http://www.osnews.com/story/6307/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:43:46 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What were they thinking only including 128MB ram? I know this is ment to be a budget computer, but by todays standards, this is just ridiculous, especially when your running X. Wed, 10 Mar 2004 17:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I know! It'd be like $5 to double the RAM and make it in to a much better machine. A lot of OEMs do this, though. Makes you wonder.

FWIW, though, X can run on some pretty scanty specs at fair speeds; with a DE or heavier WM, though, even a machine like this might just crawl. It looks like they're using KDE, too, which is getting better all the time, but it's still the heaviest DE / WM available. Mozilla's also a culprit in high RAM req's. Wed, 10 Mar 2004 17:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? why is the only pic a software screen capture? Where are the pics of the HARDware??? Wed, 10 Mar 2004 17:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I've run X on a P-133 with 32 MB of RAM, and I currently run it on a P-120 notebook with 40 MB of RAM. The secret is to not get greedy with the desktop/WM.

Low-end systems (at least RAM-wise) should use a more memory friendly WM.

I'd feel more than comfortable using this machine with only 96 MB of RAM. I'd probably run Xfce, or maybe Fluxbox/Blackbox on it. IceWM is also a good choice, but I'm not really a big fan of IceWM. Wed, 10 Mar 2004 18:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? 75mhz old lappie happily running XFree86 with FVWM. Off floppies. No HD. 24MB of RAM which also houses the ramdisks. Works fine, though I usually just import the display from another box over a nullmodem cable Wed, 10 Mar 2004 18:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I bought one Linare PC from Amazon.com and upgraded to 512 MB
RAM. I really like it. It would be nice if they could upgrade
the memory to atleast 256 MB RAM, even though there are
options to upgrade. Wed, 10 Mar 2004 18:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? the cost difference between a 256mb and 128mb module is trivial. A 1.8GHz Duron would've only been slightly more expensive. I swear, this would sell much better if only they were prepared to raise the price a little and give it significantly better specs. Wed, 10 Mar 2004 18:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ... would be for businesses that have site licenses of (older) Microsoft software, like Windows 2000 Professional and Office 2000, those would work fine. At least the Windows SiS drivers are fairly stable..

Damien Wed, 10 Mar 2004 18:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I have X on my p166 24mb laptop. If I'm running a number of apps at once I get a few mb into swap, but the sheer power of the p166 keeps things nice and snappy.
WindowMaker is a great WM for low resource computers, it's easier to use than Fluxbox/Blackbox, but still fast and small.

But... Linux likes memory, and the more and faster the better. Sharing system memory with the graphics card is cost cutting just a little too far, I have not done any tests myself, but I have seen reports of a 5% drop in CPU performance. Wed, 10 Mar 2004 18:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Well, just that, it's like Eugenia is running the site alone... Wed, 10 Mar 2004 18:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > Linare Corporation was very kind to send us a Linare PC for a hardware review (software review will follow in a few weeks).

when would someone send me hardware for review? Wed, 10 Mar 2004 18:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Godammit what a cheap computer!!
This must really be a bargain, even if you add 256MB of ram. Wed, 10 Mar 2004 19:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Given the price, that really doesnt look like too bad of a computer. I agree with more RAM being included, but there is certainly nothing stopping you from installing more. I wonder how well Windows would run on it. I would definately consider it if I were looking a secondary PC if it could run Windows XP pretty well. Wed, 10 Mar 2004 19:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Sounds like an excelent machine for basic office tasks using Windows 95 or 98. They should include a modem before adding RAM - even the most basic home/office users need internet access, and 128 MB seems OK for basic tasks such as word processing.

Don't count on playing games with the 'onboard' crap - no matter what OS is installed.

Hard to beat the price!

-Bob Wed, 10 Mar 2004 20:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Imagine this were a Windows box and you reviewed it. Would you give the same score with all the limitations you mentioned?

If this is an out of box experience, having to load another OS or worry about insufficient memory or the like would have me rating it a 3 at best. Wed, 10 Mar 2004 20:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Imagine this were a Windows box and you reviewed it. Would you give the same score with all the limitations you mentioned?

Running Win2k on a P3 800 and it runs respectfully w/128MB RAM. Granted, I'm not going to play Doom 3 on it, but for what I use it for, it's just fine.

