Slashdot Mirror
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 $800 cost I can see this one selling pretty well. And they would have a great mobile media system if they added a hardware DivX decoder on top of the hardware DVD decoder. :) And now that the Linux drivers are starting to mature and the sources are finally starting to come out, by the time this is released to the U.S. market it should be a great little Linux laptop."
Via CPU + Linux = Sweet stuff. Seriously, it's about time there was an inexpensive Linux Laptop. I might even consider getting it instead of a new mini-ITX system. Whee!
Check out Got Apex. You can get a full featured 14 or 15 inch-screen Dell for less than 800 bucks when you use the numerous discounts and rebates available. Or even better get a refurbed iBook for a little more.
And I don't even have XVideo, which would speed up decoding (it does a part of divx/dvd decoding in hardware, namely colorspace conversion and scaling). The current VIA mobos have XVideo support in XFree86 CVS, IIRC.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
is how overall performance compares. I can get a refurbished IBM ThinkPad coming off corporate lease with a Pentium III circa 700MHz, and know for a fact that the motherboard is fast. I've seen too many motherboards not able to handle their speed to give it a lot of credence without proving it. Thinkpad, on the other hand, has been consistently rugged and reliable for me.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Very cool. So I can buy a laptop motherboard separate from the laptop itself? So I could, in theory, pick up a cheap(er) used laptop, machine a cool new case from plastic, and roll my own transportable PC?
But I'd like to see a lot more of it. If open source software continues to team up with distributers and hardware manufacturers like this they could be well on their way to being viable M$ competition. If little johnny asks his dad for a computer it's going to be a tough job for M$ to convince johnny's daddy to buy him a windows computer for an extra $200(rough cost of OEM operating system license and office license?) when the linux machine boasts all the same features. M$ has ridden the coattails of every manufacturer in the world shipping a license of Windows/Office with every computer they sell for long enough. Now all they need is to work out a few more kinks and get some advertisement going.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
VIA just came out with a new laptop motherboard
I can't find any info on any motherboard. Everything they have is only about the cpu. Maybe I'm just not seeing it, but can anyone point me to where the VIA site discusses the actual motherboard. I was getting very jazzed thinking that I might be able to purchase a motherboard and use it for some projects (low heat, low power, small form factor, nice).
With all the problems I have with the VIA chipset in my current PC, I'd hesitate before buying a laptop with their motherboard/processor. I'd much rather see nvidia get around to that nForce mobile chipset-- but that probably wouldnt be targeting the low price side of the market.
...an abacus, but I'm not going to use one in an $800 machine.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
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.
blockquote from their site:
I can buy a Mobile Celeron 1.2GHz laptop with USB2, CD-RW/DVD-ROM, 12.x" screen, 256MB, 25GB, with WindowsXP Home pre-installed for $799 at my local Sam's Club. Whatever VIA does better cost about half what's out there now (and it easily could). A unit equipped similar to the one above with everything VIA puts on a mobo with no OS installed for about $500 would be reasonable me thinks.
Try running Linux 2.5 on an nForce. What, no network driver? Well, who needs one of those these days, right? Or even try running *BSD!
I own an nvidia graphics card and am happy with it because some lunatics ported the nvidia driver to the 2.5 kernels. But the nforce users are pretty much lost.
Intel chipsets tend to be well supported as well, but let me mention these: "Winmodem" and "Centrino Wiress LAN". Good luck running OpenBSD on one of those. Apart from that, Intel chipsets are expensive and historically never performed well, especially on notebooks.
If I had to buy a new computer tomorrow, I would only even consider VIA and SiS. Both chipset companies are usually well supported by Linux and BSD, and their hardware is supported as soon as it is on the market. With Intel, you usually have to wait a few years until the hardware is obsolete and then Intel will release some driver under some non-GPL license (see the e100 driver for Linux, which was only recently released as GPL).
VIA and SiS may not be the highest performance chipsets around, but they work well, have absolutely no stability issues (except maybe under Windows) and are well supported. And "well supported" outweighs anything else anyway. I'm too old to run around in circles around nvidia or Intel, begging for even a binary only driver to get my machine to work at all.
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.
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