OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/20086/Mandriva_Leaps_Into_Eee_Territory_with_GDium Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:29:49 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Kinda neat http://osnews.com/thread?323639 http://osnews.com/thread?323639 I looked at the price and weird processor and my only reaction was a shrug. However, looking at the site and the everything on a USB key philosophy of the device, I could see it (or this approach) going over very well in schools.....if there is a way to back up the USB key anyways.

I am surprised someone else hasn't done that already (or maybe they have?) Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gfacer) Comments Mandriva already runs on Classmate PC http://osnews.com/thread?323640 http://osnews.com/thread?323640 I think this is a second foray for Mandriva into the low-cost laptop arena. Intel Classmate PC is already using Mandriva for its OS.

BTW, does anybody have a good review of the Classmate PC especially about the ease-of-use of the OS and the selection of software that comes with it?Edited 2008-07-18 23:09 UTC Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (amjith) Comments RE: Mandriva already runs on Classmate PC http://osnews.com/thread?323641 http://osnews.com/thread?323641 These are the 2 reviews that I could find related to Mandriva and Classmate PC:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070708-abrief-look-at-the-in...
http://www.linux.com/articles/62230

I like the idea of G-Key (extension of Mandriva Flash?). But the price seems to be on the higher end -- 400 Euros (~630$). Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vijayd81) Comments RE[2]: Mandriva already runs on Classmate PC http://osnews.com/thread?323648 http://osnews.com/thread?323648
I like the idea of G-Key (extension of Mandriva Flash?). But the price seems to be on the higher end -- 400 Euros (~630$).


If you compare this with the new EeePC 1000 that features a 10 inch screen and costs $700 then it is not that expensive. Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (satan666) Comments Classmate, pricing http://osnews.com/thread?323662 http://osnews.com/thread?323662 Well, the Classmate is a different thing really - you can't just go out and buy one, they're only available in large quantities to large-scale buyers. The Gdium is at least partly a consumer market product.

As the story says, pricing isn't finalized and may vary from territory to territory - the U.S. price won't necessarily be the exact equivalent of the European price. But more details on that will come along soon enough I think. Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AdamW) Comments Mips core http://osnews.com/thread?323663 http://osnews.com/thread?323663 The MIPS cpu interests me on an academic level, but for practical purposes I really don't see this competing with x86 based offerings at that price. Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Freebasen) Comments Comfort & Privacy http://osnews.com/thread?323666 http://osnews.com/thread?323666 "Each user owns its G-Key and may plug it in any Gdium. The user will then retrieve its personal environment, without leaving any traces on the foreign computer."

Imagine such netbooks in the classrooms or even in the companies! This gives more freedom and flexibility. The computer is there but without the crap leaved from the previous user. For example one educational organization could buy only 100 GDiums and 500 G-keys without the other hardware and in one or two classrooms could give different courses.
Or college boys and girls could share one netbook.
And a very useful application - buy one Gdium and two G-keys, one for you and one for the rest of the family ;) Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jollyx) Comments RE: Kinda neat http://osnews.com/thread?323670 http://osnews.com/thread?323670 The price looks a little steep indeed and the processor may seem weird to you but it isn't to me and hasn't been for more than a year. You can expect longer battery life and less heat, two things that are very important in mobile devices.

I'll be looking at this Gdium and try to get one to test my Slackware port, but I wonder if it's possible to use an internal solid state drive if you want to. USB keys can be backed up much easier and it will also be much better to replace the device with another one when it's broken without opening the case. Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (psychicist) Comments lol http://osnews.com/thread?323679 http://osnews.com/thread?323679 > (sorry, I don't participate in the hype of calling them netbooks or whatever)
> ...
> will be a netbook with
rotfl ;)

Besides, netbook is (was?) a Psion machine, actually quite ahead of those things by the time...
http://www.geek.com/geek-review-psion-netbook/
It just didn't have an x86. Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mmu_man) Comments RE: Mips core http://osnews.com/thread?323687 http://osnews.com/thread?323687 why? because you can't put linux on it?

the first eee had not linux and a lot of people bought it Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (collinm) Comments RE[2]: Mips core http://osnews.com/thread?323688 http://osnews.com/thread?323688 What bullshit is this?

