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100% Free Software Compatible PC Launches
crimperman writes "The Open-PC project has announced that its first PC will be available at the end of February for €359. They claim the mini-ITX desktop machine is energy efficient, consumer ready, easy to upgrade, and — significantly — uses only hardware that has free software drivers available. As you'd expect, it comes with GNU/Linux which is running KDE (a €10 donation to the KDE project in included in the price). Interestingly all the key decisions on design, pricing etc. have been made by the community via online polls. The spec of the machine is pretty reasonable for the price: Atom 1.6GHz dual-core processor, 3GB RAM, 160GB HDD, Intel 950 graphics."
kdawson
No, the extra $300 is what you pay for ordering all those parts and preparing an assembly line to make computers but in quantities of less than millions. Certain costs are largely the same whether you're making five hundred computers or five million computers, so they cost more on a per unit basis when you're in the former category rather than the latter. Other costs scale, but not linearly. You can't make a computer with all the same parts as that Acer for the same price unless you're making and selling as many computers as Acer.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
No wireless chipset, of course. Because after 15 years of WiFi being in common usage worldwide, there still isn't a single chipset available with full support for 100% free software.
Except for all the atheros cards supported by ath5k and ath9k in the Linux kernel, or the bcm cards supported by openfwwf (though I prefer the atheros stuff as it's manufacturer not only helps out but even released their own code for reference). There may be others.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
How can you say the Open PC has more power than the Mac Mini? That Mac's 2.26ghz Core Duo runs rings around the Open PC's 1.6ghz Atom, and its graphics card beats it out too.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
Motherboard Intel D945GCLF2 with integrated Atom 330 (2 cores, 4 threads) = U$S 103
HD 160 SATA = U$S 53
3 GB of RAM (1 x 2 GB, 1 x 1 GB) = U$S 81
MiniITX Case with 500W PSU = U$S 75
Sub Total: u$s 312
- 10% VAT applied in Argentina already in those prices= -32
Total: u$s 280
OpenPC: u$s 512
Even if you add the price of building it, and a reasonable profit, it's still insanely expensive.
And my hardware choice is actually better, because the motherboard is 100% Intel and not a cheap-ass Asrock.
By chance, I happen to be running that same hardware configuration I just posted. Here's lspci's output:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 01)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 20)
And extract from cpuinfo (There are actually 2 cores with 2 threads each, which shows up as 4 processors on GNU/Linux)
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 28
model name : Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU 330 @ 1.60GHz
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 1596.098
cache size : 512 K
BTW: This hardware is 100% Hackintosh friendly. I am dual booting Ubuntu and OSX on it.
* Those are prices in Argentina (Yes, electronics here are way more expensive than elsewhere), and they include a 10.5% VAT, so that price would actually be ~280U$S. And the components are better, and still 100% Free. Except off course both this system and their system contains privative hardware design, privative BIOS and firmware, etc. So, not really 100% open.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
The problem with suspend has to do with MS corrupting the ACPI spec...
Find a machine where the ACPI support actually complies with the ACPI specs, and the DSDT has been compiled by Intel's compiler etc, and suspend will work perfectly out of the box on Ubuntu (i have several such machines).
On a machine where ACPI is in some way broken, and the DSDT is compiled by the MS compiler (grep for MSFT in your dmesg) then it's pot luck wether linux has implemented the necessary workarounds to handle the intentionally broken ACPI...
This seems to be part of MS's embrace and extend (of ACPI) attempts to stifle competition.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I've tried hard for two years to like Linux (I installed Ubuntu on two computers during that time and used it reasonably frequently), and it just never happened.
I think you should try installing windows more often then. It is not exactly "click-click-done" either. After you install the "Operative System", you have to install all the drivers (IF they exist at all; I remind you that lots of 5-year old hardware actually don't have drivers for Vista). And then compressors. Oh, video decoders. And Office. And an antivirus. And then you have something more or less functional (I'd install a bunch more stuff, like firefox+plugins, CCleaner, decent unfragmenter, im-client, DVD-burning tool, etc).
Not to mention the update process. Ubuntu wins hands-on on that one to windows.
Give it to grandma, and in one year and a half, reformat and reinstall.
(OpenOffice versus Microsoft Office, for example)
I'll take OpenOffice writer over MS Office Word any day. I'm not a linux fanboy, I use OpenOffice on windows. 35 MB for a 30-pages word document is just not cutting it for me. Excel is better in some parts, and worse in others, than OO's Calc - it's a tie for me. I preffer Powerpoint to its OpenOffice equivalent. And then, drawing tool and equation editors are just plain better in OpenOffice. So it's 1.5 points to MS, versus ~3 points for OO (I'm giving .5 to each the drawing tool and equation editor). I'm talking about MS office 2003 - 2007 interface's just wrong.
I can't say much about Apple, except that windows at least can run my games.