Remember, just because you can't recompile the kernel on a Windows box doesn't mean you can't trim it down significantly Wed, 10 Mar 2004 20:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Got you beat, 75MHz and 16MB of RAM Wed, 10 Mar 2004 20:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Look here for info on acceleration for SIS chipsets:

http://www.winischhofer.net/linuxsisvga.shtml Wed, 10 Mar 2004 21:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? This motherboard kinda reminds me of a PCChips motherboard (M812 which is AT) or it´s cousin M810 with infinite revisions. It has SiS 730 chipset and almost everything onboard. Even though VESA is the sure bet, you should have tried SiS 630 driver, which would work with no problems at all. Wed, 10 Mar 2004 22:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > Even though VESA is the sure bet, you should have tried SiS 630 driver, which would work with no problems at all.

That's what I did. As I write in the article (you read it, right?) the stock X SiS driver does work with the 740 chipset, however it does have its easy-to-find bugs.

Eugenia Wed, 10 Mar 2004 22:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It's a hardware review, yet the only picture is of the OS? Let's see some pictures of the machine! Wed, 10 Mar 2004 23:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? There is a picture of the budget friendly beast here http://linare.zoovy.com/product/00012345678

Interesting tidbit about the memory though...
Memory Support
# One DIMM socket for 168-pin SDRAM memory modules
# Supports integrated 256MB SDRAM onboard

Looks like you can't just pop in an additional 128MB Stick. Wed, 10 Mar 2004 23:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The machine's pictures are available at Linare's website. If you seen that PC there, you've seen mine. There was no reason to waste bandwidth on something that exists already.

Eugenia Wed, 10 Mar 2004 23:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Er, didn't know that (*smacks self in the head)... RH9 and Fedora keeps putting the swap partition at the end... so I sort of just kept it there no matter the distro installed.

That was good to know (yeah, I'm a dumba**)... how much of a performance hit are we talking about? Let's say for an 80 gig, 7200 rpm disk? Thu, 11 Mar 2004 00:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? im sorry.. but isnt Linux supposed to be free and open source? (Lindows, Lycoris.. and other windows contenders even) have a Download.. so where is the download for this? im lookin and im not finding.. Thu, 11 Mar 2004 01:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If the distribution includes proprietary software or artwork, you'd have to strip those out before you can redistribute it. Since this is a very small distribution, no one has done the work to be able to redistribute the distro. Thu, 11 Mar 2004 01:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? if its sooo small.. why is Wal-Mart carrying it? they dont care bout the lil guy. they are all about numbers.. hell.. local artists cant even get the local wal-mart to sell their Cd's.. why would Wal-Mart sell 'little guy' Computers? and how long is long enuf to wait for the download? is there a time limit on how long you can horde open source to yourself before redist' it? if thats the case.. why even release the code.. just allways say 'there is unremovable "proprietary software or artwork" in this distro'.. just my two cents.. (which is about what i will pay any non-slackware distro) ;-) Thu, 11 Mar 2004 03:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I picked up a machine similar to this as a local Frys (Frys is hard to explain if you don't know what it is... think: geek-warehouse-store) for $189 over a year ago...

It has an SiS 630 chipset with no AGP slot, just several PCI slots and a CNR slot (but mine actually had a 56k modem in it!)

builtin 10/100 SiS 900 ethernet
builtin SiS 7018 sound chipset
builtin SiS 630/730 AGP video

Via C3 GigaPro 1.1 processor (runs at ~800 mhz - but is slower than my PII 350)
128mb PC133 RAM (I put 256mb in it immediately that I had lying around)
30gb slow-ass "generic" (excelstor) hard drive (this is a must-upgrade - it ran significantly better with a new 80gb 7200RPM drive)

And the case looks identical...

It came with ThizLinux - which ran like complete dog crap on the machine (I couldn't believe they would even think to ship it this way) - turns out that UDMA (among other things) was turned off in the BIOS and the AGP was set to use 64mb RAM (like Eugenia found)...

I promptly reformatted the beast and installed Windows on it to do side-by-side comparisons against my PII 350 with the actual drivers from SiS that were made for the hardware... REALLY DISAPPOINTING RESULTS...

