Building the worst Linux PC ever: 6 hours to boot Ubuntu
1–10 of 62 posts
Re: Building the worst Linux PC ever: 6 hours to boot Ubuntu
#2I'm sure he could coax at least a few more hours out of it by somehow finding a working 1x CD-ROM drive to boot a LiveCD from.
Re: Building the worst Linux PC ever: 6 hours to boot Ubuntu
#3I disbelieve. How could this possibly boot to X without a framebuffer emulator too?
Re: Building the worst Linux PC ever: 6 hours to boot Ubuntu
#4I disbelieve. How could this possibly boot to X without a framebuffer emulator too?
There is no X, he is accessing the system through minicom.
Re: Building the worst Linux PC ever: 6 hours to boot Ubuntu
#5From the actual web site[1], describing the video of the boot process[2]:
"The raw video is in a few segments, since I had to change camera batteries a few times while filming."
[1]: http://dmitry.co/index.php?p=./04.Thoughts/07.%20Linux%20on%...
Re: Building the worst Linux PC ever: 6 hours to boot Ubuntu
#6I disbelieve. How could this possibly boot to X without a framebuffer emulator too?
There is no X, he is accessing the system through minicom.
Theoretically you could boot X without a hardware framebuffer emulator. X supports rendering to normal RAM as well (for example, for VNC connections).
Re: Building the worst Linux PC ever: 6 hours to boot Ubuntu
#7The best part about this is the battery pack in the picture.
I wonder if there's a niche for the equivalent of the Model 100 in today's world?
http://www.trs-80.com/wordpress/trs-80-computer-line/model-1...
A fully mobile general purpose computer with instant boot, impressive battery life, running off 4 AA's.
The Wikireader comes close as the modern equivalent. The input method would have to be something like Siri, with an optional keyboard. With a form factor and batteries from an iPad 3, but with a slower processor and a fast refresh eInk screen, you could have truly phenomenal battery life.
Re: Building the worst Linux PC ever: 6 hours to boot Ubuntu
#8The best part about this is the battery pack in the picture. I wonder if there's a niche for the equivalent of the Model 100 in today's world? http://www.trs-80.com/wordpress/trs-80-computer-line/model-1... A fully mobile general purpose computer with instant boot, impressive battery life, running off 4 AA's. The Wikireader comes close as the modern equivalent. The input method would have to be something like Siri, w…
Siri (and most other voice recognition on phones) relies on a network connection, that'll put a bit of a dent in the battery life.
Re: Building the worst Linux PC ever: 6 hours to boot Ubuntu
#9The linked blog post misses the interesting bits. Yes, it boots Ubuntu (slowly) via an ARM emulator written for AVR. That's just software.
What struck me is that he wrote a controller for an 8 bit FPM DRAM bus instead of just using a big SRAM. That's surprising, and not at all trivial to do over a bunch of GPIO pins.
Re: Building the worst Linux PC ever: 6 hours to boot Ubuntu
#10this is an amazing hack. Well done for this guy, and his totally useless project.