The first eee had linux, and this new laptop will have linux as well. Please try and read up a bit. Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Dryhte) Comments RE: lol http://osnews.com/thread?323690 http://osnews.com/thread?323690 Your keen French eye was the first to spot that one, Francois ;) .

Can you actually hear myself sigh? I typed it like that unintentionally, wanted to clear it with backspace, but thought, "ah fcuk it, they won...". Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE[3]: Mips core http://osnews.com/thread?323692 http://osnews.com/thread?323692 must read:

why? because you can't put windows on it?

the first eee had not windows and a lot of people bought it Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (collinm) Comments RE[2]: lol http://osnews.com/thread?323693 http://osnews.com/thread?323693 Well, you copy / pasted it from me, which makes it slightly less bad. ;) Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AdamW) Comments A question to the thread http://osnews.com/thread?323694 http://osnews.com/thread?323694 Do you know if the RAM is upgradeable? If it is the 400Euros are a go for me. Godson runs@64 bit. But is it a mips64 distribution on this thing? Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fithisux) Comments MIPs http://osnews.com/thread?323695 http://osnews.com/thread?323695 MIPs has the same problem as ARM. You are tied to repositories hosted by the UMPC manufacturer unless you are very comfortable "rolling your own". Asus had the same problem with the Eee. The customized Xandros OS had special repositories for the Eee pc and it wasn't very extensive. Many linux programs customers wanted were not available. The good news for Eee users is the laptop has an X86 processor. There are many different distos customized for the Eee now. Ubuntu even made a custom distro just for this category. Care to bet how many different distros will be available 9 months from now for a UMPC using a MIPs processor? I won't bet with my hard earned money. Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bolomkxxviii) Comments RE: MIPs http://osnews.com/thread?323698 http://osnews.com/thread?323698 mandriva work fine for the eee too....

mandriva will surely say how much time it suppose to support the machine...

anyway, any netbook don't have a very long life... cpu is not powerfull... so after a couple of year some software will work slowy

another compagny use "special" cpu

jisus
http://vanderled.com/onlinestore/product_info.php/cPath/49_48_58/pr...

jisus v2 use a via c7... it's suppose to do some test to see if the via nano could be used

jisus v3 use atom

if the jisus cpu is enougt powerfull and have good automony... that could be a great machine Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (collinm) Comments RE: Kinda neat http://osnews.com/thread?323699 http://osnews.com/thread?323699 WTF?

Dont get me wrong, I like the idea of yet another UMPC, and I like the idea that Mandriva is providing the OS, but can't I already set up a system based on virtually any popular Linux distro such that the user's home directory is on the user's personal USB key and the OS itself is on a write-protected hard drive? Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bosco_bearbank) Comments RE: MIPs http://osnews.com/thread?323702 http://osnews.com/thread?323702
Care to bet how many different distros will be available 9 months from now for a UMPC using a MIPs processor? I won't bet with my hard earned money.


I'll bet there will be a Ubuntu that runs on it in 9 month's time especially as Canonical will want to support this processor to gain a foothold in China. Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chemical_scum) Comments RE[2]: MIPs http://osnews.com/thread?323705 http://osnews.com/thread?323705 I hope you are right. I am just not willing to bet with my money on a UMPC with either a MIPs or ARM processor. Now, something with the form factor of the i-phone, that is a different animal altogether. Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bolomkxxviii) Comments RE[3]: MIPs http://osnews.com/thread?323708 http://osnews.com/thread?323708 You may think x86 is something special. Well, I can tell you it's not. The only reason x86 is so large nowadays is because of Intel, the Microsoft Windows operating system tied to x86 processors (it isn't that prevalent on Itanium either) and the high cost of RISC/UNIX hardware back in the day.

I have almost the same applications running on my Loongson MIPS system as those on my x86, PPC and SPARC systems. The only difference is the closed source GNU/Linux stuff that's tied to x86, which isn't that important for the device to function and can be accommodated for with e.g. a Linux/x86 emulation layer such as provided by QEMU.

