For a long time the question has been going back and forth: is Asus messing with us and making the Linux version of the Eee PC more expensive than the Windows version? Previously the numbers have all been speculation, but now, finally, we have real numbers to look at!

So now that the Eee PC 900 is out, it should be easy to get to the bottom of this mystery, right? Naturally, no. For some reason, only a few places seem to be selling the Eee PC 900. Worse, those prices are not all the same. Basically I was only able to find three places that sell both the Linux and Windows versions: Buy.com, Newegg, and OnSale. (I also found both at one more place, but from that store both cost more than $600.) So what are the prices?

Eee PC 900 Windows: $550, $550, $595

Eee PC 900 Linux: $590, $550, $550

Groan. It has been so long. Couldn’t you just give us numbers that make sense??? All I can assume is that Asus is really selling both versions for the same price and Buy.com and OnSale are just making one version or the other more expensive for some reason. Especially since Newegg has them both for the same price, I think that is the best assumption.

So in summary, because the Linux version has more storage space, which cancels out the price of Windows, I think Asus, at least in the US, has done the right thing and made them both cost the same so that no advantage is given to either OS. Now I just wish OnSale, Buy.com, and anyone else messing with these prices would just make them both cost the same as they should.  That way, the price advantage of Linux will be clear to all shoppers.

A few days ago in Brilliant Brainstorms #9 I suggested, jokingly, that the Brainstorm developers read my posts. I was surprised to learn that at least one of them, Nicolas Deschildre, does read my posts. In the comment was a link to a post on Nicolas Deschildre’s blog presenting an idea called “decentralized Brainstorm.” If you have not seen the post before, I highly recommend you check it out and then come back. To summarize, the idea is that different projects’ Brainstorm sites can talk to each other and exchange ideas. This post, along with some other ideas I have seen, got me thinking about the future of Brainstorm and the future of open-source development.

First, I think it would be great to integrate Brainstorm into the rest of the open-source development tools. Since Ubuntu created Brainstorm and they use Launchpad, I will use Launchpad as an example. Launchpad, for those of you who don’t know, is a system for open-source projects to collaborate on code, feature planning, bug reporting/fixing, translations, and so on. Canonical could integrate Brainstorm into Launchpad, making it easy for all projects to have their own Brainstorm-like site. Additionally, as suggested by Idea #8338 on Ubuntu Brainstorm, some of the ideas behind Brainstorm could go into other parts of Launchpad. For example, the ability to vote on the importance of bugs might be added.

Once a standard system incorporating Brainstorm and other parts of projects is set up, Nicolas Deschildre’s idea about connecting different Brainstorm sites could be put into place. All of this would ease the flow of ideas into and between open-source projects, hopefully, eventually making it so the users, even if they have no development experience, can be part of deciding what the features each release should focus on.

On the developer side of things, this linking of Brainstorm sites with each other and with development tools could really change how things work. Now, a volunteer developer might join one, or possibly two, projects and work on only those projects. Certainly there would still be people like this, but there could also be developers who moved from project to project, implementing the ideas they were interested in, no matter what project that idea was part of.

Although this interconnected web of ideas and development is certainly not a reality yet, I think this, or something like this, may be the future of open-source development. Certainly Brainstorm has unlocked a lot of the potential of free software to be created by the users, and I hope that this idea, or a similar one, will unlock even more of that potential.

I will be very curious to see how those who know more about the development process react to this ideas. Do you think the future of open-source development holds something similar to this?

Microsoft has apparently given details of a new deal to PC makers that allows them to get discounted Windows XP licenses for use on UMPCs, according to Computer World UK. This already appeared to be the case due to pricing on the Eee PC, however it had not been confirmed. There seem to be two parts to this story. First, Microsoft is selling Windows for less on UMPCS. Second, some people suspect that the deal is supposed to prevent UMPCs from competing with normal PCs.

The first part is relatively simple. Microsoft is giving essentially the same product away at difference prices, depending what type of device it will go on. Although I am not in any way a lawyer, I suspect that this is legal, since Microsoft can just change one little feature and then it is a different product. Just because it is probably legal, does not, however, mean I think it is a fair practice. Another way of stating the second sentence of this paragraph is: Microsoft is making Windows less expensive in the markets where Linux is gaining market share. Because of this, I think this practice should be illegal and is certainly unfair.

The second part of the story is slightly more complicated, though not by much. The Computer World article brings up the point that Microsoft may be trying to limit UMPCs from invading the regular PC market by defining them with these specifications:

• Max screen size: 10.2
• No touch screen
• Hard drives are limited to 80GB
• Max 1GB RAM
• Max 1Ghz single-core processor, except for a few particular chips

Although it is true that these specifications would limit a UMPC from competing with a regular PC, three things should be kept in mind.

