Geeks.com sent us for a review an external hard drive enclosure case, the "TVisto Series 3.5" Multimedia HDD Enclosure" (2.5" series also available). But this is not just another hard drive enclosure, but also a multimedia jukebox. And it's running uCLinux, an embedded version of Linux.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-06-28
For a commercial company, it does make sense of sense actually. Points:
1. MacPower, the manufacturer, doesn't necessarily develops the firmware too. In this case, they don't have developers on board to "force" their marketing/sales dept to support Linux as a desktop platform for it.
2. Most Linux distributions don't mount automatically and give the right RW permissions to normal users. This is a major support headache for all similar companies. They simply don't want to deal with it (and I personally would do the same, support people cost too much).
3. Formatting the disk (which is required the first time you put a new drive in it) under Linux is also not a "right-click affair". Again, support costs.
4. The recommended file system to format the drive with is NTFS. Many Linux distros don't come with NTFS pre-installed because of patent issues, so users would have to use either FAT32 (which is problematic with filesizes over 4GB) or HFS+ (which Windows doesn't support -- no other file systems are supported by the firmware).
Member since:
2005-11-29
On the TVisto’s site, systems requirements I noticed it only shows it is for Windows and MAC.
How come no mention of Linux.
It is running Linux, and you would think even if the bigger market is for Windows users, at least a mention of Linux should be appropriate.
This makes no sense.