ASUS Motherboard Ships With Embedded Linux

Michael writes "ASUSTek has introduced the P5E3 Deluxe motherboard, which in addition to using Intel's new X38 Chipset also features a soon-to-be-announced technology by DeviceVM. SplashTop is an instant-on Linux desktop environment that is embedded onto this motherboard. Within seconds of turning on the P5E3 Deluxe motherboard, you can boot into this Linux environment that currently features a Mozilla-based web browser and the Skype VoIP client. Browser and VoIP settings can be saved and there are plans for the device to provide new features and support via updates. At Phoronix is a review of this $360 motherboard embedded with Linux and a web browser."

Comments

And before you ask...

[Eco-Mono]

YES, IT DOES RUN LINUX.

Re:And before you ask...

[richie2000]

YES, IT DOES RUN LINUX. But which distro? ;-)

/ Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...

Re:And before you ask...

[thatskinnyguy]

"SplashTop" It's in the summary. Discovery is opening your eyes to what is already there.

Re:And before you ask...

[stevenvi]

But which distro? ;-)

As the summary said, SplashTop, a distro specifically designed for this purpose.

Re:And before you ask...

[Rinisari]

It's so ironic that parent is marked Redundant.

Re:And before you ask...

[the_humeister]

Hear that "whoosh" sound? It's the sound of the joke going over the mod's head.

Re:And before you ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear that "whoosh" sound? It's the sound of the Slashdot humor going down the toilet.

Re:And before you ask...

[Broken scope]

Wouldn't that be a more distinctive, flushing sound?

Re:And before you ask...

[Lije Baley]

Whoever moderated this "redundant" needs to be meta-moderated "retarded".

Re:And before you ask...

[aichpvee]

Vacuum toilet.

Re:And before you ask...

[Broken scope]

Wouldn't that be a -fwoosh-?

Re:And before you ask...

[Dunbal]

slashdot has been in the toilet for years. Yet we floaters don't mind.

Re:And before you ask...

[ChunderDownunder]

To be fair, clicking on the URL gave me a login prompt saying restricted access before 10/10/07.

Slashdotted or vaporware?

Re:And before you ask...

[Whiteox]

Does it run Vista?

Re:And before you ask...

[mikael]

From the Top 40 demotivational posters

Retard - we all know one

Re:And before you ask...

[RegTooLate]

They should also make it boot as a virtual machine inside other OS's through some standard.

Re:And before you ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is redundant. I've heard the same lame joke at least a dozen times. Far less than the "Does it run Linux?" joke, but it's still stupid copycat humor and should be modded out of existence.

Re:And before you ask...

[mrsteveman1]

With the new Slashpot3000 its more of a Xooooosh sound

Re:And before you ask...

[apostrophesemicolon]

..but does it blend?

Re:And before you ask...

[indiejade]

Dyslexic wording in the headline? It took a moment for me to get that the title of this was *not* "ASUS Mothership Boards with Embedded Linux". Tired brain = dyslexic processing.

interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years ago, while browsing around the library downtown, I
had to take a piss. As I entered the john a big beautiful all-American
football hero type, about twenty-five, came out of one of the booths.
I stood at the urinal looking at him out of the corner of my eye as he
washed his hands. He didn't once look at me. He was "straight" and
married - and in any case I was sure I wouldn't have a chance with
him.

As soon as he left I darted into the booth he'd vacated,
hoping there might be a lingering smell of shit and even a seat still
warm from his sturdy young ass. I found not only the smell but the
shit itself. He'd forgotten to flush. And what a treasure he had left
behind. Three or four beautiful specimens floated in the bowl. It
apparently had been a fairly dry, constipated shit, for all were fat,
stiff, and ruggedly textured. The real prize was a great feast of turd
- a nine inch gastrointestinal triumph as thick as a man's wrist.

I knelt before the bowl, inhaling the rich brown fragrance and
wondered if I should obey the impulse building up inside me. I'd
always been a heavy rimmer and had lapped up more than one little
clump of shit, but that had been just an inevitable part of eating ass
and not an end in itself. Of course I'd had jerk-off fantasies of
devouring great loads of it (what rimmer hasn't), but I had never done
it. Now, here I was, confronted with the most beautiful five-pound
turd I'd ever feasted my eyes on, a sausage fit to star in any fantasy
and one I knew to have been hatched from the asshole of the world's
handsomest young stud.

Why not? I plucked it from the bowl, holding it with both
hands to keep it from breaking. I lifted it to my nose. It smelled
like rich, ripe limburger (horrid, but thrilling), yet had the
consistency of cheddar. What is cheese anyway but milk turning to shit
without the benefit of a digestive tract?

I gave it a lick and found that it tasted better then it
smelled. I've found since then that shit nearly almost does.

I hesitated no longer. I shoved the fucking thing as far into
my mouth as I could get it and sucked on it like a big brown cock,
beating my meat like a madman. I wanted to completely engulf it and
bit off a large chunk, flooding my mouth with the intense, bittersweet
flavor. To my delight I found that while the water in the bowl had
chilled the outside of the turd, it was still warm inside. As I chewed
I discovered that it was filled with hard little bits of something I
soon identified as peanuts. He hadn't chewed them carefully and they'd
passed through his body virtually unchanged. I ate it greedily,
sending lump after peanutty lump sliding scratchily down my throat. My
only regret was the donor of this feast wasn't there to wash it down
with his piss.

I soon reached a terrific climax. I caught my cum in the
cupped palm of my hand and drank it down. Believe me, there is no more
delightful combination of flavors than the hot sweetness of cum with
the rich bitterness of shit.

Afterwards I was sorry that I hadn't made it last longer. But
then I realized that I still had a lot of fun in store for me. There
was still a clutch of virile turds left in the bowl. I tenderly fished
them out, rolled them into my handkerchief, and stashed them in my
briefcase. In the week to come I found all kinds of ways to eat the
shit without bolting it right down. Once eaten it's gone forever
unless you want to filch it third hand out of your own asshole. Not an
unreasonable recourse in moments of desperation or simple boredom.

I stored the turds in the refrigerator when I was not using
them but within a week they were all gone. The last one I held in my
mouth without chewing, letting it slowly dissolve. I had liquid shit
trickling down my throat for nearly four hours. I must have had six
orgasms in the process.

I often think of that lovely young guy dropping solid gold out
of his sweet, pink asshole every day, never knowing what joy it could,
and at least once did, bring to a grateful shiteater.

Re:interesting

[kurt555gs]

Here we have an article about linux, and there is this post from an obvious Windows user. Where is the Slashdot of old when all we had to worry about was the occasional GNAA or goatse post.

Those were the days.

Re:interesting

[JoshJ]

It's interesting, actually. Pro-Linux posts get modded troll and flamebait with some regularity now. I haven't been a very Slashdotter for a long time, but the Microsoft fanboys (shills/astroturfers?) definitely have a much larger influence on moderation than they used to. They've deliberately attacked people that were consistently posting pro-linux stuff: just look at what they did to twitter, whose account is currently sitting in negative karma hell after having ACs copypaste the same exact diatribe at him for months. I got sick of seeing it and I'm not even the guy they were targeting.

Eventually, it's become more and more obvious that there are people whose sole purpose for BEING on Slashdot is to simply bash Linux even though Slashdot is by its very nature a Linux website. Why they find it enjoyable or interesting or even a worthwhile use of their time is beyond me- I simply don't see why anyone who doesn't use Linux would come to Slashdot, load a Linux article, and mindlessly bash Linux. Why not just play some of Windows games that you like so much, you know?

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I simply don't see why anyone who doesn't use Linux would come to Slashdot, load a Linux article, and mindlessly bash Linux.

Somebody's got to put food on the table.

Re:interesting

[ozmanjusri]

I got sick of seeing it and I'm not even the guy they were targeting.

Judging by the downmods, you are now...

But you're right. Microsoft marketing drones have been gaming tech site comment systems for a while now. Any discussion of Linux, GPL3, ODF or any other topic which threatens their monopoly will be swamped with red herring and troll posts.

It's one of the more disgraceful features of the company. They're willing to undermine anything - ISO standards, US DOJ, open discussion, etc, etc - if there's an advantage to them.

Re:interesting

[JoshJ]

If anything, it's the Jesusbots targeting me, not the Microsoft shills, as I really don't comment much on Linux-related stuff. The Microsoft stuff is shameful, but I haven't really been targeted by it directly. I just find it amusing that they're trying to do this on a site which not only started out as a Linux site but is also owned by OSTG. Seriously, what's the point? I can understand going it to other tech sites, because there at least there's a chance of success, but doing it to Slashdot is like trying to put out a volcano by pissing on it.

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

you guys do know you're complaining about linux bashing and modding down of pro linux posts on Slashdot in reply to a post about a guy having gay sex and coprophagia? Location, anyone?

Re:interesting

[TheRaven64]

You know, just because something is pro-Linux, doesn't mean it's not a troll. Twitter is a case in point; most of his posts were obvious trolls, while the better ones were non-obvious trolls.

Some of us are just bored with this whole Linux fanboy idea that Linux is always the best tool for the job. It isn't. Free/Net/OpenBSD, eCos, OpenSolaris and even OS X are often a much better solution for any given problem. Linux has no grown large enough that there are a lot of people who try to fit it into every possible niche, including those for which it is completely unsuited and shouting down anyone who suggests a better option. We moderated down the MCSEs for this kind of attitude with Windows, and we'll mod down the Linux fanboys when they display it with Linux.

