Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Intel Honesty

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 426 posts

Re: Intel Honesty

#371

Post by segasaturn »

flo123456 wrote: post #182
fluoridation wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly speaking, that running Linux as a desktop OS would be easy enough that even non-technical users would be able to do it with difficulties comparable to, say, Windows XP.

Whichever for me was in 2010 when I set up Ubuntu for my grandma and put a Firefox shortcut on her desktop and she never had any issues with her computer again. Very simple use-case but it was a lot better served than by Windows Vista at the time. These days it’s even better served by an iPad though.

By that metric the Year of the Linux Desktop was in 2012 with the introduction of Chromebooks.

Re: Intel Honesty

#373

Post by Wytwwww »

SoftTalker wrote: post #28
api wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Throughout most of the 2010s, EUV lithography was like the "year of the Linux desktop" - i.e., this year will be the year where EUV was suitable for high volume manufacturing. We need to learn to recognize the difference between something that's never going to happen for either physical or economic/social/structural reasons, and something that is just really difficult and takes a long time. I always think of this w…

I'd say Linux desktops have been good enough for a long time, but never broke into the mainstream for the reasons you cite. ChromeOS is the closest thing I guess, but outside of schools and a few other institutional uses, Chromebooks are not very popular.

> good enough

I'm not sure. IMHO it's good enough for power users and people who don't really need much besides a browser and maybe do light office work etc. or completely fixed/define workflows. In between there is a huge gap that's quite hard to cross due too generally poor and inconsistent UX, various package installation, configuration issues and various UX patterns that are hard for many non technical people to grasp.

OTH Windows and macOS "just work". Well maybe not so much for Windows but at least it's a lot easier to find someone who can help you.

Also Linux hardly offer anything at all for this segment. If you use only your PC for gaming, office work, media creation and similar stuff what value does Linux offer you that would make it worth switching (even if Linux UX was much better than it is switching still requires significant effort and still a lot of hops to jump just to do what you already know how on Windows)? I think approximately none at all.

Re: Intel Honesty

#374

Post by Wytwwww »

ho_schi wrote: post #86
SoftTalker wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say Linux desktops have been good enough for a long time, but never broke into the mainstream for the reasons you cite. ChromeOS is the closest thing I guess, but outside of schools and a few other institutional uses, Chromebooks are not very popular.

Linux is not preinstalled. There are some ThinkPads* and Dells with Ubuntu or Fedora but you need to know that. And people how know will and must reinstall anyway Arch, Gentoo, Suse, Debian, Fedora or Ubuntu. The Steamdeck is an excellent proof how a full featured Linux (SteamOS is based upon Arch) is shipped well. Not a unmaintained or googlyified closed-source derivate of Linux (Android and ChromeOS). * I ordered a…

Steamdeck is a gaming console not a general purpose device from the perspective of most people (yes I know it's a standard PC and completely open but that's not something most people care about). Linux is more or less just an implementation detail. Obviously not as extreme but a bit like PS4 being BSD but I don't think it's that different from Android/ChromeOS. Arch is there just to run a completely proprietary layer which is the only thing most people who use it interact with >90% of the time.

Re: Intel Honesty

#375

Post by keepamovin »

joe_the_user wrote: post #368
keepamovin wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point. I get it probably gets ingrained, more so than a more open culture that would be open to bettering it self. My view was Intel had a good culture until external pressures resulted in turning toxic.

My gosh you can read the posts on this thread of myself and others talking about the toxicity of Intel's culture in the 90s. If you're in doubt, I'd recommend David M. Gordon's Fat And Mean for a discussion of how toxic culture persists and intensifies in corporate America. Edit: I think can credit the long period of success Intel had to shrewd leadership and leading in a massively expanding market. The thing about a…

Hmmm....unhappy optimum. How can we do better?

Re: Intel Honesty

#376

Post by Wytwwww »

timschmidt wrote: post #34
api wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Throughout most of the 2010s, EUV lithography was like the "year of the Linux desktop" - i.e., this year will be the year where EUV was suitable for high volume manufacturing. We need to learn to recognize the difference between something that's never going to happen for either physical or economic/social/structural reasons, and something that is just really difficult and takes a long time. I always think of this w…

Valve sells the SteamDeck and is preparing SteamOS for use on similar handhelds available now from most major vendors. They may not be traditional laptops or desktops, but they're PCs, and they're being sold with compatibility with a large installed base of Windows games in mind. Moreover, handheld gaming PC users seem to perceive SteamOS as being superior to Windows in this device category.

SteamDeack is a much more open equivalent of Android/ChomeOS. Yes you can use it as a Linux "Desktop" but form the perspective of most people it's just there to run a single proprietary app while Linux is just an implementation detail.

Of course some people will use it for other things than Steam but I doubt it's a very significant proportion.

Re: Intel Honesty

#377

Post by Wytwwww »

andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #6

US chip production really needs its SpaceX moment, but it seems like it will never happen, and we're left with the crumbling empire of Intel. By "SpaceX moment", I mean a startup entering an impossible market, where the barrier to entry is billions of dollars of research and manufacturing, a market dominated by industry giants from the 60s, and yet still coming out on top somehow.

> By "SpaceX moment", I mean a startup entering an impossible market

SpaceX entered a market with hardly any competition (due to little demand) and is/was extremely reliant on government funding anyway.

Semiconductors are highly competitive and you can't rely on government agencies buying most of what you manufacture.

I'd argue Tesla might be much more closer to "startup entering an (somewhat)impossible market" considering how entrenched non Chinese car makers it was and how hard it was to survive in and especially start from scratch as a small company.

Re: Intel Honesty

#378

Post by Wytwwww »

cherryteastain wrote: post #13
andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #6

US chip production really needs its SpaceX moment, but it seems like it will never happen, and we're left with the crumbling empire of Intel. By "SpaceX moment", I mean a startup entering an impossible market, where the barrier to entry is billions of dollars of research and manufacturing, a market dominated by industry giants from the 60s, and yet still coming out on top somehow.

The semi spacex moment already happened - it was when TSMC was founded

Or maybe Intel itself? AMD? Nvidia?

Re: Intel Honesty

#379

Post by Wytwwww »

ska wrote: post #69
ac29 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1987? As near as I can tell there was nothing particularly remarkable about TSMC in the 1980s or 1990s.

20 years for a hardware startup to get really going isn't unusual. One of the other reasons VC likes SAAS. Hardware startups are cash intensive and slow boils, typically.

Wasn't AMD or even Intel the same sort of "startups"?

Also what's so special about TSMC?

I mean they were doing quite well in the 90s and early 2000s before falling back behind Intel before they caught up and surpassed it this time.

Re: Intel Honesty

#380

Post by Wytwwww »

ryandrake wrote: post #107
reducesuffering wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Elon Musk was never born, it is likely we'd still have SpaceX and Tesla equivalents I'm perturbed by Elon's politics and hypocrisy, but this is absolutely not true in anywhere near the same timeframe.

So, out of the seven billion people on the planet, only Elon Musk could have made these companies what they are? No other person on Earth (given access to equivalent capital) could do it?

Sort of. Because a lot of what Musk was doing didn't make much sense at the time. Basically you needed a person who was already very successful and had a lot of clout and was willing to bet all that on a boondoggle (certainly not in hindsight). There aren't that many people who are in that position and are willing to go all in on something like (while having the vision, skills and lucky to pull it off and prove everyone wrong).
Post reply on HN