Neuros LINK Mixes Quiet, Aesthetics, and Ubuntu

jonniee writes with a link to Dr. Dobb's Journal's look at a rather cool living-room-suitable media-centric computer from Neuros (presented as being suitable mostly for developers and serious hobbyists for now), excerpting: "The Neuros LINK is essentially a quiet x86 PC running Ubuntu Linux with an ATI graphics card delivering video via VGA, DVI, and HDMI output. ... What makes the LINK such a compelling platform for these folks and Linux/open source developers in general is the recognition that a real business entity is stepping forward to spend the money necessary to market and commercialize what tech enthusiasts have been doing for years."

Comments

ATI graphics on a media pc?

[sammydee]

Why are they using an ATI card? Nvidia cards have much better support under linux generally, including full 1080p h264, mpeg2 and wmv hardware decode support. ATI don't have any hardware video decoding support at all, so to play HD films you need a much more beefy cpu creating a lot more heat and noise than with the nvidia solution.

ATI's drivers still haven't really got much better, tried installing them on a friend's Ubuntu pc the other day for a radeon 3650. Trying to enable compiz caused the entire system to hang immediately, and the only way to get working video was to use the opengl output option. The open source drivers aren't exactly brilliant at the moment either. If you want real opengl or video support on linux your only option is still nvidia.