Straying back on topic, this is a pretty neat idea. It's a shame Be Inc didn't last a bit longer, because this is exactly the kind of thing BeIA would have been ideal for. That said, it seems more of a gimmick than something useful. Considering how cheaply you can buy a 1GB CF card and CF to IDE adaptor, you could probably create a system like this yourself more cheaply. It's not like this is aimed at Joe Public, because he doesn't buy motherboards, just finished systems.

Re:interesting

[chawly]

The editors should do something about this - the same crap day after day.

Re:interesting

[Dan100]

It's interesting, actually. Pro-Linux posts get modded troll and flamebait with some regularity now. I haven't been a very Slashdotter for a long time, but the Microsoft fanboys (shills/astroturfers?) definitely have a much larger influence on moderation than they used to.

Maybe the site is just getting more balanced, and fanboy trolls/shills/astroturfers of any "side" are getting modded down.

Re:interesting

[setagllib]

You know the funniest part? That OSTG makes money by hosting Windows Server 2003 advertisements which spread FUD about Linux.

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Missing your tin foil hat buddy? I can sell you one for only $0.20 CAN

Re:interesting

[superslacker87]

That's what? $0.10 USD?

Re:interesting

[GalionTheElf]

The fact that you take twitter seriously says enough. This is is a guy who uses sockpuppets to peddle his lies around , in plain sight even, but still you'd prefer to think that MS has a "troll slashdot" department.

For the record, I've used Linux on the desktop for a couple of years, on and off before that, and I mod Twitter/Erris down any chance I get. Why? Because he's harming more than helping. Whatever his intentions are, lies and half-truths are never the way to achieve anything. Yes, even if the other guy is doing it.

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah,which is what, about twice what your mom's stank pussy is worth? I should know. I broad dicked that bitch twenty times last night. I mean seeing as I was down to my last US dollar, I got 20 sloppy worthless fucks until I finally wore it completely out. Oh, just so you know why your toes are sticking together, I had to use your sock as a nut rag. My bad.

Re:interesting

[Kizeh]

I have nothing against Linux, and think the product is pretty interesting, but the review was bad. It was not at all well written with a lot stylistic and grammatical errors, it gloosed over most technical aspects in the most superficial of fashions, and the tone of the review was very biased; any shortcomings were either excused or ignored. What draft of N was the wireless? Will it support draft 2? Will ASUS guarantee it can be upgraded to the N-standard when it comes out? Which of the two frequency bands did it work in? Did the integrated linux support WPA 2? There are a lot of very basic questions that were never touched, many of which could result in this motherboard being pretty useless.

Re:interesting

[Spazntwich]

Idle speculation gets modded insightful now? For shame.

Logical fallacies and other such non-arguments contain no insight by their very nature.

Re:interesting

[Slashcrap]

They've deliberately attacked people that were consistently posting pro-linux stuff: just look at what they did to twitter, whose account is currently sitting in negative karma hell after having ACs copypaste the same exact diatribe at him for months.

I wouldn't touch Windows with a shitty stick and yet I have expended many mod points modding down that little fuck over the last few months. He is clearly a troll trying to make anybody who is genuinely (and sanely) pro-Linux look stupid by association. I'm glad he is being picked on and I will continue to help the effort whenever I get a chance.

I got sick of seeing it and I'm not even the guy they were targeting.

The fact that you even felt the need to mention that makes me suspect that you are in fact the same person. Although in this case maybe you got an adult to write the post for you.

Re:interesting

[kurt555gs]

Actually I do think that M$ has a troll department. Just check on Monster.com for the listings

Re:interesting

[DigiShaman]

Microsoft marketing drones have been gaming tech site comment systems for a while now. Any discussion of Linux, GPL3, ODF or any other topic which threatens their monopoly will be swamped with red herring and troll posts.

No doubt you have your Microsoft fanatics perusing topics regarding Linux. But, are you serious about Microsoft employees doing the modding? I find that very hard to believe as it sounds too conspiratorial.

If what you say is true, than there's a solution. Slashdot could block the IP ranges belonging to all of Microsoft's branch offices including the main one in Redmond. What I mean by block, is to flag and prevent these IPs from modding users posting in topics marked "Linux". Technically, it could be done. Getting the correct IP ranges however, would be the difficult task.

Yes, I am advocating censorship for astroturfers. If a Microsoft employee still wants to mod a Linux topic, they can damn well do it from home if they still feel that passionate about it.

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft fanboys? I've always thought it was the Apple fanboys, who don't seem to like the competition in the "non-Windows" arena. Just look at the hostility when someone brings up OGG support, or says they prefer Linux over OSX on their Mac, or when someone critizes the closedness of Apple products.

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a long-time lurker who reads this Slashdot site assiduously. The pro-Microsoft astroturfing started very suddenly and all at once at a very defineable time (I didn't log the exact date, but it was a year or two ago, very noticeable, an almost overnight change). There is no doubt whatsoever that it is a *very* calculated move ... one so calculated, that on the contrary, rather than seeming "conspiratorial," the odds are extremly doubtful that it isn't precipitated by the organization itself.

Re:interesting

[wytcld]

[Have we gone off-topic, or meta? Is meta allowed here? We'll see:]

Could it be part of a larger plan? As an old Linux hand, I've noticed the gatekeeping on the Bugzillas for a number of major OS projects has been lately taken over by kids who if they aren't being paid my MS, should be. These punks treat bug reports as if they were attacks on the date-ability of their sisters, marking them "bogus" or otherwise closing them before they've even taken the time to understand what's being reported. Often they're tossing "clever" insults at the reporters at the same time. This is what it now means to be running "peer reviewed" code: you review it, you find real flaws, and some teenager whose worked his way into being a Bugzilla gatekeeper rejects the report because, well, you're not his peer. Obviously.

So how have we ended up with kids whose destiny would have used to be manning the complaint desks at Ma Bell in key positions to cripple the quality of OS projects - often projects which directly compete with MS products? </snark>

My real point: MS doesn't have to hire shills. We're doing it to ourselves. Somehow the values that were so pervasive in OS even a few years ago haven't been passed on to the latest wave of newcomers. That's not just showing up on /., but at the fringe of major OS initiatives, where the newcomers take up beginner's posts sorting the mail, as it were - and delight in tearing up half of it and throwing it in the trash. What's wrong with kids these days?

Re:interesting

[nuzak]

> Idle speculation gets modded insightful now?

Idle speculation like vague allegations of an astroturfing conspiracy? Maybe moderators would just like the rabid fanbois to grow the hell up.

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus has bots?!?

Re:interesting

[grcumb]

I'm a long-time lurker who reads this Slashdot site assiduously. The pro-Microsoft astroturfing started very suddenly and all at once at a very defineable time (I didn't log the exact date, but it was a year or two ago, very noticeable, an almost overnight change). There is no doubt whatsoever that it is a *very* calculated move ... one so calculated, that on the contrary, rather than seeming "conspiratorial," the odds are extremly doubtful that it isn't precipitated by the organization itself.

Yep, it's possible to pick out the talking points that the astro-turfers get handed for a particular topic. A few old chestnuts:

• 'Damned if they do, damned if they don't.' (Hypocrites pick on MS when it doesn't do something, then pick on it again when it does.)
• 'Slashbot', 'groupthink' and 'fanboi'. (This last one has unfortunately got some traction among the rest of the community.)
• Testimonials: 'I administer Linux systems, but $WINDOWS is my desktop of choice....', 'I love Mac/Linux, but....'
• Linux doesn't support X, ergo no Linux for anyone, anywhere!
• Deliberate misconstruction of 'Standards', 'Free' and 'Open'.

It would be amusing if it weren't such a pain. The worst part, though, is that they used to spend all their time modding their comrades up, but now they've moved on to modding 'inconvenient' posts down.

Re:interesting

[NotZed]

Anybody working a bugzilla for a popular project for long enough will be turned into a people hater. Its just the nature of the job. And with so many more greedy selfish bastards out there who want everything for nothing, who submit low quality reports with unreasonable demands, it's a lot worse than it once was.

You know, compared to back when the reporter was at least capable of writing a patch.

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

The US dollar is worth less than the Canadian dollar these days.

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like a class-A moron.
I'm sure there are Micrsosoft employees that read and post to slashdot just like employees of any other company. And the earn mod points in the process. It's very sad and petty of you to suggest that fellow slashdotters be banned from modding simply because you don't like their employer.

I'm sure there are employees of Apple, Red Hat, IBM, Sun, that post things and mod other posts in accordance to their own points of view as well, and those points of view would be naturally influenced by their place of employ.

Don't forget, slashdot itself is owned by "VA Linux" (well, before they evolved into SourceForce Inc), so is naturally a pro-Linux site. And as consequence, the stories that are accepted here are generally anti-Microsoft, or spun to be such in the summaries. This site also uses anti-Microsoft icons for its "Microsoft" and "Windows" topics, the only negative icons used for any topics on the site. In the midst of all that, you can't handle a handful of pro-Microsoft posts/mods? You are truly sad.

If Microsoft employees should be banned from modding topics, then employees of pro-Linux companies should be banned from modding as well.

One more piece is needed ...

[DavidRawling]

All it's missing is iSCSI support for it to be a diskless yet completely functional desktop. Central storage (and upgrade) of apps, documents and settings, just by mounting the appropriate partitions from a large, fast shared disk array.

Re:One more piece is needed ...

[Anonymous Coward]

iscsi? dedicated volume per machine? instead of using good, old file level access, and mount volumes by NFS?

I think I speak for all of us when I say....

[SpectreBlofeld]

...Whoa. That is wicked cool. Now, make a lower-end one with cheaper hardware.

Re:I think I speak for all of us when I say....

