Mandriva Joins the Netbook Market With the GDium

AdamWill writes "Lately it's hard to avoid the buzz about netbooks — the small, cheap laptop systems that were popularized by the Asus Eee PC. Mandriva is providing the innovative operating system for the upcoming GDium netbook system, produced by Emtec. The first GDium will be a netbook with a 10", 1024x600 resolution display and a battery life of four hours, weighing in at 1.1kg. The innovative G-Key system stores the Mandriva operating system and all the user data on a USB key — nothing is permanently stored inside the GDium. You can use your own desktop and data by plugging the G-Key into any GDium."

Comments

Gayaplex?

[idiot900]

From the site:

10.
1024×600.
1.1Kg.
4 hours.
Mandriva Linux.
G-Key.
Gayaplex.

I understood the first six things on the list. But what the heck is a "Gayaplex"? I'm going to assume that it doesn't mean what its spelling implies...

Re:Gayaplex?

[clang_jangle]

Looks like Gayaplex is what they call their forthcoming social networking/educational "portal": http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:6V7GNDpoU-YJ:www.gdium.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/gdium_announcement-en.pdf+Gayaplex&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

Re:Gayaplex?

[dreamchaser]

Here I thought it was some special Mac OS X emulator...

netbooks

[zogger]

It is headed the opposite direction, they are getting more expensive, not less, and gaining in size. When that first eeePC hit I thought "cool, pretty soon now the hundred buck blisterpack small notebook". Man, I was wrong.

Re:netbooks

[mobby_6kl]

Yeah, but at least they're becoming way more usable. The small low-res screen, shitty keyboard, low storage and relatively poor battery life made sure I wasn't getting myself the EEE 4G/700. Now Dell is coming up with the $299 "E" laptop which appears to be what the EEE should've been all along, and I'm rather interested.

No matter how many unpaid overtime hours the Chinese kids work, there still is a certain price floor at the current technological level. I'd be quite satisfied if they just kept improving the product at the current price range until it's feasible to go lower without producing something completely useless.

GDium

[blind biker]

From a cursory glance, I'd say I like this. It seems the first Linux distro that is actually tweaked to run from Flash RAM storage, rather than just a somewhat leaner generic Linux bolted on top of a SSD-based computer. Less logging, less unnecessary data to and from the storage, more stuff loaded into RAM. This is what I was hoping from the Eee PC's Xandros, but was disappointed (Xandros on the Eee PC is every bit of a normal Linux distro, with some of the less useful logfiles annoyingly and dangerously often updated).

So let me get this straight...

[jrothwell97]

As I understand this, the root partition is stored on the machine's internal ROM. The user's home folder sits on the USB key, along with something that somehow links to /etc/passwd to provide authentication. The key is automatically mounted when inserted. Correct me if I'm wrong.

This doesn't sound particularly promising - it would be very easy to lose the key. I also fail to see why, when most ultra-sub-notebooks are bought by a person for their use, and their use only.

Also, will the home folder on the key be accessible when plugging into another computer, say, a desktop running OS X, Windows or another Linux distro? If so, it would kind-of defeat the object. Emtec would be entering the market very late, so they can't expect this to take the market by storm. If it doesn't, it kind-of defeats the object of sticking everything on a USB key.