extra_specticles t1_j8cixcv wrote
But without a good market, will fade into non existence v Quickly.
AloofPenny t1_j8d22qr wrote
China is only able to use risc-v, so the support is clearly there
CirkuitBreaker t1_j8ep8hx wrote
China can also use MIPS since that ISA was also made open source.
extra_specticles t1_j8d2npt wrote
EDIT; So downvotes for pointing out that mainstream Chinese hardware will not be enough and that OS support is needed. And just to be clear I love Linux and have been using it since the 90s. It has never been mainstream consumer or business desktop/laptop will not so easily. Servers yes, desktops - no. No matter what you wish.
China may well make lots of components but the only OS they'll be able to make is Linux. Linux does not and will not have mainstream consumer and business appeal. The only OS that will come close is Android. I seriously doubt any Chinese laptop and Linux will get mainstream consumer and business appeal in the massive market of Europe/America/APAC. That's where the market for these is - and it won't happen. Windows and MacOS are far too entrenched for Android to have done anything in that space - and they've had years to try.
AloofPenny t1_j8d3oab wrote
Really? also, what are you even talking about. They didn’t used to make Windows or iOS for arm, but they do now. But keep shitting on something that still doesn’t even actually exist yet.
extra_specticles t1_j8d41ne wrote
ARM Windows has existed for absolutely years. First version was in 2011 iIIRC. I'm not shitting on things I don't know about - I'm just pointing out how I've seen the market evolve.
KingdomOfBullshit t1_j8dh00o wrote
Windows CE on ARM has an even longer history. I still miss my HP Jornada 720 with it's StrongARM SA-1110. Pretty sure I had that before or right around Y2K.
moepsenstreusel t1_j8dx6y4 wrote
Yeah, but Windows CE wasn't in any meaningful sense Windows.
It was one of the generation of puny, souped-up embedded OSes (Symbian, BlackBerry) that slimmed-down, desktop-class OSes iOS and Android killed.
KingdomOfBullshit t1_j8dy4eu wrote
Honestly though, Windows CE was the best of these for me. It had a proper GUI, networking support, compatibility with PowerPoint/Word/Excel, awesome battery life, good support for printing and external displays and a decent SDK. It lacked win32 support but it checked all the other boxes for me. Couldn't say that about any palm pilot I had.
Edit: forgot to mention that, of course I agree it was a different beast than windows
[deleted] t1_j9nl2cv wrote
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AloofPenny t1_j8d4jc2 wrote
https://amp.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3178109/tech-war-china-bets-open-source-risc-v-chip-design-minimise-potential there you go. There’s the market. It exists already. Because the US forced it
extra_specticles t1_j8d4uqw wrote
Yes and like I said it may be the case for China. But outside of the restrictions on China - the most massive laptop markets do not use Linux. And it's won't happen in those markets until major desktop OS support is created from Windows and perhaps MacOs (which I doubt)
Arentanji t1_j8e4mdl wrote
It would be interesting to see what will develop in a new ecosystem where Windows and Intel do not dominate.
Pure_Swing2184 t1_j8d3qr7 wrote
No business appeal = 98% of all cloud and server market
extra_specticles t1_j8d4ajw wrote
I said "mainstream consumer and business appeal" this whole thread is about laptops, not servers. Linux OWNS the server space. Linux does not have any mainstream appeal in the LAPTOP space. No matter how much you try to take that quote out of context.
[deleted] t1_j8d7cbs wrote
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InevitableAd5222 t1_j8d9e4j wrote
>There are other larger / more mainstream markets but that does not diminish the money to be made/relevance of enthusiast tech. Raspberry Pi had 95.82 million GBP revenue. It is not Windows, but idk why people are saying it will "fade into non existence V Quickly". It is an open source spec not some new Phone, so how mainstream it is doesn't even seem like an applicable critique. This is a niche group of people so the market is not as big. It is like saying Ubuntu or Arch is not relevant and will fade into the abyss. It may not be relevant to you, but I mean even Slackware still has a community.
[deleted] t1_j8dsp7k wrote
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Vast_Ad9484 t1_j8dun8w wrote
Like a v quickly as in RISC V quickly?
InevitableAd5222 t1_j8cz5zp wrote
What??? Tech enthusiast market is HUGE and enthusiasts love the idea of an open source standard like RISC-V w/ easy to fix/upgrade hardware for learning. Have you seen all the RISC-V posts on hacker news? Plus just look at Raspbery Pi demand.