[Antique Geekmeister]

And switch to LinuxBIOS or OpenBIOS, instead of that 5-minute boot time mandating collection of Phoenix and AMI hackery that is most modern BIOS's. Simply improving the boot time of low end and high end machines will save power and improve uptime noticeably, and make it one heck of a lot easier to tell the BIOS "do not use PXE boot in my secure environment".

Re:I think I speak for all of us when I say....

[H3g3m0n]

In order to switch to Linux BIOS is would need to be able to boot windows correctly first (last I check there where some BIOS calls that stopped most newer Windows from booting correctly).

It would also need a nice VESA/ASCII config menu and bootscreen. I think if that happened manufacturers might take a serious look at it. It might really happen if they can add suport for full resolutions with animations and such but that would require drivers for most videocards to get full resolutions (1920x1200 isn't suported under VESA 3.0, I don't think most widescreen resolutions are). If bulletproof Xorg was avilable at boot that would be awesome but its too large (There is KDrive but thats VESA so defats the purpose). Maybe just making it prwdy and forgetting about the resolutions or letting people select them. Then there is the problem of weather or not loading hardware that much in the BIOS will allow windows and other OSes to use it.

It is a cool idea but it needs some fixing of the rough edges and vendor support, but then again so does most open source software around today. If a large Mobo manufacturer where to start supporting it, adding in hardware support then we might get somewhere but even the Mobo manufactures will have problems with Chipset manufacturers and other component makers requiring NDAs.

Gigabyte apparently did have some partial support for LinuxBIOS on one of their Mobos so maybe they are starting to look at it. Also OpenBIOS has been used previously as the primary BIOS by at least one motherboard (Might have been either ASUS or GBYTE I forget).

Use?

[Kawahee]

What's the point? All it can do is surf the internet and make phone calls. You can't save anything from the internet and you can't mount external media, making it's backup/restore functionality near zip. The author also laments the lack of media playback.

To me it would be much more logical for a user just to have Linux installed on their hard drive with full functionality. Where's the use in a crippled OS on a motherboard?

Re:Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

i guess if all you need in a PC is the internet, then you're set...

however it should also include Pidgin, and after support for external drives, maybe a music and video player

throw in built in ability to play DVDs using the deCSS library, and you've got a computer that has a complete backup system in case your hard drive dies, and i suppose even there no need to have another operating system.

ok i supposed by that point you've got simply an OS installed on something besides the hard drive. oh well, it was an interesting thought :)

Re:Use?

[TheGratefulNet]

I'm building a HTPC and I want it to be diskless, or at least no spinning disks. it has 1 fan for the whole pc, so far and if I can eliminate a spindle in the drive and make it solid state, that's ideal.

even more ideal is instant boot TO linux.

ultimate: being able to mount samba shares and playback HD content (normal .mpg is fine with me, in HD size) and send to dvi and spdif locally. if you can be 100% fanless and instant on and do all that, I'll pay MORE than its worth. the synergy of all that would be worth it.

I will look at all solutions that offer a way to avoid a spinning disk drive. for a bedroom or quiet room HTPC, yup, I sure will.

Re:Use?

[jamesh]

well... if it had xfs_repair on it, it could save me a lot of mucking around trying to repair the filesystem on an unbootable system (at home), like I did this morning.

The same result could be achieved with a bootable Disk on Chip though.

Re:Use?

[mlts]

I'd like it to have xen, VMWare ESX Server (though would add to the cost) or some VM technology that works with Windows, and support the graphics drivers. Then, I could have an install of Windows just for gaming, one for web browsing, and Linux for general work, and if the web browsing instance gets hit by a new type of malware attack, it won't affect anything else.

Re:Use?

[Provocateur]

What's the point?

Instant-on. You've never experienced it, have you? Think of the possibilities.

You: Like what, instant-off?

*slap*

Re:Use?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

What's the point? All it can do is surf the internet and make phone calls. Surf the internet from a read-only OS. No worries about trojans or key-loggers. Seems like it would be an ideal way to do online-banking and other sensitive types of activities without worry that your system was compromised.

Re:Use?

[dch24]

Just brainstorming some possibilities for a diskless HTPC:

• I googled "diskless htpc". This looks promising. It doesn't have details, though.
• Boot from a linux install on a USB thumb drive.
• Boot from a "Persistent Live USB" (or google for things like "casper" and "casper-rw")
• Netboot (PXE boot), and set up an NFS root or SMB root (not sure if SMB root has been done before)
• Netboot or boot from USB, and run from a ramdrive root. Then even if network goes down, system still has basic functionality (net being down is more of an issue on a home network and an always-on HTPC)

The other issue is the instant-on behavior. I looked at this a while ago when I was installing a uATX motherboard in my car. I'd say the biggest problem is the time it takes for the BIOS to POST. I timed it at 7 sec. Even when I had my kernel booting in 2 sec. and a GUI loaded in 2 sec. (initng, not loading X, small root partition), the BIOS was taking way too long.

I'm waiting for better LinuxBIOS and kexec support.

Re:Use?

[stranger_to_himself]

Presumably its good for web applications like those Google Apps or whatever they're called so if you use them to work then you've got all the functionality you need.

Re:Use?

[RAMMS EIN]

``What's the point? All it can do is surf the internet and make phone calls.''

Yeah, that's completely useless.

Re:Use?

[cheater512]

I'd assume this motherboard would have something similar to LinuxBIOS to speed it up.

Re:Use?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Where does it say no external media? Unless I'm overlooking something USB is fine for storage for some things, for others you could store things on the network. For example a home theater pc would be fine with loading movies from any machine on your lan and then displaying them on the no moving parts machine out in the living room thats running quiet and lean.

FWIW, I run linux on my linksys router using USB for storage, it does plenty of useful tasks without ide/scsi/traditional external storage.

I also have linux on my nintendo DS to work as a dumb terminal to get into my router and attach my irc session. Still has storage(access to my SD card), but doesn't really need it.

I'd also love this for recovering the machine during disk errors.

Re:Use?

[Joce640k]

All you need now is a copy of aMSN and you've got a complete system for cybercafes. If you could squeeze in OpenOffice as well you'd have a PC which does everything that a decent percentage of PC owners use their PCs for - and it's instant-on.

It's amazing what $5 of flash memory can do.

If this becomes a trend then Microsoft should be very scared.

Re:Use?

[ozmanjusri]

If this becomes a trend then Microsoft should be very scared.

They are.

That's why their marketing drones spend so much time trolling in these stories.

Re:Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sure beats booting to BASIC on failure to load drive.

Re:Use?

[TheThiefMaster]

My Asus M2N SLI Deluxe motherboard posts in under 2 seconds.

When I was still using a CRT, the first thing I saw after turning the pc on was grub, halfway through the 10s countdown. Even with my new 22" TFT it's rare for me to even catch a glimpse of the motherboard's POST (or the splash screen covering it anyway). I can be in Windows or Ubuntu within 30s of pressing the power button.

This is much better than a few years ago when my win2k install broke and started taking half an hour to load.

Re:Use?

[Ash-Fox]

throw in built in ability to play DVDs using the deCSS library, and you've got a computer that has a complete backup system in case your hard drive dies, and i suppose even there no need to have another operating system.

Just set the region code on your DVD drive or get one of those multi-region DVD drives. You don't need that library.

Re:Use?

[gr8dude]

I wouldn't promote this as THE most secure way to do online stuff. After all, besides keyloggers and spyware we still have sniffers that can be running elsewhere in the network and monitor the traffic; there is potential for man-in-the-middle attacks (if weak protocols are used), etc.

Re:Use?

[wishmechaos]

It's not read only -- you can save your settings, so presumably there's some way to screw it up. If it's more secure it's because you're just running a really obscure platform.

Re:Use?

[datajack]

You really want to be checking out ITX motherboards then. Running low-powered CPUs with a small form-factor means they doin't look too out of place alongside the TV :)
Slap mythtv on a server and net-boot minimyth to the ITX box and you are onto a winner. I run that here and love it.

Re:Use?

[DingerX]

Err... Use?

This is one of them '38 Mobos. Top-of-the-line. It has all kinds of other fancy bits that can't be used yet either. But think of it:

A $360 motherboard targets two groups: 1. the price-insensitive freaks who think they'll be getting the best of everything if they shell out a ton of cash, and 2. serious overclockers/hardware hackers/tech geeks.

Most people in both groups will find it completely useless, right up there with the fourth SATA channel. But some of group (1) will show it off as part of their interminable "look at my toys" spiel they suffer upon visiting males and females; and some of group (2) will look at that, and figure out that it's effectively a dual-boot BIOS with most of the hooks already there, and a second OS in flash memory. Some of them might even figure out a way to "break out of the box" and mount what they need.

Now think of Asus' costs and risks. Costs? A very small amount of flash. Heck, I'd be surprised if it was 256 MB, and that stuff is _cheap_ wholesale. Then they need some people to slap together the code. Oh yeah, they're already building an entire line of linux computers with a stripped-down version of Firefox and Skype on board. So it's cheap. The only risk is allowing access to the file system right out of the box. 'Cos Mr. Price-insensitive would have to secure the other operating system too...

Re:Use?

[Antique Geekmeister]

This is incredibly useful for hardware that's having installation problems, so you can boot one machine with the Linux and check the console messages on the other with the support staff on the phone, or probe your hardware or network from the Linux to see why your normal boot system isn't working.

Re:Use?

[Zantetsuken]

First, at least this takes care of some of the problems (local spyware, etc) - freed from that, you could then easier go focus on what might be sniffing the data on your local network. Second, for the home user that is savvy enough and would pay for this sort of thing for the potential security benefits, they're at _home_ where they might have 2 or 3 other machines on the network, which should be decently easy enough to manage and make sure that they aren't totally compromised...