1. Microsoft has to set the limit somewhere. If Windows is going to have a different price for UMPCs, Microsoft has to define what a UMPC is so a 17-inch desktop replacement doesn’t count.
2. Every major UMPC that I can think of fits these specifications.
3. If these specifications are going to limit UMPCs, it is only going to hurt Microsoft. PC makers will not stop improving their hardware because they don’t get Microsoft’s discount. They might, however, switch to Linux, because Windows costs $50 more.

For these three reasons, I don’t see anything wrong with the specifications Microsoft has set. I do, however, think that the whole idea of selling the same product at differenet prices is unfair. If you disagree, however, I am open to hearing your arguement. Go ahead and post it in the comments.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly-ish summary of some of the best brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site. In the beginning it may not always come exactly once a week or on the same day, but, if it becomes popular, it should become more regular.

Sometimes it seems like the Ubuntu Brainstorm people read my post (yeah right, they have better things to do). Last week I said this:

First, I have been eagerly watching the Brainstorm Blog, but there have really not been any new posts in a long time. I hope this changes soon.

As you can guess, there is a new post this week. The new post basically introduces some new features for Brainstorm. One of the features is making developers’ comments on ideas more visible. I am very glad they did this, since I was hoping this would happen for a while. (Although I was expecting it to happen through the blog.)

Flash drive unmounting is a strange issue. No one bothers to do it, and it never seems to matter. Still, it is an important issue, since data loss is possible. Since it seems that no operating system has made it easy to deal with unmounting, Ubuntu should be the first.

What is the use of ideas if other people can’t volunteer to work on those ideas?

Although I do kind of like the generic bootloader, I do think that Ubuntu should theme it at least in a small way. Perhaps just an Ubuntu logo?

Last week I talked about an idea to redo Ubuntu’s homepage. Looking at this mockup, it looks like the ideas are already there, it just needs to be implemented.

Some ideas are great, but not that important. For example, this one. Just kidding!

It is great to be able to vote ideas down, but what if you want to know how many votes up or down an idea got, not just the total points?

Note: Everyone that pointed out that it is really only a difference of $50 if right, however the basic point still stands, since $50 max difference is assuming Windows is free.

Also, every that pointed out the USB flash drives are quite different from SSDs is, of course, correct. I am, and was, aware of the difference, however I choose to use flash drives due to their availability.

Today the headlines have been about the Eee PC 900 with Windows being cheaper (at least in Australia) than the Linux version ($650 to $500). Additionally, the Linux version will not be sold in retail stores. The story gets even worse when you read some of what Asus has said. APC is reporting that ASUS said “Microsoft has been a longstanding supporter of Asus.” I suppose this could just be innocent press talk, but it sure sounds to be like there is something suspicious going on.

One element of the story, however, has not been reported as much. The Linux version comes with 20GB of flash memory, while the Windows version only comes with 12GB. At first glance, 8GBs of storage should not cost $150, but flash is expensive. Could 8GB more flash memory create a significant price difference?

The answer, in a word, is no. The evidence I can find all points to, not surprisingly, 8 additional GB costing far less than $150. Let me explain my reasoning.

First, there are two issues complicating what would otherwise be a very simple problem. First, there are not many consumer solid state drives. Instead I had to use USB flash drive prices. Second, 12GB and 20GB are both very unusual capacities. Here I had to use 8-16GB and 16-32GB.

I used three lines of USB flash drives. The Corsair Voyager (8GB, 16GB, 32GB), the Corsair Survivor (8GB, 16GB, 32GB), and the A-Data My Flash (8GB, 16GB, 32GB). I will not get into the math here (it is nothing more than subtraction, but it would take up a lot of space and be very boring), but the numbers come out to this. The average price difference between the 8GB and 16GB (an 8GB difference) model was around $38. The average price difference between the 16GB and 32GB (16GB difference) was about $86 (the largest difference was about $100). In other words, the price difference between the models should really only be about $50 at most, even if Windows was free.

In summary, although it is imposssible to have perfectly accurate results, it is quite clear that the Windows version is, in fact, significantly less expensive than the Linux version for what you get. This is unacceptable.

Now that open-source is gaining attention in the general tech community and the whole world, more and more companies are making big deals of their plans to open up specifications to their products, help with Linux drivers, and generally be more friendly to the open-source community. Unfortunately, however, not all of these announcements are really followed through on. Some certainly are followed through on, such as AMD’s push to open specifications for their graphics cards, but others are not. The question is, how should people react to these announcements, not knowing if the company in question will really follow through or not? I see two possibilities.

Possibility One

The first possibility is to always respond with enthusiasm and praise the company for their steps. The advantage of this is that it lets the company see how excited people are about their move. Hopefully this will make the company more likely to follow up on their promise. The disadvantage of this, however, is that the company is rewarded before they really contribute to the open-source community.

Possibility Two

Alternatively, an argument could easily be made that the initial response should be “OK great, but show me what you have really done.” This advantage of this is that the company gets nothing for their press release, unless they follow through. This would sound like a better way, but it is not necessarily. A company could also take this response as no one cares, so let’s just leave and never really do anything. This, of course, is not what we want.

