Plasma Embedded
Due to some fortunate events, I got my hands on a small (miniITX) all-in-one board based on AMD Geode, which you can see in the picture. It is a low-power thing without any coolers (not even passive ones).
My job was to install Linux on it. And I did just that - Debian GNU/Linux with KDE 4.1 beta which is in Debian’s experimental repositories. I hooked the system to my screen so that you can see what it looks like (although it was a bit odd to hook something like this to a 19″ screen). It behaves surprisingly well - the system is responsive and works very well (with all fancy Plasma animations)
The ultimate goal is to create an environment for systems that will have the ability to run only a limited set of predefined applications (for example a web browser, mail client and office suite). For this, there will be some changes to the screen you have in the screenshot, but I’ll talk about that a bit later.
Which graphics card have this machine? and RAM?
Comment by cruzki — July 17, 2008 @ 6:22 pm
This is awesome. I’ve been wanting to try something like this to build a Linux MCE or MythTV front end. I knew ASUS was putting Linux on some (soon to be all) of their motherboards. I’ll be really interested to see the progress on this. Do you have any documentation as to how you went about installing Linux on the motherboard?
Comment by Steven — July 17, 2008 @ 8:11 pm
Well for kde3 I’ve used kiosktool to restrict the possibilities of the user (very useful for surfstations). But I think kiosktool has not been ported to kde4, yet.
Comment by jamasi — July 17, 2008 @ 11:49 pm
No fancy graphics card here - Geode platform contains a graphic card. Ram on this model is 256MB.
@Steven
This is the same setup as you have in some routers (albeit a bit more powerful - it has usb ports…).
The installation could be done directly by booting from USB flash or external CD, and installing on a compact flash.
I had a bit different approach - I installed it on a virtual machine and then put the image file onto the compact flash.
@jamasi
Well, I don’t exactly want a kiosk system, but it could be done /by hand/ even if there is no kiosktool.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — July 18, 2008 @ 7:38 am
Wow, this is great, where i can buy the embedded system? and how much is the price? thanks..
Comment by wildan — July 18, 2008 @ 11:31 am
To be honest, I have no idea - for both questions. According to Google, this exact model (ALIX.1C) is 100EUR.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — July 18, 2008 @ 12:12 pm
[...] Plasma Embedded My job was to install Linux on it. And I did just that - Debian GNU/Linux with KDE 4.1 beta which is in Debian’s experimental repositories. I hooked the system to my screen so that you can see what it looks like (although it was a bit odd to hook something like this to a 19″ screen). It behaves surprisingly well - the system is responsive and works very well (with all fancy Plasma animations). [...]
Pingback by Boycott Novell » Links 18/07/2008: GNU/Linux at NASA, Nicaragua — July 18, 2008 @ 8:02 pm
I think KDE is a bit too overweight for the motherboard. I got myself on the VIA PX10000 (/w 1GB RAM) and it doesn’t run that fast with GNOME or KDE. OpenBox or other light weight WM do the job better. I wonder if someone could come up with a light weight KDE version..
Comment by Jones Lee — July 19, 2008 @ 3:04 pm
Well, on this setup it works just fine.
I do intend to strip the KDE to just Plasma and a couple more things, but it works as good as it should even with full blown KDE 4.1.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — July 19, 2008 @ 3:11 pm
@wildan
The alix board can be bought directly from pcengines.ch.
For my address in Denmark, the price is 118 EUR incl. case, Power Supply and CF card.
Comment by Michael Krog — July 22, 2008 @ 1:42 pm