Re:Use?

[lnxpilot]

``What's the point? All it can do is surf the internet and make phone calls.''

Yeah, that's like what 99% of people use a computer for. ;)

Re:Use?

[geschild]

There are Mobos with an on-board CF-slot, especially in the smaller boards geared towards embedded use. Most of them have shortcomings that make them unsuitable.

I think the ideal motherboard for a front-end would have:
- 2D Onboard graphics good enough for HD playback on Linux (Intel G35 chipset might do, with HDCP)
- wireless (although, now that 'n' seems further and further away I'm unsure...) and gigabit eth.
- optical out for sound to an external amp.
- firewire, USB2.0 and if at all possible bluetooth on board
- CF slot for 1GB 'disk' for the operating system
- a few connections for a omni-standard DVD rewriter.

Probably other stuff that I'm forgetting but this covers most of it.

You can boot from the CF into LinuxMCE, connect over network to a LinuxMCE back-end for recording and dishing up the content and output the stuff to a large panel with audio through a surround amp.

This can be made into a small package with perhaps one 12cm slow case fan and a Scythe Ninja mini fanless cooler plus a near-silent power supply.

Re:Use?

[wikinerd]

I'm building a HTPC and I want it to be diskless

There are available solid state disks and standard memory drives at 1.8", 2.5", 3.5", and 5.25" sizes, as well as detachable ones (eg ExpressCard) and SSDs on PCI and PCIe cards.

Smart server admins use em to speed up their databases.

Re:Use?

[couchslug]

"Surf the internet from a read-only OS."

That's easy to do with a "poor man's install" of Knoppix or other live CD/DVD image.
Only use "persistent home" if you want to, or choose not to set one up.

http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Poor_Mans_Install

SATA/CF adapters as well as the more common IDE/CF adapters let you use a CF card instead of a hard disk. This has been around for a while and there is plenty of info for the Googling.

Re:Use?

[cabazorro]

Let me explain to you:
Motherboard A: Out-of-the box -> A splash screen and a message saying: "No Boot Device Found"
Motherboard B: Out-of-the box -> Browse the web for SPECS, pin-outs, etc or connect to your IS for support.
Now you get it? It makes more functional. It is not replacing your OS.

Re:Use?

[couchslug]

A CF/IDE or CF/SATA adapter with the Linux distro of your choice is easy to setup, easy to upgrade, and easy to just swap out if you have a second CF card. Works in any recent mobo without spending much cash. You can do Poor Man's Installs of Knoppix or other live CD.

Damn Small Linux can be installed to CF in a USB cardholder using the install to USB option and then all ya do is toss the card into the the IDE header adapter.(Worked nicely on my PII266 Portege) SATA adapters are available.

Example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822998002

BTW, use a Sandisk or other CF card that conforms to IDE spec if you want it detected properly. many CF cards won't be detected properly and fail to boot.

Grab ideinfo.exe from
http://pigtail.net/LRP/hd/index.html
(you can extract it from the linked floppy image and build it into a bootable DOS or FREEDOS CD since floppies are rare now) and use that to check out your CF card parameters if you have problems.

Re:Use?

[pimpimpim]

Yeah I wonder if it comes with diagnostics tools. That would make it very useful indeed, not only for people seeking driver info to get linux working, also for the windows people (hard drive recovery!).

Re:Use?

[Ox0065]

``What's the point? All it can do is surf the internet and make phone calls.''

like a public servant from the Japanese agriculture ministry... except for the phone calls bit. Can you edit wikipedia with it?

Re:Use?

[Ex-MislTech]

If u add a flash drive with some apps on it,
then it can do a bit more.

Think ....8 gb USB key.

Think two 8 gb USB keys.

Re:Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

My MythTV is diskless and fanless.

I used a VIA EPIA M10000G motherboard with a fanless case.

See here: MiniMyth

Runs great!

Re:Use?

[hey!]

I suppose the idea is for a machine that spends most of the time being turned off. If you just wanted to make a skype call or a hit a web page, it'd be convenient. I'd certainly like to see this in a laptop.

What I'd really like though is to have ClamAV installed on this, with the ability to download the latest database to a USB stick. That would be wicked useful.

Re:Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

"No worries about trojans or key-loggers."

That's not really the case.

I'd consider this significantly less secure than a properly maintained source distribution. You've got an unpatched installation burned to the firmware, from the factory, set up with who knows what options and additional software with its own holes (intentional or not).

Remember how eager the Phoenix and AMI companies have been in the past to incorporate phone-home technology and DRM in the motherboard itself? It's my belief that the hardware should be simple and general-purpose; software, entirely under control of the user, should handle all complex tasks (and especially anything having to do with networking, besides possibly wake-on-lan).

The more "intelligence" is built into the hardware, the less chance you have to ever know what your own computer is actually doing -- without spending millions of dollars to dissect and reverse-engineer the silicon (assuming it's even possible with current technology).

Re:Use?

[smerkel]

This may be useful for a kiosk application. I know a few folks that build kiosks that make use of a web browser and wifi to present some specific functionality at various locations around town. Given the mobo has built in wifi and a web-browser that can retain its settings - it might be a viable solution for these folks...

Re:Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, no. deCSS is for decrypting the CSS scrambling. Region code is only part of it.

Re:Use?

[Sledgy]

For the EPIA-MII VIA supply a "fastboot" BIOS, there are seperate BIOS images depending on what device you want to boot off. Using their BIOS along with a compact flash->IDE adapter and a little kernel optimisation you can have a command prompt in around 4 seconds from power on. My aim was to have the system in a gui (using DirectFB) in under 10 seconds but at present I'm looking at around 6-7.

The system was using grub, a custom built kernel and Busybox.

Re:Use?

[batkiwi]

Plenty of people do this right now with mythtv. It's quite easy, look around on the mythtv wiki and mailing list.

Re:Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about using Google Docs and suddenly you can do 2/3s of the things you usually do with a computer? 5 second bootup, no hard drive to crash, and you can access your docs from anywhere. I'd buy it. I don't even really need the multimedia junk. That's what the iPod is for. /B

Re:Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

because then I can give my users an unbreakable PC that they can run all my internet based apps on. Yes there are times when it would be nice to save a file somewhere (one that I cant already import into google apps that is which doesn't leave that many for 90% of my users).

Re:Use?

[vuffi_raa]

on that same note- couldn't you manufacture the motherboard with a small- say 8 gig amount of flash memory with a chipped OS restore for this in the manufacture? something that would allow you to flash the memory from the bios so that you could always do an immediate restore on the board with nothing other than the board itself while still having a bit of space for use? that way if you were really paranoid you could set to flash on boot and still be functioning with a blank os if you want- or dual boot from the flash disc and internal HD for linux or OS of your choice-
or if you want it would give you an opportunity in an enterprise environment to create an encrypted partition that could be flashed from that would auto configure your workstation - either to standardize workstation config- or to setup network disks and such-
I think that asus has been on the right track for a while now- just needs a few more steps to be completely awesome.

Re:Use?

[rtb61]

A step further to this is to have Linux in the CPU ie a computer in a chip, virtually no boot time apart from accessing connected hardware. A far more secure solution, and in the long term an achievable goal. Likely an upgradeable chip that sockets into the main CPU.

It is all to do with appliances specific use computers rather than general use computers. For obvious reasons an open source OS has a significant advantages over a closed source proprietary (P)OS, not the least being a software licence fee greater than the cost of the chip.

FINALLY!

[thatskinnyguy]

Maybe with a Linux distro built into the motherboard, there will finally be a solution where you don't have to go on a two day scavenger hunt for drivers. The last time I installed Fedora and Suse, both times I had to spend countless hours looking for Linux drivers for my NForce chipset. That All-in-One crap is for the birds.

A problem has been solved! BRAVO!

Re:FINALLY!

[kungfujesus]

the nforce drivers are built into the kernel, if i'm not mistaken.

Re:FINALLY!

[thatskinnyguy]

True but not bundled with the distros I find useful. At the risk of going even more off-topic, lets save this argument for another time. Shall we?

Re:FINALLY!

[Siddly]

That is strange, I've used NForce based Asus motherboards for a long time and never once had to hunt down drivers for any SuSE, Gentoo or Mandrake/Mandriva distro. Perhaps you got one of the first boards to be issued. The browser could be useful in certain circumstances, like when you don't have knoppix or other live CD's around. Access to external storage is pretty much a necessity along with being able to do BIOS updates within that environment.

Re:FINALLY!

[aichpvee]

So useful you have to spend two days looking for drivers? You sound like you're running windows when you talk about having to "download drivers," geez.

Re:FINALLY!

[Bralkein]

Right, this is exactly the sort of thing I've been waiting to see. People often complain that pre-installed Windows has much better integration with the hardware than when you install a Linux OS yourself. I find this rather frustrating, because the openness and flexibility of Linux should in theory make it much easier to integrate. It was disappointing for me to read reviews of the Dell/Ubuntu machines, since the reviewers often lamented a lack of proper integration with the hardware, which seemed to suggest that Dell just hadn't put in the effort to deliver the quality experience you expect from a pre-installed machine (yes, even from Dell ;-).

I hope that devices like this motherboard as well as the up-and-coming Linux smartphones will get companies thinking more positively and imaginitively about what they can do with Linux and Free Software in general.

Re:FINALLY!

[dbIII]

True but not bundled with the distros I find useful

It's now 2007 and you'll need a distro put together after late 2005 for this hardware support - that is current versions of all of them.

int 18h

[iamacat]

This is similar to countless computers that had BASIC in ROM and has the same problems. Sure it's convenient, but what people want to do with computers changes every year while ROMs stay the same. Will this thing support IPV6? Browsing the web over corporate VPN? External network adapter/monitor/scroll mouse? Silverlight?

Modern hard drives just take a second to read 4GB, a reasonable size for a quckstart Linux partition. And a PC builder can easily include an internal flash drive with hardware write protection switch. I wouldn't pay any more for this product than for a comparable motherboard without this feature.

Re:int 18h

[mark-t]

Ideally, it is installed in flash rom, that can be updated under application control, and only requiring a reboot to complete.

Re:int 18h

[larry bagina]

The article mentioned (or assumed) that the linux was updatable, so it's probably more like flash RAM than ROM.

Re:int 18h

[DavidRawling]

Modern hard drives just take a second to read 4GB... Dude ... which alternate universe do YOUR hard drives come from?! I can't find any consumer drives that can beat 50-60MB/sec ... (that's almost 2 orders of magnitude difference).

Re:int 18h

[Dunbal]

flash rom

      Flash ROM? Lol. When I was a kid I used to think that ROM meant "Read Only Memory". But does ROM still apply if you can write to it? Flash ROM is an oxymoron if I ever saw one.

Re:int 18h

[Anonymous Coward]

40MB would easily hold a decent boot partition, and could be read as quickly as he suggests. Not sure what he was smoking that led to the 4GB claim though - you can't even zero 4GB of RAM in one second (unless you count dropping the power...).

Re:int 18h

[Nazlfrag]

Write once Read Only Memory - you need to enter a specific flash atate to rewrite it, it normal operation it is ROM first and foremost. Sure, malware authours can hijack the architecture, but really why bother with dozens of winboxen to fulfill your needs.

Re:int 18h

[kasperd]

I can't find any consumer drives that can beat 50-60MB/sec

Many new SATA disks can do 70-80MB/s. Still if somebody can tell me where I can find those 4GB/s drives, I'm going to order a lot of those. (I wonder if that guy was thinking about 60 drives in a RAID-0 configuration).

Re:int 18h

[kasperd]

When I was a kid I used to think that ROM meant "Read Only Memory".

When I was a kid new computers had "Electrically erasable programmable read only memory", which made it quite obvious, that it was not as read only as "read only" would imply.

Re:int 18h

[mark-t]

oh fer cryin' out loud.... you know what I meant. Flash RAM.

Re:int 18h

[mark-t]

Flash RAM, then... are you happy? Man, it's not like it was unobvious what I was talking about.

Re:int 18h

[BronsCon]

No, even then, I'm pretty sure it takes several seconds for the RAM to completely discharge and lose its state.

2010s

[renrutal]

It'd would be more generally useful if it only came with a OpenGL ES enabled GRUB + a micro Linux environment prepared with machine virtualization, which would run, semi-transparently, the other OSs by default, unless overrided.

Re:2010s

[nurb432]

So you want a built in root kit? :)

Virtual Machine Host?

[Xenna]

Considering the name of the company and the (limited) text on their homepage. Wouldn't it be cool to have a motherboard with built in (ROM) virtualization software like Xen? Isn't that what they're really aiming for?

X.

Re:Virtual Machine Host?

[TheRaven64]

It would, and this is one of the more benign potential uses for a TPM chip; you could configure it to verify the integrity of your hypervisor partition before allowing you to boot; if someone's compromised the hypervisor, don't boot. If each VM image is encrypted with a key stored in the TPM and only released to a non-corrupted hypervisor, you've got a fairly secure system (at least, until someone cracks the TPM).

Re:Virtual Machine Host?

[Russell Coker]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetTop

I'd like to see something like NetTop (see above URL) implemented in the hardware. Imagine if you could have a Windows session running under VMWare (or similar) and when (not if) it gets rooted use Linux to recover it. NetTop allows doing this now (at moderate expense and some difficulty), if there was a cheap version of the same thing implemented in flash on the motherboard (so it didn't even add to the boot time) then it would significantly increase the security of the entire Internet.

It seems that the battle for desktop security has been lost by the company with the most market share. So the battle is now to contain the damage when a desktop machine is 0wned. Technology with features similar to NetTop allow having a full local firewall in front of a Windows VM controlling which network interfaces it accesses. For example you could have one Windows session with access to the Internet and one with access to the corporate Intranet and not allow them to talk to each other!

To summarise the NetTop project. It has a base OS of SE Linux with custom policy to prevent VMWare sessions from talking to each other (they can't access each other's block devices etc). To access a CD-ROM or other removable media you have to assign it to one session (which denies access to other VMWare instances). Each VMWare session can have access to some sub-set of the network interfaces (which may be VPN interfaces allowing a single Ethernet cable to carry data classified at multiple levels).

Gotcha

[DrJimbo]

On page 3, TFA says:

To update Express Gate though you will need to be running Windows on the hard drive in order to run the ASUS utility.

Re:Gotcha

[Anonymous Coward]

haha thats funny as

Re:Gotcha

[Dzonatas]

I'm going to Wine about it!

Updating the system

[ctid]

Sadly, you will have to be running Windows if you want to update the internal environment. From the Phoronix article:

This SplashTop Browser also includes Adobe's Linux Flash plug-in, so web-sites depending upon Flash will work out of the box. ASUS intends to issue free updates to Express Gate for the P5E3 Deluxe from their website in order to update the browser and enable any additional functionality or new programs. To update Express Gate though you will need to be running Windows on the hard drive in order to run the ASUS utility. The SplashTop Browser we were running was their Community Preview v0.9.0.1 edition.

I think this is a shame (to put it mildly). Hopefully the specifications for the update process will be published so that a Linux solution can be produced.

Re:Updating the system

[Dunbal]

Sadly, you will have to be running Windows if you want to update the internal environment.

      (Hunts around for his Windows "live CD"...)

Re:Updating the system

[FranTaylor]

I refuse to run Microsoft software. The reasons are many and not worth going into. I won't pirate it, because I'm a software developer whose pay comes from paid-for software, and I won't engage in conduct that I would not tolerate from others. I was intrigued by this motherboard until I saw the Windows requirement. ASUS, you have a potential sale here if you make it usable without Windows, I am tired of waiting for Linux to boot up. I like your stuff, I'm typing on an ASUS system right now.

Re:Updating the system

[Hal_Porter]

Sadly, you will have to be running Windows if you want to update the internal environment.

      (Hunts around for his Windows "live CD"...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BartPE

Re:Updating the system

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP Live Edition

Re:Updating the system

[CCFreak2K]

You mean this thing?

Oh the irony

[Barnoid]

This could be very useful for backup/recovery or testing purposes, eliminating the need for a live CD. However, the intended purpose seems to be a completely different one: "With a fast boot-up speed of only 5 seconds, the ASUS Express Gate offers an optional Linux OS boot-up that allows you to enjoy instant access to commonly used functions like accessing the Internet, VoIP, and Web emailing without entering the OS."

Who would want to boot into a crippled Linux where you cannot mount external drives just to browse the internet or make Skype calls?

At least it can be updated, so ASUS might provide more functional versions in the future. However,
from TFA: "To update Express Gate [the embedded linux] though you will need to be running Windows on the hard drive in order to run the ASUS utility."

Now, that's just great...

Re:Oh the irony

[houstonbofh]

According to the GPL, they will have to release the source code and the tool set. That means a Linux updater, and a custom firmware fairly quickly. Unless they they decide to play fast and loose with the GPL... Or if it is just a pig.

Re:Oh the irony

[jd]

Well, a 5 second boot time and a Flash image of Linux matches the specs and description of LinuxBIOS. If that is what they are using, then there is really nothing much for them to release other than maybe some minor patches. I would consider them entirely in compliance with the GPL if they provide their own additions (in full) and how those additions are added, along with a comprehensive set of package names, versions, URLs of master sources, and so on. Actually hosting more than they wrote would seem to be unnecessary, so long as EVERYTHING is made available.

However, given that this is almost certainly just a LinuxBIOS-flased motherboard with a mini distro on whatever bytes were left over, I'd say that it should be possible to produce a comparable system on any motherboard that is capable of holding a Flash chip of the necessary size. (This will be a LOT bigger than normal, so you may hit a whole bunch of design limitations.) It should therefore be possible to sell LinuxBIOS + BIOSdistros for any motherboard out there that can handle the chip, as an upgrade.

I support ASUS' experimentation - that's good - but people need to see that it's late in coming and it's more limited than the technology supports. Motherboard companies shouldn't be permitted to move as slow as possible and drag their feet when it creates the delusion that technology is more limited than it really is. The pace needs to be upped a little - just enough to show the consumers that they've been paying top dollar for decade-old components.

Re:Oh the irony

[Provocateur]

you will need to be running Windows on the hard drive

I musta missed something. Is it April 1 already??

Re:Oh the irony

[NotZed]

You might think it's ok to distribute patches, but the GPL doesn't. Patches don't cut it, you need to distribute the 'complete machine readable source code'.

Re:Oh the irony

[evilviper]

According to the GPL, they will have to release the source code and the tool set. That means a Linux updater, and a custom firmware fairly quickly.

Well, you're half right.

They need to release any modifications they made to the GPL'd free software, but they most certainly don't have to release an "updater" or anything of the sort. In fact they can easily pull a Tivo and use a signature to prevent you from upgrading the firmware at all.

Re:Oh the irony

[Buchenskjoll]

I would love this as a kitchen computer. Turn on it on to read mail, get the weather forecast, tv-programme, online calendar, all that stuff you want to be instantly available. I'm not a fan of having computers turned on all the time, they make noise and burn energy. But they need to cut the price to about half.

