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Linux-Friendly Mini PC Fast Enough For Steam Games
crookedvulture writes "Barebones mini PCs have been around for a while, and the latest one from Zotac is pretty unique. For $270, the Zbox ID42 offers a Sandy Bridge CPU, a discrete GeForce graphics processor, and all the integrated I/O and networking you'd expect from a modern PC. You have to add your own memory, hard drive, and operating system, but the latter shouldn't cost you a dime. The Zbox works well with not only Windows, but also Linux. Ubuntu even recognizes the included remote, which can be used to wake up the system, control XBMC, and navigate Steam's Big Picture interface. Team Fortress 2 for Linux is actually playable, albeit at a relatively low resolution and detail level. The hardware seems better suited to casual games. Zotac also makes a Plus version of the Zbox that comes bundled with RAM and a hard drive, but it costs an extra $130, and you can get much better components if you add them yourself. The user-friendly chassis makes filling out the system a trivial undertaking."
Mention Linux and its bound to make it to the front page.
"albeit at a relatively low resolution and detail level." ... So it doesn't do it well at all, and it will do it worse in the entire future you own the box. Woot, awesome deal dude! Totally worth posting on Slashdot!
In other news, 50cc Motor Scooters are able to travel on they same roads as other vehicles. They may not go as fast as other behicles but can still get you fron point a to point b
. .
Well, sort of.
"Team Fortress 2 for Linux is actually playable, albeit at a relatively low resolution and detail level. The hardware seems better suited to casual games"
For myself and all the Steam users that I know personally, this wouldn't actually be fast enough for any of the games they play.
Sounds like ZBox is short for Zune Box.
Your problem is Ubuntu, not the hardware. I also have a Zotax box, and all distros I've tried except Ubuntu work great. Ubuntu works like crap unless you remove the stupid desktop texturing and Unity.
One quote in particular stands out, and a lot of assumptions in the article are predicated on it:
The GT 610 should still be quicker than plain-old Intel integrated graphics, however.
Anandtech's benchmarks show that the Intel HD4000 in a desktop IvyBridge processor are 50 to 75% faster than a GeForce GT 610 (or more specifically, the GT 520 that was renamed the GT 610). In fact, the HD4000 is very nearly as fast as what was renamed the GT 630 in many benchmarks. The mobile version of this iGPU is not much slower, although the ULV mobile version of it is probably roughly on par to the GT 610.
Of course, the Celeron 847 was a Sandy Bridge part, not an Ivy Bridge part, and the Celeron 847 didn't even ship with a full fledged Sandy Bridge generation iGPU, so the GT 610 is likely still faster than the 847's iGPU. But this should give you an idea about how silly the "fast enough for Steam games" statement is. We're talking about a machine with a GPU that is at best two thirds the performance of a modern Intel iGPU.
You mean I can actually buy a PC for jur just $279 + RAM + notebook HD = $399 that is capable of running Linux?
That's amazing!
Prices certainly are dropping through the floor...
Oh look, Dell has a system on sale for $299 WITH the so-called Microsoft Tax (Windows 8) and an actual DVD drive.
What was it that made this system special? The novelty of shipping with no operating system? Seriously?
Ken
This is really a $300-400 problem? You could do much better with a Foxconn barebones ($130), 4 Gig of DDR3 RAM ($25) and a $30 add-in gigabit card and a hard drive ($50) - all in for about $235.
Of course, this is an atom-based system, but you won't be paying a premium for a discrete graphics feature you won't use.
Ken
A PC that runs Linux? you dont say, wow ... mind = blown
I have to echo what the others have said re Ubuntu. Every experience I've had with it has been a disappointment. I've installed it on 4 different systems and always had trouble with something. The most dramatic experience was when I installed it on a Dell Inspiron 1501 AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core with 2GB RAM (admittedly that CPU is weak re cache). After I installed the 64-bit version of Ubuntu, I almost tore the laptop open to see if there really was a dual core 64-bit processor inside because it ran like a 486. Needless to say, I dumped it and installed sidux instead (sidux reorganized as aptosid and then forked to siduction, if memory serves). I used the laptop reliably and extensively for just over two years with sidux and finally aptosid.
Even one of the more popular and respected Linux columnists did a write-up re the disappointments in trying to use Ubuntu. We both had sent comments to their community, but never received any responses.
That was 3 years ago. I would have expected that since then things might have improved. As a matter of fact, I just reconfigured an old P4 box for my niece. And the distro I installed on it was Xubuntu. I had tried several. (I typically have several liveCD distros laying around to do installs.) And to my great relief, Xubuntu worked quite well. Now she's happily using her reconfigured P4 (while her husband and his family members have all been hit by a virus on their Windows machines) Sorry. That last bit is a cheap shot.
So long story short, I have no doubt installing a distro other than Ubuntu would result in better performance. Once more, the availability of choice is shown to be a benefit.
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