NVIDIA's Project Kal-El

[P4man]

Define *easily*. No one but a hardware geek can use Linux cause it only ever kind-of works - you have to know how to debug and hack it to make it work properly. Equally the ui isn't up to windows standards, well it might be if you are a linux geek and know how to do all the mirad of things to make it work nicely but no *normal* person is going to do that.

My mother is 75 and a happy ubuntu user for several years now. Ill be sure to tell her she is not normal and a geek. Installing can be hard with ubuntu if something doesnt work out of the box. OEM preinstall takes care of that. And installing stuff that isnt in the repository is sometimes (too) hard, but hey, still easier than installing something on an ipad thats not in the appstore .

 

[cotak13]

AMD is probably smart to sit this one out. They can't compete with intel in cpu, nvidia in gpu, and nvidia/intel/samsung/ti/etc etc etc in mobile with their limited resources. Even intel with their nearly limitless R&D budget isn't going after all of those markets simultaneously. Bobcat and differnt versions of it are AMD's play for now, we'll see how things work out. Maybe they get bought out. Maybe they go bust. But, if they do manage to scale bobcat well, and if BD is at least somewhat competitive, and they continue their gpu overall competitiveness, they at least have a roadmap that could keep them independent and, dare I say, profitable, in the not-too-distant future.

Not to mention the need in the future for smartphone chips to have integrated RF. That's one expensive bit of technology that I don't think Nvidia's in the position right now to acquire or develop themselves.

Tablets are a maybe success area. But the real money I think is in smart phones. Everyone needs a phone but many will be hard pressed to justify the cost of a tablet if they already have a phone and a laptop.

 

[Mopetar]

Define *easily*. No one but a hardware geek can use Linux cause it only ever kind-of works - you have to know how to debug and hack it to make it work properly. Equally the ui isn't up to windows standards, well it might be if you are a linux geek and know how to do all the mirad of things to make it work nicely but no *normal* person is going to do that.

Just as easily as they use Windows. Ubuntu is just as easy to use as Windows and while it may not support every single piece of hardware under the sun, as long as it supports most of the commonly used peripherals it'll do quite fine.

Netbooks are mostly used for web browsing and some very light workloads. This isn't rocket science and nor is it a profoundly better experience with Windows.

Most "normal" people don't know squat about the advanced features that come with Windows and generally don't mess with their system as they have little to no understanding of how it works. Hell, if you told people that they were running Windows instead of Linux, some wouldn't notice at all.

I don't know when the last time you used Linux was, but it's certainly come a long way since then. Download a release of Ubuntu and give it a whirl. You might be surprised.

 

[Dribble]

I have a ubuntu bootcd which I use from time to time mostly because I have a linux pvr, and a linux nas and windows doesn't get on well with unix file systems. It's good for that, and because it boots of a cd so I can stick it in a broken pc and get it up in an os I can poke around with.

However even with a simple task like that I still end up having to go to the command line - you can't just *format* a disk and have it work with my pvr - there's a whole myriad of ways you can format and partition a disk in linux and you can't do that from the ui. It needs exactly the right options set which the ui can't manage and you have to go back to the 1980's and do it from the command line.

To the power linux geek that's actually a good thing that you have that much control, to you're average user that is exactly the opposite.

The example is a case in point - the ui is passable when it works (although by default it's a long way from mac's and windows) but stuff often doesn't quite work and you have to hack.

My mother is 75 and a happy ubuntu user for several years now. Ill be sure to tell her she is not normal and a geek. Installing can be hard with ubuntu if something doesnt work out of the box. OEM preinstall takes care of that. And installing stuff that isnt in the repository is sometimes (too) hard, but hey, still easier than installing something on an ipad thats not in the appstore .

Well done to your mother, but I am afraid she is a geek - not a bad thing, there aren't many 75 year old mothers that can use ubuntu

 

[Mopetar]

You've just described a use case that the common consumer will almost never engage in, let alone understand. If I were to take what you've written and relate it to some average Joe I will have mystified him by the time I've said 'boot CD' and absolutely lost him after talking about a PVR and NAS; and we haven't even gotten to the bit about file systems!

This bloke just wants to check his Facebook and watch a few Youtube videos with cats in silly outfits. Linux is more than able to handle that.

 

[SickBeast]

You know, the more I think about it, the more this new Nvidia CPU sounds good to me. I would love to have a tablet with 4 cores that I could do some basic gaming with, particularly if it costs less than the iPad.

 

[P4man]

I have a ubuntu bootcd which I use from time to time mostly because I have a linux pvr, and a linux nas and windows doesn't get on well with unix file systems. It's good for that, and because it boots of a cd so I can stick it in a broken pc and get it up in an os I can poke around with.

However even with a simple task like that I still end up having to go to the command line - you can't just *format* a disk and have it work with my pvr - there's a whole myriad of ways you can format and partition a disk in linux and you can't do that from the ui. It needs exactly the right options set which the ui can't manage and you have to go back to the 1980's and do it from the command line.

You have an ubuntu cd from the 80s? Here is what disk utility looks like:


It lets you do everything you want, in a GUI thats if anything, more intuitive than windos disk manager. Not only can you delete and create partitions, file systems, you can even check the SMART states, benchmark, setup RAIDS and what not. Disk utility is installed by default, it should be on your live cd, right where you'd expect it: system > administration.

Well done to your mother, but I am afraid she is a geek - not a bad thing, there aren't many 75 year old mothers that can use ubuntu

She is the furthest thing from a geek. She cant do anything other than browse the web, home banking, use email (and even that with difficulty), skype and play some card games. But she can install software in ubuntu, which she cant in windows.

 

[drizek]

cfdisk4ever

 

[Dribble]

You have an ubuntu cd from the 80s? Here is what disk utility looks like:

I know what it looks like and last time I looked you couldn't set the inode size when using it.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Boy it just never stops with the industry and its underhandedness.

http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidias-KalEl-Demonstration--Marred-By-Benchmark-Shenanigans/


I want to here less about tegra zacata and HD 3000 and more about Innovation products . Oh ya its not american. But its performance is = to tegra II

 

[P4man]

I know what it looks like and last time I looked you couldn't set the inode size when using it.

I dont know (m)any people needing to either. I wouldnt blame ubuntu for hiding an option from the GUI that no non geek (and precious few geeks) needs, Id blame your PVR for not working properly with Ext. BTW, how do you do it on a Mac? I doubt you have a GUI for it, yet I havent heard many people saying Macs are too hard to use for non geeks.

Anyway, this is getting off topic, but if that is the worst example of why ubuntu isnt suitable for normal people, I think it will do just fine.