I wonder what Mandriva have done in that respect. Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (psychicist) Comments Excellent... http://osnews.com/thread?323711 http://osnews.com/thread?323711 Of late Mandriva is an excellent distro: polished, stable, fast...
So it is ideal for small laptops, IMO. Definitely better than Xandros. Of all the ones I have tried it is also the only one which installs a laptop kernel:

http://justingill.com/blog/2008/03/21/update-mandriva-20081rc2/ Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous Penguin) Comments RE: Excellent... http://osnews.com/thread?323722 http://osnews.com/thread?323722 Just to catch you early - you may notice 2009 doesn't. That doesn't mean anything's wrong - we just don't have a laptop kernel any more (post-2008.1). There was no longer any need for a separate kernel, as most differences between it and the desktop kernel disappeared, and the one remaining one (USB suspend support) could safely be enabled in the desktop kernel. So, 2009 will have no laptop kernel. Sun, 20 Jul 2008 05:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AdamW) Comments RE[2]: Excellent... http://osnews.com/thread?323733 http://osnews.com/thread?323733 I am sure it will be fine nonetheless. Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous Penguin) Comments RE[4]: MIPs http://osnews.com/thread?323738 http://osnews.com/thread?323738 can you post some bench of you machine with Loongson MIPS cpu? Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (collinm) Comments RE[2]: Mips core http://osnews.com/thread?323741 http://osnews.com/thread?323741 Well for starters there are things like native flash support. You won't find that on MIPS yet. You can insert any number of other programs that will not compile for the architecture. Basically the same problems that the PPC linux folks have, just an even more obscure platform on the desktop. I'll give you that a lot of things will work and will work just fine, but tell me what is the benefit of the platform? As it is now I see no compelling reason to buy this over an x86 based offering. Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Freebasen) Comments Pricing update (good one) http://osnews.com/thread?323752 http://osnews.com/thread?323752 Update on pricing - I am told I can say that the price is "expected to be _less_ than 400 euros". ;) Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AdamW) Comments RE[2]: MIPs http://osnews.com/thread?323822 http://osnews.com/thread?323822 But the C7 is an x86, the Loongson is not. After feeling quite restricted on a PPC and having experience with an ARM, I will not go for a MIPS, and certainly not at that price. Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pepa) Comments MIPS??? http://osnews.com/thread?323834 http://osnews.com/thread?323834 Going MIPS in china may be economically correct but in north america, I think it is pure suicide. I'm pretty sure when you look now at all the EeePC sold in north america, a big part of them is running Windows XP. I work in a computer store and I sold two time Linux based EeePC. The two time the client came back with it, wanting us to install XP. This thing, running on a MIPS processor can't run Windows XP. Maybe Windows NT4 which if I remember well got a port. But what is it possible to do with a 10 years+ old OS and no program to run onto it? Like every other here I'm saying that a MIPS processor is a vendor lock-in for the Linux distributions (maybe except in china were its more used). Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (werfu) Comments RE: MIPS??? http://osnews.com/thread?323838 http://osnews.com/thread?323838 MIPS seems as good a choice of CPU platform as any. While you may have had a couple of Linux-hating customers who wanted Windows on their eee's, most people just plain don't care. You see, devices like this aren't really laptops in the conventional sense. Rather they are high-end PDAs, much like the old Psion gear or the early laptop-style PDAs from HP. Most people just want a device that they can surf the web, check e-mail and keep their schedule on. The underlying OS isn't important to those people. Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (madcrow) Comments RE[3]: MIPs http://osnews.com/thread?323844 http://osnews.com/thread?323844 Meanwhile, I'm tempted because all I'm likely to use is Linux, and the MIPS-like CPU would be an exciting novelty for me. Until I needed to run WINE, probably. Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DigitalAxis) Comments RE[2]: MIPS??? http://osnews.com/thread?323897 http://osnews.com/thread?323897
devices like this aren't really laptops in the conventional sense. Rather they are high-end PDAs, much like the old Psion gear or the early laptop-style PDAs from HP. Most people just want a device that they can surf the web, check e-mail and keep their schedule on. The underlying OS isn't important to those people.


"Surf the web" implies that this device can run flash and java. Is that the case? Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bounty) Comments RE[3]: Mips core http://osnews.com/thread?323903 http://osnews.com/thread?323903 I'd say speed and lightness => autonomy ?
What about that ? The software has been recompiled Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Abigael) Comments RE[3]: MIPS??? http://osnews.com/thread?323907 http://osnews.com/thread?323907 Hi

Writing on behalf of EMTEC / Gdium : we are working on this... Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sari) Comments RE: MIPS??? http://osnews.com/thread?324009 http://osnews.com/thread?324009 Maybe they dont care about the north american market? Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments