[luau] Demo Linux PC

Hawaii Linux Institute wp at HawaiiLinux.us
Tue Jun 24 22:24:00 PDT 2003


This message was originally intended for Michael, but I thought the 
community as a whole would benefit from it.

As I mentioned earlier, I will be working with Michael to set up a demo 
Linux PC at McKinley.  Our original thought was, due to McKinley's 
unique student mix, it would be beneficial to have an English lauguage 
based computer that has at least CJK-localized environments.   Red Hat 
fits this bill better than anything anybody could have ever imagined 
(including commercial operating systems such as Windows, of course).  If 
we should have enough Japanese students participating, this demo Linux 
PC will allow me to practice my Japanese.  Furthermore, in conjunction 
with our state's strong desire to attract Chinese tourists, a 
JACK-enabled machine ("JACK" means CJK plus "American English") can also 
become an important selling tool to promote McKinley's adult education 
programs.

I am still deciding on the best software configuration (mainly RH8 vs. 
RH9) for this demo.  The hardware will be VIA KM266A-based ShuttleX 
SK41B2 with Athlon XP 2000, 512 MB DDR, DVD, and a single 17" LCD 
monitor.  For office applications, I couldn't tell much difference if 
any between KM266A and nForce2 based ShuttleX PCs.  However, the former 
is about $150 cheaper.  For one or two machines, this is not much of a 
difference.  But if someone wants to get into Linux business (the best, 
if not the only, way to promote Linux is to have an army of Linux 
vendors), this could mean break or broke.  The KM266A-based ShuttleX PC 
is very quiet, it also allows network booting (though I have not had a 
chance to try).  A DVD drive is included instead of a CD-RW, as I would 
like to see how well DVD movies play on a Linux machine.

It will be at least a while before I bring the final system to 
McKinley.  One of the main reasons is that there are no drivers for the 
sound and video components of the KM266A chipset.  I am currently using 
the the generic VESA driver in RH8.  (For office applications, the VESA 
driver, running at 32 MB, is more than adequate.)  The VESA driver seems 
to be missing from RH9 (as well as from MDK 9.1 and Knoppix 3.2).  From 
the 2.4.21 patch logs, I have noticed quite a few kernel patches 
relating to the KM266 driver.  But VIA has already paid a hefty price 
for not paying full attention to Linux (VIA is losing a lot of market 
share to nVidia).  Anyway, their loss is our gain.  And this should 
teach hardware makers a valuable lesson.

(I must apologize beforehand that I don't read e-mails regularly; plus, 
I am out of town quite a bit.  Once I have had a discussion with 
Michael, I will set up a schedule where I will be at McKinley on a more 
or less regular basis.  If MonMotha is reading this message, I will 
eventually need his help to see whether it is possible to squeeze a 
modified, but almost full-featured, RH distro into a 256 MB flash disk.)




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