Chinese Company Produces $150 Linux PC

srinravi writes to mention an Ars Technica article about another ambitious 'inexpensive computer' project. A Chinese manufacturer, YellowSheepRiver, is aiming to make available a $150 Linux PC built with inexpensive hardware components. From the article: "Urging potential customers to 'Say no to Wintel,' YellowSheepRiver is devoted to using its own Linux distribution and hardware designed and manufactured by Chinese companies. YellowSheepRiver hopes to close the "digital divide" by making computer technology available to the Chinese public at an affordable price. The Municator, which comes with 256MB of RAM, uses a unique 64-bit CPU with an instruction set based on a subset of the MIPS architecture. Designed by a Chinese company called BLX, the the cheap chip is clocked at 400 or 600MHZ and supposedly provides performance comparable to that of an Intel P3."

Comments

Its a bunch of crap

[abhinavkaiser]

With that kind of configuration, we will be going back to the 1990s. It is not worth 150 bucks. If you pay 200 dollars more, you could get a emachines desktop computer with the latest technology.

Re:Its a bunch of crap

[Opportunist]

With or without DRM? That's the key question here, not the price.

I'd prefer to pay 300 bucks for a P3 that is mine over paying 150 bucks for a P6 that isn't under my control.

(Yawn)

[danwesnor]

I'm tired of seeing these el-cheapo computers heralded as an achievement. X Box costs $150, PS2 is $130. Both of those systems could run linux probably as well as or better than this box.

Ambitious

[suv4x4]

another ambitious 'inexpensive computer' project

You know, purely based on context, the meaning of the word "ambitious" starts shifting to a new meaning of "brave but clueless".

Why would I need a computer based on non-Intel chip for? Is there any software for it? The article says we'll do it to say no to WinTel. I need to buy a $150 worthless piece of hardware to say no to WinTel.

Are they targeting kindergardeners or something?

That's like selling cheap Internet that's however not Internet so you can't connect to any site or anything.

They claim their chip performs like P3, that kinda doesn't matter since what will I benchmark it with. Photoshop? 3DSMax? AutoCAD? Ah no, none of them will run on an exotic 64-bit chip under Linux.

They run on a WinTel...

Every opportunity has risks. The future is here.

[twitter]

There is a danger that GNU/Linux will get a bad name because it mostly installed on very cheap systems.

Not if they work. Unless the hardware is complete crap, it will work. The same factories are already making reliable electronic devices, including PCs that everyone else rebrands. If they don't work, the reputation will be cured by the next $100 device that does work.

This is just the first of the cheap machines. There will be many more and the price point won't support anything but free software. As long as they don't have DRM dongels built in, all sorts of things can be made with them.

imagine Ubuntu on all Dell, HP ... systems.

I can do that myself already but I don't unless I haul it out of the trash or a used computer shop.

Those major brands have major problems and repair records show that people are happier with cheaper hardware. While 3/4 of all PCs are white boxes, the majority of computers that show up at the computer store are major brand. It may be that major brands are brought to the computer store because people think their computer is worth repairing, where the white box owner just buys a new one. In any case, the legions of people working on both home and office PCs indicates a serious reliability problem.

Dell, HP and others will follow or die.

Re:CeBIT 2006 Demo

[suv4x4]

here's a demo of the product.

Oh, good, good. Now that we know it's not x86 compatible or Windows compatible so the majority of ordinary people can't do anything useful on it, like run Word or Excel, it also doesn't look like a computer.

It looks like a huge cellphone battery. Except you don't have that big of a cellphone to fit it in.

Re:Not that cheap: don't even have to factor curre

[kiatoa]

Someday it may have to have a Chinese CPU in it

I don't know what it is but when I saw "Chinese CPU" I just couldn't help somehow imagining a CPU with asian physical features and trouble handling the letter "r" in strings. Someone with a talent for art could have a field day with that line.

No, it's not that slow.

[twitter]

Is it so slow that when you watch american kung fu flicks (chuck norris) they automagically get the "out of sync english voiceover" effect?

Only if Bill Gates tries to port Windoze and WMV to it. I've never had sync problems with xine like that, even on a 233 MHz PII. This machine should work as well as a PIII and that's good enough to play movies and do other things at the same time. That S video will be nice to have.