I don’t know which of these responces is the right answer. Which do you think is the best responce or is there yet another possibility that is even better?

This weekend I discovered a feature of Ubuntu that I think is so interesting is has to be posted here. I am sure most of you are familiar with the orange spiky blob that appears to tell you there are updates available. Over this weekend, a different icon appeared in place of the blob - a bright red down-arrow with an exclamation point in the middle. This icon indicates important updates, mostly security-related.

So why is this such a great idea? After all, it is just an icon. What is big deal?

Ubuntu, and most Linux distributions, don’t try and force you to let your computer automatically install updates. This makes sense, because, generally speaking, Linux users want more choice and are tech-savvy enough to remember to do the updates on their own, with a little reminding from an orange spiky blob of course. This means, however, that when a less tech-savvy user starts running Ubuntu on their desktop, they might miss important updates. At least they might if the red icon did not exist.

The orange blob blends into the interface well and is so often up there that it is easy to ignore if you don’t look for it. The red exclamation icon is far less easy to ignore for three reasons. First, it does not blend into the interface as well as orange does, making it easier to spot. Second, it rarely appears, making its appearance even more noticable. And third, people link the color red with danger. For these three reasons, even someone who misses the normal updates will at least see the most important updates, keeping them at least fairly safe.

As I was playing around with OpenSuse 11 Beta 2 KDE 4, I discovered some ways not to use KDE 4’s desktop.

“TrashCan.Org”

“Look what I found in the trash”

“Look what I am putting back in the trash”

“Tux got mail”

“Firefox merchandise gone wrong”

“Tux got stuck in a terminal” or “Tux hate GUI, love terminal”

“Big Files”

“Throwing away your files”

And finally, a great way to use the new KDE 4 desktop:

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Don’t take them too seriously. They are just for fun.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly-ish summary of some of the best brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site. In the beginning it may not always come exactly once a week or on the same day, but, if it becomes popular, it should become more regular.

First, I have been eagerly watching the Brainstorm Blog, but there have really not been any new posts in a long time. I hope this changes soon.

Now on to the ideas. Starting with the small ones.

If you have ever downloaded a lot of wallpapers to try out, you know that adding them all manually can be a little annoying, so why not just have a folder that Ubuntu automatically watches?

Sometimes applications have weird, err… creative, name which can be confusing. Instead of forcing everyone to use dull names, just add what the application does at the end.

This is more of an advanced feature, but it would be nice for some people to know why they can’t use Compiz, not just that it does not work on their PC. As long as it is hidden behind an advanced button, there is no reason not to include this.

More organization is always better, so the more small tools to help people organize their folders and files the better.

Another organization tool, being able to name drives and partitions. Sick of remembering the size of each HD you use AND what it is for? Vote for this idea.

You may know that this is a bit of a rip off from Vista Ultimate, but, while I am usually against simply copying a feature like this, two things make me feel differently about this. First, in my experience, all you would have to do in order to implement this better than Vista did is make it not freeze after extended use. Second, Ubuntu can do better than Vista by offering more than just video. Perhaps sideshows of your photos/photos from friends streamed from the internet or a Fedora-like background that changes based on the time of day?

For a new user trying to install Flash from the Adobe website, it is very hard. If Adobe just included a .deb package, it would be soooo much easier.

And finally, the big idea. People are already using Ubuntu Brainstorm to add their ideas for other open-source projects, so there is clearly a need for more projects to implement a Brainstorm-like site. Instead of making all those projects, some of them possibly very small, make and maintain their own site, there could be one site for ideas for all open-source projects. It could even be part of Launchpad.

Ubuntu Open Week, a week of IRC presentations by various members of the Ubuntu community, is finishing up today. For those of you who were unable to attend the sessions, you will be glad to know that logs of the meetings are available for you to read. The sessions were very informative, so I would definitely encourage everyone to check them out. Particularly if you are new to the Ubuntu community, you might want to check out some of the following sessions:

One session many people may be interested in is the Community Q+A which consisted of various questions about Ubuntu and the Ubuntu community. Although it is not very in depth, it is an interesting read.

Another session that should interest almost any Ubuntu user is “The Future of the Ubuntu Desktop.” Don’t expect screenshots of what Ubuntu will look like in 10 years, but you might get some idea of what the desktop team is thinking about in terms of Ubuntu in 10 years.

For those of you who are interested in helping out Ubuntu, you might want to check out the session on reporting bugs, which can be tricky at first, but easy once you get the hang of it, the session on triaging bugs, or the session on packaging. All of these are arranged sort of like a tutorial.

Finally, if you are interested in a specific project, there are lots of sessions focusing on smaller projects within Ubuntu, such as Ubuntu Mobile Edition, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Server, the Art Team, the Documentation Team, and more.

This is nowhere near all the sessions, so go check out the full listing on the Ubuntu Open Week page.