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VIA Introduces A New Laptop Motherboard
arrasmith writes "It looks like there is going to be an upgrade to that non-expensive $800 Linux laptop. VIA just came out with a new laptop motherboard based on the faster Nehemiah core for the C3. You can get all the specs at the Antaur homepage. If they stay near the $800 cost I can see this one selling pretty well. And they would have a great mobile media system if they added a hardware DivX decoder on top of the hardware DVD decoder. :) And now that the Linux drivers are starting to mature and the sources are finally starting to come out, by the time this is released to the U.S. market it should be a great little Linux laptop."
And I don't even have XVideo, which would speed up decoding (it does a part of divx/dvd decoding in hardware, namely colorspace conversion and scaling). The current VIA mobos have XVideo support in XFree86 CVS, IIRC.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I could find no information on a motherboard, just the processor chip.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Via is not as anal as Intel about their specs. Linux already has working support for the random number generator (their crypto extension), CPU frequency scaling (their SpeedStep/PowerNow equivalent), you aren't stuck with some proprietary and unsupported Intel wireless chipset, their USB, Firewire, Ethernet and IDE chips are proven technology and well supported by Linux, ...
and I'm told there is even support for their hardware MPEG-2 decoder now in mplayer (haven't actually tried it yet). All in all this is some sweet hardware, and I'd much rather buy Via than Intel chipsets. With Intel chipsets, if something is unsupported, you are basically on your own. In contrast, Via has actually come forward on the mplayer mailing list and asked for people willing to help add support for their MPEG-2 decoder extension. What else could you possible ask for?
Personally, I don't care about 10% chipset performance as long as I know Linux works on the damn thing. Just google for the troubles people are having running Linux on their Centrino notebooks and you will see what I mean.
By the way: I can play full-screen DVD and DivX even on my (older and supposedly much inferior) 933 MHz Ezra C3, with AC3 sound. It's just a question of the correct compiler switches. These CPUs are not as fast as an Athlon or a Pentium M, and I wouldn't want to transcode a DVD to MPEG-4 on them, but they are fast enough to do real work like software development. If these become available in Germany, I'll buy one.
Lindows is based on Debian. As far as I know, you should have no problem taking a Lindows notebook, removing all the packages that contain the strings "lindows" or "xandros", editing sources.list to point to your favorite Debian mirror, and doing apt-get dist-upgrade.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
HP notebook has a 15 inch screen, VIA a 12.1 display (both have the same max resolution).
HP notebook has an Athlon XP 1.8 (1.5 gig clock frequency) cpu, the VIA notebook has a much more limited VIA C3 933mhz cpu.
The HP uses PC2100 notebook memory and supports up to 1 gig. The VIA uses PC133 memory and supports up to 768 meg. Both come with 256 meg standard.
The HP came with a 30 gig hard drive, the VIA comes with a 20 gig drive.
The HP uses an ATI video chip and can share up to 64 memory. The VIA uses a Savage video chip that can share 32 meg.
The HP came with a combo DVD reader/CD-RW writer; the VIA lists the CD drive as optional!
I'll give credit to the VIA in that it has USB 2 and firewire; the model of HP notebook I'm using does not have firewire (it is an option) and as far as I know USB 2 is not available (it has USB 1.1, 2 outlets).
Also to the VIA's credit is that it has a compact flash slot as well as a PCMCIA slot, the HP has only PCMCIA.
Both have a LAN connector, but additionally the HP has a built in modem (handy on a notebook when you travel) and SVGA video out (as well as the normal mouse and VGA out porrts). The VIA has no mention of a modem or a video out connector.
HP also threw in a free (after rebate) USB floppy drive, neither system comes with a floppy.
The VIA is much lighter, so if you're looking for a light notebook rather than a PDA it might be a good choice, but as a general notebook you can get a lot more of a notebook than this even after paying the Microsoft tax (the HP comes with XP home). The HP does support Linux just fine; I use Knoppix with it all the time. Only conflict I've seen is with the free wireless PCMCIA card that was thrown in the deal, and the VIA doesn't come with wireless hardware, so if you get a wireless pcmcia card that will work with Linux on the VIA it will likely work on the HP as well.
So it's good to hear that people are offering Linux notebooks, but I would much rather see HP offer their notebooks with Linux or no OS at all and take what they give Microsoft off the price. Just because VIA is offering a notebook with Linux does not make it a good deal.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Surprise surprise, Via has just released drivers with support for DRI and all the other goodies...
From: Tim Roberts <timr@probo.com>
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2003 11:32:34 -0700
Subject: [Savage40] Better Driver Out There
To: savage40 <savage40@probo.probo.com>
Reply-To: Tim Roberts <timr@probo.com>
Return-path: savage40-bounces@probo.com
Well, folks, it appears that my Savage driver is now a LONG ways from the state
of the art. I am no longer "da man".
Unbeknownst to me, VIA/S3 have been quietly bulking up their snapshot of the
Savage driver. Recently, they were persuaded to release their driver to the
world in source form:
http://www.linux.org.uk/~alan/S3.zip
I have not tried to compile this yet, but based on a quick perusal of the
source code, it looks like it:
* Supports all of the Savage chips
* Supports video4linux for videoport/zoomvideo
* Supports the Chrontel TV part on ProSavageDDR motherboards
* Supports MPEG motion compensation acceleration (XvMC)
and (drum roll, please):
* Supports DRI and OpenGL
They have made so many changes that it is almost impossible for me to determine
whether all of my recent fixes are in their code, but given the thoroughness I
see in other places, I suspect that they are.
So, if you have the inclination and ability to build from source, it would be
well worth your trouble to give this a try. If you do build binaries for
either 4.2.0 or 4.3.0, let me know and I will announce it to this list.
--
- Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
If you read above, the problem is weight. A comparable sub-notebook that weighs 2.9 pounds is extremely expensive. And yes, weight matters! ----------------- God, is that you?
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
The audio is working well (except record in OSS) now, and thats sort of my fault because I have the docs to fix it. The CPU power management works a treat. The firewire apparently works, USB definitely works. I've not explored the consumer IR port.
On the X side 2D works (accelerated) as does TV out. VIA sent me a code drop fairly recently which includes XFree 4.2 3D support and kernel side DRI modules, as well as further Xv overlay (but not the mpeg2 engine). Testing that hit a problem on 1600x1200 but once that is sorted it'll get pushed upstream.
The 3D needs a couple of people with the time to work through the Mesa changes from XFree4.2->4.3 and update the 3D driver code to make it work again. (or use Xfree 4.2 8))
The 3D stuff is all in the DRI project CVS for the interested, as is the savage 3D stuff they released at the same time - although that also needs further work.
Alan