In any case, the most painful part is that there is no AGP slot - the SiS video is terrible, it doesn't even support enough features to play most newer Windows-based DirectX 8/9 games properly...

It really sucks for alternative OS support (I currently have BeOS R5 running on it with an old PCI Matrox Millenium card I scavenged from another older machine of mine as the primary vid card - runs pretty good with that!)

For anyone curious, the Via C3 GigaPro processors are rubbish - I hear the Via C3 running at 1Ghz is actually decent enough for DVD playback... but otherwise, the only nice thing about the C3s are their lower-power usage and low-heat (you can run 'em with just a big heatsink and no fan if you want)

So, for $189 it's not bad, at least it's usable for something... the Linare machine actually sounds like a much better deal, but I'll avoid buying another computer without an AGP slot (especially with a chipset like SiS where driver support is skimpy) - I find that to be the most horrific thing to deal with unless you're using the machine strictly for Windows and 2D video only. Thu, 11 Mar 2004 03:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Seems to be a descent second PC for the price.
Looks like Linux Desktop is picking up. Thu, 11 Mar 2004 05:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Looking from the specification that PC must be using the ECS K7SOM+ or PCChips 810DLU mobo. you can find more info on this site :
http://www.ecs.com.tw for ECS mobo and
http://www.pcchips.com.tw for PCChips

I know this because I've been using both mobo Thu, 11 Mar 2004 05:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Probably the ECS board - looks like the PCChips boards actually have AGP slots (or maybe the DLU version doesn't and I can't find it on their site)...

ECS currently has an L7SOM Slot A board that fits the specs of the Linare machine... AND... my machine (the crappy Via C3-based box that is almost identical) has an ECS P6VEM3 (in their "On Board CPU" section) - I forgot to mention that before Thu, 11 Mar 2004 06:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >Looking from the specification that PC must be using the ECS K7SOM+ or PCChips 810DLU mobo

The motherboard is actually "Linare" branded. The motherboard's manual is also "Linare". It is not ECS or PCCHips, even if under the "brand name" might be what it is. Thu, 11 Mar 2004 07:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Looks like Linare has done a pretty credible packaging job of the most cheap parts to be found anywhere. Only way to get that kind of price.

I assume that since the case is tiny, the PSU is a 150W tiny PSU like the eMachine types. If so, thats a $70 compusa replacement part if it fails. Nice if those tinies could be had for the $15-20 specials I see on reg ATX psus

But I suspect the HD will be a junker too. By the time the system has been upgraded some to improve things, back to $300-$400 point.

Linare may claim the mobo is theirs, but the little writing on the board usually gives up clues where it came from. There are only so many mobo companies in TW or China

regards. Thu, 11 Mar 2004 13:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? still waiting on the download.. Thu, 11 Mar 2004 18:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "im sorry.. but isnt Linux supposed to be free and open source? (Lindows, Lycoris.. and other windows contenders even) have a Download.. so where is the download for this? im lookin and im not finding.."

GPL software doesn't have to be free in cost. And I think most forms of the GPL just require the source to be released to paying customers. Like someone said above, you could remove certain bits from it and post it online, like you can do with RH, SuSE, Lindows, etc.

As far as shared memory stuff, my BIOS sets an aperture size for the video. If I set it to 64 meg it doesn't take that full memory away from the main memory. It does set some upper bound or something. I have to work on that PC today anyway, guess I will google this aperture size crap and set it right. I do know that I can view my memory and I'm not missing the full 64 meg on win or linux. YMMV.

"I assume that since the case is tiny, the PSU is a 150W tiny PSU like the eMachine types. If so, thats a $70 compusa replacement part if it fails. Nice if those tinies could be had for the $15-20 specials I see on reg ATX psus"

Some of the emachines ones are cheaper. There are some compatible PSU and you might check an emachines hobbyist site. I recall my model can use a $20 to $30 surplus supply (it's an older comp). You'll probably have to get the info from another user, since they aren't sold as "emachines compliant" or whatever. Some users mod (chop up) the case and put in a full size.

Looks like a cool little machine. I will be getting one of the Microtels, cheap dells, or maybe this linare at some point. I wish there were more cheap laptops ... the cheapest linux laptop is over 3.5 times the price of these budget desktops. Fri, 12 Mar 2004 21:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments