flash drive, kindly donated by SanDisk. Having the economic recession. RedHat’s company to deliver a better-than- long been interested in reducing filesystem revenuesfor the thirdfinancial quarter expected operating margin,”he latency – particularly around my IOGrind tool – of 2008 were $165.3 million, an explained. “We also took advantage of it was great to experiment with the ultimate increase of 22% from last year’s third unusual market conditions and answer to reducing seek latency. quarter and 1% over quarter two. repurchased some of our convertible It was interesting to see some of the known- Subscriptions have remained flat over bonds and common stock. Ourbalance the previous quarter,but were up by sheet remains strong.” slow scatteredI/O bottlenecks suddenly 17%onthe previous year.The company RedHat has alsosigned a vanish. One of these is reading lots of scattered alsosaid that it had suffered due to the collaboration agreement with Google to desktop files to build various application weakness of the US dollar,which wiped support its Google Web To olkit (GWT). menus: previously this involved chasing out almost $7 million of revenue.The The move will seethe toolkit integrated pointers all over a rotating disk with a 10ms net income was $24.3 million. intothe JBoss SeamFramework, giving latency each time to read small files. With the Jim Whitehurst,president and chief developers additional options when flash disk, even with a cold cache, this was executiveofficer of RedHat, said the creating rich internet applications (RIA). solid resultsrepresented the company’s Craig Muzilla, vicepresident of Red almost instantaneous. Also,I was pleased to strong position within the sector. Hat’smiddleware business, said the win a few seconds of boot time on OpenSUSE “Purchasing decisions forIThave partnership wasintended to increase 11.1 by removing two redundant ‘sync’ calls, changed dramatically for CIOs,”he said. choice. “Webelieve developersshould which were writing lots of modified state to “In this budget-constrained be able to select technologies such as disk. While scattered reads perform environment, IT professionals are GWT, Spring Framework and Adobe wonderfully, largelinearreads areslow(for adopting open source and, more Flex, while using JBoss to provide the now). This means that the previous read-ahead specifically,Red Hat to save moneyand best operational and most flexible enhance their competitiveness.” platform for running their applications,” optimisations to avoid seeking on rotating Charlie Peters,the company’schief he said. media cannow makethingsslowerratherthan financial officer,said that despitethe Support for GWTwill be added to faster, and should be disabled for flash drives. challenging conditions Red Hat had JBoss Enterprise Application Platform delivered better-than-expected results subscriptions over the coming months. Superfly flash Of course,Linux is leadingthe wayhere: prototyping and shipping new features such as Trim/Discard wherebyfilesystems cantellsuch devices which data blocks are not in use (eg when you delete a file). This can be used to help inform theinternalremapping,