BumderFromDownUnder t1_j8d4kr7 wrote
Enthusiast market isn’t huge at all. It’s literally the smallest out of the available markets. Corporate/business and “normal” user markets considerably dwarf “enthusiasts”
InevitableAd5222 t1_j8d8rbr wrote
There are other larger / more mainstream markets but that does not diminish the money to be made/relevance of enthusiast tech. Raspberry Pi had 95.82 million GBP revenue. It is not Windows, but idk why people are saying it will "fade into non existence V Quickly". It is an open source spec not some new Phone, so how mainstream it is doesn't even seem like an applicable critique. This is a niche group of people so the market is not as big. It is like saying Ubuntu is not relevant.
BostonDodgeGuy t1_j8dmxsp wrote
> Raspberry Pi had 95.82 million GBP revenue.
Do you have a source on that? Highest I saw after a quick googling was 71m. Though, that's revenue and not profit. Twitter makes a ton of revenue but no profit for example.
tastyratz t1_j8dpnbt wrote
> Raspberry Pi had 95.82 million GBP revenue
Raspberry Pi makes a lot of their money selling to businesses for commercial use.
A small powerful lightweight power efficient computing device is of course very popular to install in many kinds of equipment, not just makers.
Diablojota t1_j8ddkpi wrote
That’s a very niche market with those revenues in the tech space. Not saying they won’t do well, but it’ll come down to price. It won’t succeed if it doesn’t align with the niche market at a price they’re willing to pay in terms of features and benefits. The question will be, so they get enough sales to get the scale necessary to make this cost effective.
Gschu54 t1_j8dqug4 wrote
Right, edge computing. Very different than desktop/laptop.
extra_specticles t1_j8d3151 wrote
Yes, the market is POTENTIALLY huge - but without major h/w & OS vendor support it's not going to be massive. The open desktop market has only existed in part due to the fact that (A) the h/w was always open right back to the original IBM PC, and (B) OS/software support for a large number so hardware components. Don't get me wrong I'd love to see it, but I've been in the tech industry for over 40 years and I'm not going to hold my breath.
PI Demand - even then the pi was available (and it's coming back online for Q3 this year) the number of laptops with it? You might think the appeal of such hardware configurations is high, but without mainstream OEM hardware vendors (DELL, LENOVO etc) they will not succeed in the consumer and business markets. What will make it happen is if Windows introduces a version for it. This of course is a possibility - however, Microsoft will need to come up with something like Apple's Rosetta for ARM to enable x86 apps to run. Again this is not something that they can't do - but they've certainly not been able to do it for their ARM Windows yet.
InevitableAd5222 t1_j8dbps6 wrote
Ten years after the first Raspberry Pi was shipped in 2012, more than 40 million of the devices have been sold worldwide, creating a market worth in excess of $1 billion, plus more in peripherals
-https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/raspberrypi
extra_specticles t1_j8esig7 wrote
The original post is not about SBC it's about modular laptops. No one is saying riscv SBC would not be a big market. The whole thread was about laptops and their marketplace.
[deleted] t1_j8d6zmb wrote
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Gschu54 t1_j8drh6h wrote
Rpi's and the rest of the single board computers are basically cell phones. They are not really close to being laptops.
Hell I have sbcs with literal cell phone processors and the os that's packaged for it is an AOSP variant, not a native Linux variant.
InevitableAd5222 t1_j8d9ry1 wrote
I agree with 90% of that, at least about how applicable to broader market it will be. But look at Arch and Slackware. Tech like RISC-V can exist SOLELY from communities and still end up becoming worth a lot of money. Like RedHat lots of money. Also about Pi: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/raspberrypi (that is a MASSIVE market to any startup founder) Saying that 1 billion usd is failure in consumer market is just not true.
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Also asking how many laptops with Pi is not the right question, people wanted it as its own little SOC motherboard not in a laptop. Putting the single board in a laptop kinda defeats the whole tinkering purpose and how would they expose GPIO pins? A laptop for the pi is just a case with a keyboard and built-in monitor, most people in this niche would rather just keep the easier physical access and use external monitor + SSH.
yapyd t1_j8d5k15 wrote
How many laptops have you seen with Linux (excluding chromebooks)?
glasses_the_loc t1_j8d79cm wrote
Windows had Windows Subsystem for Linux built in.
InevitableAd5222 t1_j8d8cu8 wrote
Most corp latops I worked on ran Linux. Every computer at Google I saw ran Linux or OSX. All of my personal laptops including the laptop I wrote this comment on (System76: https://system76.com/).
jwkdjslzkkfkei3838rk t1_j8f6qyq wrote
Most of our Indian collagues run Linux on their Thinkpads. I don't know how widespread it is in India, but even a few percent is a lot of laptops, when Hyderabad alone has 6 times as much people working in IT as Silicon Valley.
[deleted] t1_j8dg65g wrote
Look at how thick that thing is. No one will want to use it. Will probably be very hard to even find a bag that supports it.
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