Re:Oh the irony

[jd]

Huh? I can be wrong - it does happen from time to time. Let's look at what the GPL says:

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

• a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

  b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

I would argue that (b) would allow you to physically perform source distribution from someone else's machine to the user's machine. This section only requires that you perform the distribution and be able to do so for a given length of time, it doesn't seem to say anything about who actually does the hosting. If the user is told to select link 1 (which downloads the basic source) and then select link 2 (which downloads a self-extracting, self-installing patch), then I'd consider that as a written offer to give a third party a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code on a medium customarily used for software interchange.

Is this a reasonable interpretation? Well, patches and shar files are indeed customarily used for software interchange, so I don't see any argument even on the next layer up.

Is this a common interpretation? Virtually all Linux kernel projects I know of (and I track about thirty or so) provide kernel patches, NOT a patched kernel. Some (but by no means all) provide links to the vanilla kernel sources. I would argue that those who provide no link at all do indeed violate the GPL, as what is provided is not really "complete", even indirectly. However, I can't remember the last time anyone fried them for non-compliance. Can you give me an example of that ever happening? If not, it would seem I have a stricter interpretation of the GPL than many developers.

Surprised at mouse support?

[Anonymous Freak]

...you can use your USB mouse; it's not keyboard-dependent which was another surprise.

Uh... Has this guy been living under a rock? I'm not even assuming he thinks Linux doesn't have USB mouse support, which would be just plain ridiculous. There have been graphical BIOSes for years! I know I had a computer back in the mid 90s that let me use the mouse to change BIOS settings. So why would it be a surprise that a full-blown Linux system, even if it is embedded in the BIOS, would have mouse support?

Re:Surprised at mouse support?

[bitserf]

The AMI BIOS of my AMD DX4/100 486 had mouse and rudimentary GUI support...since then it's been a text-only affair though, which is odd but I'm not complaining. I prefer the 80x25 text mode bios.

Re:Surprised at mouse support?

[spiderbitendeath]

Mouse support? Hell, I had an old IBM PS/2 Model 77 that would error out on post if there wasn't a mouse attached, and required drivers for the BIOS, just to add an add-on card.

Re:Surprised at mouse support?

[El_Isma]

At my University, they have USB mouses and frozen (ie: no changes saved on reboot) Windows. Every time you boot those things you have to wait 10-20 seconds before Windows realizes that thingie you plugged in USB is a mouse and configures it. So, instant usb mouse recognition? Wow!

I'm not entirely sure, but I think Windows takes its time too if you plug and unplug the mouse (I'm thinking of laptops).

Re:Surprised at mouse support?

[Anonymous Freak]

It could also be possible that "Legacy USB" is on, in which case they just have their Linux kernel NOT load ANY USB drivers, so the USB mouse and keyboard are treated as PS/2 by the BIOS. That's why you can use your USB keyboard before the OS had fully loaded its USB drivers.

How much?

[DigiShaman]

$360? OUCH!!!!

Because of the price, this mobo will be a total flop. Unless you're an overclocker, most PC builders want a simple board that still provides the latest in North/South bridge technologies. No WiFi, no super mega 7.1 audio, no dual nics, no on-board video. None of that crap matters in our market. If we really wanted all of those features, we would purchase a thin client PC from Dell which includes a nice warranty should any of those on-board features fail.

Re:How much?

[FranTaylor]

You really demonstrate your ignorance of the market. There are a lot of motherboards out there that cost this much and more. If they were flops they wouldn't keep selling them. The market is splintered all over the place, which is why we have cheeseball motherboards for duffers like you and fancy ones for people who want fancy features without using up all the internal slots. "our" market is really "your" market. And last I checked, motherboards come with warranties, too.

Re:How much?

[speaker of the truth]

Sounds great for Internet cafes though. No need to look down the computer using software (that can be circumvented, often by simply installing Firefox >:D), it comes preinstalled. Although there'd need to be some timer or something for it to be truly useful in such instances.

Re:How much?

[Dunbal]

a thin client PC from Dell which includes a nice warranty when any of those on-board features fail.

There, I fixed it for you.

Re:How much?

[DigiShaman]

There's a market for them because they obviously sell. But when I'm talking about "our" market, I'm talking about the Slashdot crowd. I will almost guarantee that most people here do NOT want an "all-in-one" board.

These all-in-one boards are for two types of people. The first type are for overclockers that want all those extra tweaking features found only with these type of boards. The second type is for entry-level PC builders. No serious enthusiast will DARE build one with the idea of actually using these on-board features. Those that do, simply disable them and use their own expansion cards.

So you want to tell me again that I don't know WHAT THE FUCK I'M talking about?! Go on buddy, just try it!

Re:How much?

[CrosseyedPainless]

Hey, I'm a 3-or-4 mobo a year kinda guy myself, and I like all-in-ones because when they get demoted from my primary system, they get stripped of all the cool gear. The more built-in crap they have, the closer they are to finding a new (albeit lesser) role in my computing world.

There! Now you've learned a new idea! Chill the fuck out!!

Re:How much?

[Aladrin]

I'll bite: You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

This may be an all-in-one board, but it's got something that no other all-in-one board has ever had: Linux on the chip. Geeks everywhere are already trying to figure out how to get one of these so they can tinker with the onboard Linux and build that little dream system they've been contemplating for years. The very fact that people have been posting (on THIS website) their hopes that this would happen is proof enough that price of the first version -does not matter-. And that's what this is, the first.

As for the other guy, he called you out because you said 'total flop'. Now you backpedal and claim you meant 'total flop with the slashdot crowd', which is -not- what you said at all. It doesn't matter though, because you're wrong on both accounts.

Re:How much?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Oh, I think you're mistaken. Vendor supported fast boot times are a big deal, and "all-in-one" boards are useful for educational markets or corporate markets where desktop systems wind up running as servers.

Re:How much?

[LuSiDe]

$360? OUCH!!!!

Agreed.

Because of the price, this mobo will be a total flop. Unless you're an overclocker, most PC builders want a simple board that still provides the latest in North/South bridge technologies. No WiFi, no super mega 7.1 audio, no dual nics, no on-board video. None of that crap matters in our market. If we really wanted all of those features, we would purchase a thin client PC from Dell which includes a nice warranty should any of those on-board features fail.

I disagree. WiFi could be very useful onboard, in certain situations. Onboard NICs (10/100/1000 mbit) could also be very useful. It all depends on what you wish to do with the board. If you're trying to make a cheap router with a SSD BSD or Linux OS on it, you'd love the higher I/O and throughput of onboard NICs (provided the drivers are well they can achieve higher bandwidth than other busses). Else you'd have to sacrifice one of your PCI-E slots for this. Onboard graphics card (IGP) is also useful because they use less. Unfortunately, you can't put 'em off, so you're using a lil bit overkill W. As for a desktop, many desktops do need sound and networking and onboard video is "good enough". I'd say a desktop wouldn't need 2 NICs but if you look around you'll see most boards do NOT have 2 NICs. Roughly only those meant for firewall or embedded applications do.

No, the issue is that fine-grained setups would have exactly 0 RS232, and exactly 0 USB, and so on including 0 (or 1) of the above. But thats where the free market jumps in, and the issue is not one only limited to this board. The assumption is else you'd buy all kind of PCI cards which all adds up too, ofcourse. So these are included in the "the package", and usually you'll see these boards are adapting to the casual home user / business user, not e.g. a thin client or a router.

What leaves us is the high price. I don't understand that. I can get a good enough mobo for 80 EUR. A fast (flash-based) SSD for PATA I can get cheap too although it'd depend on e.g. the size say 50 EUR.

Re:How much?

[kasperd]

I will almost guarantee that most people here do NOT want an "all-in-one" board.

There may be some on board features, that I would rather be without. But there are definitely some I like to have, such as ethernet interfaces. You can never get too many onboard ethernet interfaces. The last computer I bought had too few onboard ethernet interfaces for my needs, so I ended up having to use all the expansion slots for additional ethernet interfaces. Why do motherboards still come with less than 4x1Gbit/s?

Re:How much?

[JoeCommodore]

As a guy who is working on web based applications I can say this is a great thing. It has a browser on bootup? I wonder if it has SSL support, a PDF viewer and print drivers installed also?

If I were selling (POS) web deployed canned solution, these would make great guts for the terminals to connect to the server, one dies, you replace the MB and re-configure the settings - back in business.

I don't think it may appeal to the power user crowd as a their primary computer but as a disk less or at least a pretty thin workstation it shows promise.

Re:How much?

[Joe The Dragon]

the boards that cost more are sever boards and $360 + DDR3 ram will kill it also they can drop the USB based wifi on it.

Re:How much?

[FranTaylor]

That's list price. I can't even remember the last time I paid even close to list price for computer gear. I shop carefully and usually pay about half of list. Half of $360 is quite reasonable for this board.

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Geeks everywhere already have a linux partition and don't care to drop USD350 on a motherboard with fwap fwap fwap linux installed on some flash memory. The people that buy these motherboards are the subset of those that spend any price to have the top-of-the-line (read: most expensive) hardware sold by high-end vendors.

Whether it's a 'total flop' or not is mostly irrelevant, because its existence serves as a point of marketing. It reinforces brand reputation and interest.

Re:How much?

[Walruzoar]

"...we would purchase a thin client PC from Dell which includes a nice warranty should any of those on-board features fail."
Hmmm: "Dell", "nice warranty". Not often you hear those words in the same sentence.

Re:How much?

[notthe9]

You don't frequently buy your other cool gear? Why do you need to replace your motherboard every three months? You are happy using last year's sound card and video card on your cutting-edge motherboard?

As for chilling, I think we could all use a little bit.

Re:How much?

[notanatheist]

Your posts are about as "troll" as they can get. Completely idiotic. The "Slashdot crowd" are technology enthusiasts and I for one welcome our new linux booting motherboard overlord. As for your statement on buying some prebuilt name brand... get real. My clients have moved past that stage and realize by spending a little more they get a vastly more reliable PC because I know exactly what goes into them. They typically aren't $360 boards but they aren't your Fry's specials either. Maybe you should look at things like video cards, RAM, and every other component in the marketplace. There is always a high end. Would I buy a $700 graphics card? No, because the $300 one does what I need. On the other end that silly little $80 card that you think is so awesome would suck balls trying to handle my needs.
Lastly, quit yer bitchin' about "onboard features". I'm sure more than 9 out of 10 geeks use at least the integrated NIC and probably more than half use integrated audio. As for the integrated OS, if you could at least have a RAM drive and write access to a Windows partition you could scan for viruses without booting into your infested machine because you know those Windows users spending gobs of money on high end hardware are actually more likely to be pirating Photoshop or the latest video game. Sad but true. I just stick with open source and getting it to work on the latest hardware can be a PITA but I like a good challenge.

Re:How much?

[DigiShaman]

Your posts are about as "troll" as they can get.

I would rather "troll" and be *correct*, than call someone a troll and be *wrong* (like you).

As for your statement on buying some prebuilt name brand... get real. My clients have moved past that stage and realize by spending a little more they get a vastly more reliable PC because I know exactly what goes into them.

Actually, I've found custom built PCs to be the most *unreliable* for every customer I've provided IT services for. I'm not talking about one blueprinted custom PC that's been built for an office. I'm talking about the hodgepodge of clones each with their own set of hardware combinations. Supporting them has also been a huge PITA. For what I charge an hour, by the time I diagnose and correct a hardware issue on my own (and I can do it rather quickly with my experience), then go out and purchase replacement parts (failed fan, HD, CDROM, etc), my billable time has already exceeded the cost of the machine.

Sorry, but your clients are uninformed regarding TCO (total cost ownership) with custom built PCs. PCs with a 3y warranty from Dell, HP, IBM have been proven to provide a lower TCO. Examples include on-site hardware support, and ability to only need a few clone restoration images. With custom built PCs, you may have rebuild them from scratch in the event catastrophic hard drive failure. Unless of course, you want to keep a copy of a cloned image for each custom built PC of different blueprints.

Re:How much?

[nuzak]

It's not priced significantly higher than other X38 motherboards.

> most PC builders want a simple board that still provides the latest in North/South bridge technologies

That would be an X38, Einstein.

Re:How much?

[DigiShaman]

Ya, an X38 loaded with Asus flagship features and doodads. If I want a new Asus motherbord featuring X38, I'll wait for their "lite" version. Obviously, their reaching out for the highend market first.

Here's an example. Currently, Asus as five boards featuring both the P35 chipset with ICH9 south bridge. According to Newegg.com, their cheapest P35 board (ASUS P5KC) lists for $99.99 while their "flagship" (ASUS P5K3 DELUXE/WIFI-AP) lists for $239.99. With Asus, this is the rule, not the exception for how they develop and market their products around a chipset platform.

Re:How much?

[evilviper]

You are happy using last year's sound card and video card on your cutting-edge motherboard?

Video is the only thing you have a point on, and then, still maybe not if you're using Linux. The rest doesn't improve often at all...

If you got a good NIC (eg. Intel) when it went to gigabit, don't expect to need (or want) another one for close to a decade.
Wifi is updated a bit more often, but only every few years, and still you can safely skip a version or two.
A 48K 24-bit 5.1 soundcard from 10 years ago is still just as good as it ever was. And frankly, soundcards are nearing obsolescence, as all many really need is the $5 built-in S/PDIF digital output.
USB hasn't improved for years, since v2 was introduced, and built-in USB2 is as good as anything, if not better than add-in cards.
Firewire has had some speed improvements in the past 10+ years since introduction, but practically any device you get with Firewire is going to be limited to 1X speed anyhow, so there's little benefit in an upgrade.

Re:How much?

[superpulpsicle]

Well said. With the exception of graphics card, everything is pretty static.

Re:How much?

[notthe9]

This is more or less my attitude, too, but I do not upgrade my motherboard every three months.

two possibilities

[Verte]

I wonder if the ability to mount other media is restricted in the BIOS or the actual system.

If it is the latter, and since the system can be updated from a running OS, it should be possible to put your kernel, servers and window manager in the flash and have most of your operating system boot instantly. And I have no doubt that if that is the case, some very clever person who was given one of these will work out how to do just that. Given that this does use a Linux kernel, it shouldn't be too hard to get source for any hardware specific issues you might find in booting from this.

Otherwise, this is pretty boring. There has been software available to, say, play media without booting into your operating system for ages.

Re:two possibilities

[BrookHarty]

Kinda nice idea, go grab the latest drivers or read a forum if you have an issue with a driver.

No driver bootup with instant web access, wish I had that in the past myself... Wonder if the stripped down firefox runs java apps, for web based ssh terminal.

Sounds cool to me, wouldnt use it much, but nice feature when you need it.

LinuxBIOS

[RAMMS EIN]

So how does this compare to LinuxBIOS?

I'll start:

LinuxBIOS:

  - More capabilities, freedom to tinker
  - Less expensive hardware
  - Usually not supported by vendor, doesn't work with lots of motherboards

Re:LinuxBIOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux BIOS works with so few motherboards that I gave up on it sometime ago.

It doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Re:LinuxBIOS

[dreamchaser]

It compares to LinuxBIOS about the same way that Apples compare to Oranges.

Almost there

[Gnavpot]

In a way it is sad to see a motherboard which is so close to offering built-in system rescue and system installation help.

If the onboard OS could write to the harddrive or at least a USB stick, this would be perfect for downloading latest drivers prior to performing a Windows installation. Especially network drivers which always seem to create a Catch 22 on newer motherboards (you have to have network drivers installed in Windows if you want to download network drivers). A direct link to the drivers for this specific motherboard could even be preconfigured in the browser.

Re:Almost there

[mok000]

I agree... so close, but no cigar.

I would like to see a bunch of Linux disk utilities like parted, fsck, dd, etc., hardware diagnosis programs like memtest86, benchmarking software, security auditing, etc. All the stuff we usually have on a Live-CD Linux system.

I guess the webbrowser is useful, and so is Skype in case you need to make a call to a support hotline.

And finally, why not LinuxBIOS instead of Megatrends?

I can't believe that people don't get it

[Gadget_Guy]

This is obviously intended to allow you to quickly make a phone call or look something up on the net. It is not supposed to be a replacement for your entire operating system. If you want to save files, watch DVDs or run your business software then boot your hard drive!

I couldn't count how many times I have booted up my computer just to look up a bus timetable, or the TV guide or just check my mail. And how handy would it be to be able to quickly look at the slashdot headlines while your wife goes back to try on another outfit before you head out.

If the boot time can be believed, you could go from off to reading the /. front page in around 20 seconds. How cool is that?

And I want to set up a temporary Internet cafe at conferences. This would be an ideal, non-hackable environment.

about time

[rhade]

I have to ask why this has taken so long, we needed this 10 years ago. The asus site says its down, cant find all the details, does it come with all linux partitioning tools? including resizing of partitions? I know this can be provided by live cd's, but what if you dont have a cd player? This is fantastic, finally having it available, but really about damn time.

Re:about time

[Verte]

does it come with all linux partitioning tools? including resizing of partitions? No. It offers no ability to touch the hard drive at all at the moment. It doesn't include any GNU tools whatsoever. :(

What a waste of a good motherboard

[itsybitsy]

That's a bizarre waste of an otherwise good motherboard.

How about letting us put whatever OS we want on it instead? Ick, Linux.

How about Minux? OpenBSD? FreeBSD? ExoKernel? ___OS?

Linux. Ick to the max.

Re:What a waste of a good motherboard

[callinyouin]

How about letting us put whatever OS we want on it instead?

You can't seriously think that ASUS made a motherboard where installing an OS to disk would be restricted. Please, say it ain't so! Of course, you might be talking about putting your own OS on the flash chip itself which would be great if ASUS' business model was to not cater their products to regular (and by that I mean non-geek) end users whatsoever.

How about Minux? OpenBSD? FreeBSD? ExoKernel?

Alright, I can see maybe OpenBSD or FreeBSD, although not with brand new hardware, but Minix and ExOS (Exokernel is a type of kernel, MIT's versions include XOK and ExOS) are probably a bit too premature to be a primary OS. That is, unless you have to live on the edge and refuse to use a stable operating system, especially with ExOS being in alpha stage. Minix is obviously more mature since it's been around for a pretty long time, but to quote the Minix3 homepage, "It [Minix] is nowhere near as mature as FreeBSD or Linux right now." With name-drops like ExoKernel I'm led to believe that you're a far-superior computer user. I'm sorry that I've wasted your time. Good luck putting ExOS on your brand new P5E3 Deluxe-based rig, you little computer wizard you.

If only

[Drahgkar]

If only they made a version with Nvidia SLI support instead of ATI Crossfire...

Re:If only

[They'reComingToTakeM]

The board uses Intel's X38 chipset. Unfortunately, Intel no longer purchases SLI licenses from Nvidia.
(I can't remember offhand if Intel won't buy, or Nvidia won't sell).

Yes but..

[ms1234]

...can you read your email with it?

Re:Yes but..

[knahrvorn]

Can it make coffee?

Re:Yes but..

[really?]

No. It's a "vi" board.

Skype for linux?

[paulatz]

It is at least strange that they have chosen to use skype, as its linux version is complete crap, lacking most of the features. Let's at least hope that this will speed up skype development a bit

Re:Skype for linux?

[Marcion]

Good point, that man. The first thing a Windows skype user will do is say, where is the video? My Webcam doesn't work...

Re:I can't believe that people don't get it

[TheRaven64]

Maybe I've been in laptop-land for too long (last desktop I owned was three years ago), but do people really still regularly reboot? I close the lid on my laptop, it goes to sleep. I open the lid, it wakes up and I can start doing things with it as soon as I've entered my password. The only time I reboot is to install updates. Surely desktops can do this by now?

Asus: Our favorite Vapourware announcer

[Anonymous Coward]

Kids, before you wet your pants over that one, think about the Eee. Yes, that piece of Vapourware Asus announced at CeBIT. It is supposed to be a laptop with Linux. It doesn't ship, but Asus took the liberty to reduce the specs and increase the price, while pushing the imaginary shipping date forward month after month.

Re:Asus: Our favorite Vapourware announcer

[nuzak]

The Eee has an impressively big-looking screen. Most of it is a black border, and the actual resolution is something like a cell phone. Personally, I don't think it will ever even ship.

Possible GPL violation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone now if this is allowed?

http://www.phoronix.net/image.php?id=869&image=asus_splashtop_q1

Because I don't think you're allowed to "reserve all rights" on the GPL-ed parts of this application.

Re:Possible GPL violation?

[Marcion]

I wonder if it has any GPL3 software, if I remember correctly, GPL3 mentions about screens specifically as a place to put the credit.

To be honest I am not interested in the software, the question is whether the Motherboard can be reflashed with my own choice of mini-distro.

Re:Possible GPL violation?

[DragonTHC]

That is firefox. Look at the menu bar in other pictures.

As far as I know, firefox is GPL.

my raptor only does 84MB/s theoretically

[wikinerd]

Modern hard drives just take a second to read 4GB

Look here: My Raptor 10kRPM SATA drive has a buffer-to-disk sustained theoretical transfer rate of 84 MB/s. Furthermore, this embedded OS is not in true ROM, it's flashable.

limited linux os?

[Anonymous Coward]

This mobo just made embedded linux devs cream their pants, theoretically you could make a custom linux image with all the features you want.

OK

[yoprst]

That's pretty smart of you, young man. But can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?

Re:I can't believe that people don't get it

[shutdown -p now]

Well, desktops have no lid, obviously. But aside from that, you can of course put a desktop to sleep, or even hibernate it - the latter is what I usually do, but it's not enabled in WinXP by default, so you have to fiddle with power management settings to get it running.

Instant On

[drx]

Does anybody remember true instant on?
For example with an Atari ST or a Commodore 64? Where the OS was actually on a chip? It was so hard to switch to today's booting mess for me, but i eventually got used to it.

GPL:ed wireless driver?

[Anonymous Coward]

The 801.11n driver contained would be interesting to see the source for.

ASUS are not the first to do this

[laing]

I bought an IBM (server) motherboard last year which has a Linux kernel (and even an X window manager) in the BIOS. The downside is that if I plug in a PCIe video card instead of using the on-board graphics controller, the X gui fails to start and I have no way to check or change the settings.

--
This space for rent.

80s-era computers with OS built in

[davidwr]

"Look ma, no boot disks."

Back in the '80s most 8-bit computers had an OS built in. Even many PCs had a BASIC interpreter boot option.

The Macintosh Classic even had a bootable "ROMDisk" you could get into with a few magic keystrokes. It made a great rescue disk.

Some of Tandy's computers booted DOS and Deskmate from ROM.

Other computers booted various OSes or working environments directly from ROM.

Oh, and of course today embedded devices like Routers and cell-phones usually boot from silicon.

Heck, you can even boot Windows from silicon USB memory sticks on most modern motherboards.

This is how Linux wil take over the desktop

[PeterJFraser]

Look 4 year into the future, adding Linux to any motherboard should cost about $10 (the price of the flash). In 8 years every motherboard will have an operating system build into it. As time goes on those operating systems will more and more complete. No one will install an operating system ever again.

Something like SystemRescuseCD

[DrYak]

For now its already very cool :
- You can use the embed linux for a quick peek on a coupl of internet page or for a quick phone call, all within 5 sec from turning on the computer, without needing to wait that a full fledged OS boots.
- AS you mentionned, use this as a pre-install environment and/or rescue environment, to quickly get vital information from the web, when there's no functionnal full OS (yet).

But, I think, we could extend this second usage you evoked :
- ...and something similar to Systen Rescue CD - enough tools for helping fixing/rescuing/partitionning a system. With things like a functionnal anti-virus (either opensource clamav. Or some other antivirus software with which ASUS has a deal), Gparted (there are only a couple of filesystem that can be resize live when mounted in Linux. It's absolutely impossible to partition a hraddisk currently being used in Windows), imaging software (also use full for quick OS installation), tools to access data like Samba's CIFS client and NTFS-3G, and a tool to reset lost Windows passwords. With this,

The Flash device containing the system would need to be a tad bigger, but whith this the embed Linux is going to be the admin's best friend to salvage broken OS installations - without needing a bootcd.

To keep it going

[ClosedSource]

When I was a kid new computers used ferrite-core memory.

Re:I can't believe that people don't get it

[mikji]

The only time my desktop reboots is when the power goes out, or about once a month (I live in Lawrence, KS). I imagine most linux desktops are the same, except for those freaks who play windows games.

They probably reboot a lot.

Re:I can't believe that people don't get it

[supertsaar]

Yup. Sleep, not boot. Macs do this flawlessly (push powerbutton, sleeps alomst instantly, push again and it comes back in +/- 1 second).
XP takes a bit longer though, not sure why....

Mars Attacks?

[jagdish]

Read it as "ASUS Mothership Embedded with Linux"

For a second, I was faced with the horrific possibility that Independence Day was right after all.

Website is viewable

[Anonymous Coward]

splashtop.com/index.php

To make it stop

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was a kid we had to write it ourselves on a stone tablet.

You can already do that with a boot CD....

[Joce640k]

You can already do this with a live CD (or the leaner "sysresccd" which fits on one of those little 3" CDs).

The only advantage of having Linux in flash is that it boots in five seconds.

Re:You can already do that with a boot CD....

[Antique Geekmeister]

Sure. If you want to have someone provide, put in, and remove the CD when they're done. That kind of service can be very expensive, in either a data center with lots of services and a real reluctance to touch customer hardware, or at home where you have to keep the CD around and remember where it is. And if the CD drive works (one of the most likely components to fail at home!)

V useful for troubleshooting with just one PC

[funkdancer]

The #1 top feature for this would be troubleshooting, especially if the user only has one machine with a single OS. As it has been noted, USB key compatibility would make it even better still.

You could also use it as an instant on technique to quickly check a web site, however I'd say just putting Vista* into hibernate would be just as fast. (*The average user who is buying one of these X38 boards would most likely couple it with at least 2GBs of memory and a reasonably good Core2Duo CPU and thus have plenty of resources for Vista.)

Love the integrated features

[funkdancer]

Wow, enjoy the view up there from your high horse?

I consider myself a serious enthusiast. Now, first of all, last time I checked the P5E3 x38 didn't have onboard vga.

Then, I have an Asus Blitz Formula (p35) with a Q6600 and 2gb of memory (DDR2-1066mhz). This board is similar to the one discussed, except that it's using P35 and doesn't have onboard wifi - instead it is probably a bit more focused on overclocking performance. I greatly enjoy having the sata and network controllers built in - would you like those as PCIE/PCI cards too? And what if you have a camera that needs a firewire connection? That's another Asus onboard inclusion.

Also in my system the audio is included but as a tiny device which uses a PCIEx1 slot; it offers most excellent sound for my Logitech Z-5500Ds and I didn't have to pay any extra for it.

For the P5E3 wifi edition; if I was using wifi at home I'd appreciate not having to have another PCIE slot taken. (My Blitz doesn't offer this).

Benefits of integrated designs are: Better air flow thus cooling, reduced system complexity bringing higher stability. Also those tools that were put into the bios and design of my board (e.g. reset CMOS button) make overclocking so much easier. I paid a lot for it, but feel that I'm getting great value in return.

I'm getting the Maximus Formula X38 in a month or so to put the Blitz into my Zalman HD160XT based HTPC and the X38 into my desktop. The only additional card I need to put into it will be a 8600GTS Silent. Compared to the machines of old, I absolutely love the lack of clutter these feature rich motherboards provide.

Meta: Funny ad

[jsiren]

The post was followed by an ad for Windows Server 2003. Are the Slashdot ads word-targeted?

that's nice

[xvicex]

but will it blend?

Dohh

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

Why X-Fire and not SLI. If that was an SLI board, I'd change my platform now.

Re:I can't believe that people don't get it

[tehcyder]

Maybe I've been in laptop-land for too long (last desktop I owned was three years ago), but do people really still regularly reboot? I close the lid on my laptop, it goes to sleep. I open the lid, it wakes up and I can start doing things with it as soon as I've entered my password. The only time I reboot is to install updates. Surely desktops can do this by now?

With a desktop it's easier just to leave it on all the time. Laptops only need a sleep mode because they have batteries.

Obviously, this ignores any green issues about wasting electricity.

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you never wanted to just look something up online, but not wanted to wait the few minutes while the OS boots? I don't use skype but I imagine a similar need arises, to just make a quick call before you go out or whatever.