Watch out, Wintel--a new "Draglin" is coming to China.
Hong Kong's Culturecom Holdings has combined its Chinese-friendly V-Dragon central processing unit (CPU) with the open-source Linux operating system. The plan is to take on the dominant "Wintel" combination of PCs that run on Microsoft Windows software using Intel CPUs. In its drive to take on Wintel, Culturecom has found powerful allies in IBM, which is making and supporting the new chips, and the Chinese government, which is promoting Linux as a cheaper alternative to Windows.
The V-Dragon chips have scored some initial success since hitting the market last summer, with 1.5 million to 2 million units expected to ship this year, said Benjamin Lau, senior vice president and corporate strategist. The chips sell for $15 to $30 each on average, or well below the cost of a comparable Intel chip with Windows software. "We want to make sure the price can come down, so we've shied away from any Wintel peripherals," he said. Culturecom's two biggest orders to date have come from Taiwanese speaker maker Orient Semiconductor Electronics, for 1 million units over two years, and China's Datang Telecom & Tech, for 300,000 over a year, he said.
Unlike the traditional Wintel systems in which software and chips are separate entities, Culturecom's CPUs come with the Chinese character capability and Linux embedded in the chips. Intel chips now account for nearly 90 percent of the China PC market, while Windows--often pirated--accounts for the vast majority of PC-based operating systems. The country is now the world's No. 2 PC market, with 13.3 million units sold last year.
News source: C|net
Hong Kong's Culturecom Holdings has combined its Chinese-friendly V-Dragon central processing unit (CPU) with the open-source Linux operating system. The plan is to take on the dominant "Wintel" combination of PCs that run on Microsoft Windows software using Intel CPUs. In its drive to take on Wintel, Culturecom has found powerful allies in IBM, which is making and supporting the new chips, and the Chinese government, which is promoting Linux as a cheaper alternative to Windows.
The V-Dragon chips have scored some initial success since hitting the market last summer, with 1.5 million to 2 million units expected to ship this year, said Benjamin Lau, senior vice president and corporate strategist. The chips sell for $15 to $30 each on average, or well below the cost of a comparable Intel chip with Windows software. "We want to make sure the price can come down, so we've shied away from any Wintel peripherals," he said. Culturecom's two biggest orders to date have come from Taiwanese speaker maker Orient Semiconductor Electronics, for 1 million units over two years, and China's Datang Telecom & Tech, for 300,000 over a year, he said.
Unlike the traditional Wintel systems in which software and chips are separate entities, Culturecom's CPUs come with the Chinese character capability and Linux embedded in the chips. Intel chips now account for nearly 90 percent of the China PC market, while Windows--often pirated--accounts for the vast majority of PC-based operating systems. The country is now the world's No. 2 PC market, with 13.3 million units sold last year.
News source: C|net
Changelog 0.8:
- almost all components starting from some 0.7 beta SDK still work, though recompilation with new SDK is recommended to take advantage of new features
- "open" dialog now lists supported file types
- file modification time tracking, goodbye "reload file info"
- file size tracking
- new menu item config, massively improved menu system
- improved matroska component (fully extendable through third-party components, improved speed)
- fixed UI glitch in masstagger
- masstagger scripts can be now exported to files
- new diskwriter
- new albumlist
- replaygain shows total progress
- toolbar menu now completely fakes regular menu behaviors
- found a way to get rid of dreaded beep when pressing alt+key
- various minor UI tweaks, improved playlist tabs
- fixed multimedia keys displayed in shortcuts page
- AIFF input fixes
- FLAC input fixes
- SDK side change: all uppercase/lowercase character conversion had to be moved to utf8api, some string8 methods are missing (replaced with utf8api functions)
- new icons, thanks to picmixer
- improved drag&drop support, thanks to foosion
This is where it starts people, big parts of the world will not tolerate the os/pc trade imbalance if they have a choice -- they'll either pirate or if you push down piracy they'll pop up with cheapper alternatives. Open source has begun to make alternatives a reality.
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