Intel Support for Linux on the wane?

[The Liquidator]

Just saw this this morning.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/pc-c...at-ultrabooks/

Anyone have any thoughts on this, or is it just a case of them leaving up to the community?

And yes, Mr Pendrey...I WANT TO BUY A LINUX NOTEBOOK!!!!!!!!! (but not from you, it would seem)

[GreyGeek]

...

but will not support open source Linux-based operating systems...

doesn't mean that Linux won't run on them. It just means that they won't help Linux developers to get it to run. How is that much different from what they've done in the past by throwing the devs a bone of dry source code with little functionality?

But, if push comes to shove, and they have deliberately put something into the bios that blocks the installation of Linux, then there will be a LARGE market segment, which they've underestimated, that WON'T buy the "Ultrabook".

[dibl]

Toshiba is famous for its disregard of Gnu/Linux -- no help at all there. But I've had great success with a Tosh NB205 netbook. Dell has pretty much walked away from Gnu/Linux too, but I have a really nice setup on a Dell Latitude E6500. So, I wouldn't make too much of Intel's lack of enthusiasm.

[woodsmoke]

Just as a note, I've got a Toshiba Satellite that all Linuxes that I've tried work on, but some of them won't work with the atheros chipset, and I just plug in a PCMCIA atheros in.

However, this may be at least one of the operative reasons for not "supporting Linux".

the new processors can make a portion of the screen unreadable to spyware, helping prevent a hacker from obtaining login credentials that could lead to identity theft.

If that is in any small way actually "part of" the hardware, not necessarily the software, then they probably should figure that cost/benefit margin for working with Linux to somehow make it be "open source" just is not in the cards, and that is not their "fault" in any way, shape or form. After all it is a "corporation". And, if it is "open source" then .....other hardware people could relatively quickly emulate it in some way.

However, I think that it is just possible that this would be a "thrown down gauntlet" to the real Linux hard core programmers.....and that they would have a similar app in a short while. However, it would also take having the machines in hand for test beds. Or it may, actually, just be a "slight of hand" that works incredibly fast with their "3D" stuff and could work with "regular" processors but maybe in a perceptibly slow manner.

woodsmoke