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The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer

blog.linuxmint.com

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Re: The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer

#31

Post by [deleted] »

drostie wrote: post #29
noonespecial wrote: post #27

In the course of my business, I deal with dozens of different embedded PC's. There's one thing I wish players in this space would keep in mind: If you want to take a shot at this window of power and performance (the level at which people start thinking "set-top box") you really have to beat out the $250 netbook I can get at walmart. If my first thought is, "nice form-factor but a netbook/mini-itx/mac-mini solves the…

Yeah, the one big thing that this one has going for it is its noiselessness due to using its case as a heat sink. Torvalds has also talked about how he wants a "whisper-quiet" computing environment; I'm surprised that so few companies treat this as a design target. It's probably more popular among computers designed to be used as thin clients, which it looks like the mintBox is. It's nice to see how much you can comp…

[deleted]

Re: The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer

#32

Post by drostie »

crumblan wrote: post #22
dbaupp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a little ridiculous: you can trivially add the DuckDuckGo (or Google) search provider; e.g. on the right-hand side of the DDG search page[1] there is a "Add to Firefox" (and presumably similarly for Chromium) link that you can just click, and it just works. [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=add+a+search+engine

I know, but I wanted Google, and I found it difficult to remove the branded search and switch to basic Google. It's not a ridiculous complaint, I just think if they are willing to treat their users like that it will only get worse in the future. I jumped off of Ubuntu because of Unity, though, so I might be feeling very "once bitten..."

That is quite understandable, but think of it from a scrupulous person's perspective. You could make your default search Google, in which case you're sending your user a mixed message: "I am giving you the popular search" versus "I don't actually care about your privacy."

What's worse is, it's generally a conflict of interest. At least at one point (and perhaps it's still the case) Google was paying Mozilla for the privilege of being the default search provided on Firefox. Don't get me wrong, I like money going towards Mozilla; but I'd prefer that Mozilla not have to sell Firefox users' privacy for it.

Google Search is still a bit better than DDG at very recent news, at exposing cached pages, and at calculating natural language expressions. Sometimes they are better on relevance but for most searches DDG does very well. In some sense the freshness of Google Search is its only real remaining advantage in the marketplace: the Internet Archive has long been better for long-term caching, and Wolfram Alpha now does a much better job with some natural language queries.

("Some" because astonishingly, Wolfram Alpha does not have a syntax of composition. What I mean is, you can just ask Wolfram Alpha "Schwarzschild radius of the Sun" and it will answer that if the Sun got beneath 6 km wide, it would collapse into a black hole. But don't try to append the words "in light-seconds" or "/ speed of light" to that query, don't even wrap it in parentheses, because Wolfram Alpha will suddenly look at you and say, "WTF does any of that mean?!?!?")

Re: The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer

#33

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #31
drostie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the one big thing that this one has going for it is its noiselessness due to using its case as a heat sink. Torvalds has also talked about how he wants a "whisper-quiet" computing environment; I'm surprised that so few companies treat this as a design target. It's probably more popular among computers designed to be used as thin clients, which it looks like the mintBox is. It's nice to see how much you can comp…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer

#34

Post by ekianjo »

hack_edu wrote: post #24
tikhonj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious: what do you see as the advantage of Ubuntu over Mint? My understanding is that Mint is just Ubuntu with a different default desktop environment and some multimedia codecs. Do you just like Unity? (For what it's worth, I actually like it as well.)

Ubuntu has a huge community that makes any question you have easily Googlable, as well as a much more mature ecosystem in general. Even if they're built on the same foundation, these little things really make a difference and ease headaches. And really, you can't write off the simple fact that its been around and strong for so many years. You can rest assured that it will continue to be.

I don't really understand your point. You can install the exact same thing on Mint as on Ubuntu. Both environments are very similar, and you can have the more resource efficient Cinnamon as Framework on Mint instead of Unity on Ubuntu. It's basically the same thing, and Mint benefits from the very strong Ubuntu foundation,.

Re: The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer

#35

Post by moreorless »

hack_edu wrote: post #24
tikhonj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious: what do you see as the advantage of Ubuntu over Mint? My understanding is that Mint is just Ubuntu with a different default desktop environment and some multimedia codecs. Do you just like Unity? (For what it's worth, I actually like it as well.)

Ubuntu has a huge community that makes any question you have easily Googlable, as well as a much more mature ecosystem in general. Even if they're built on the same foundation, these little things really make a difference and ease headaches. And really, you can't write off the simple fact that its been around and strong for so many years. You can rest assured that it will continue to be.

What kind of problems are you referring to that is easier to search for Ubuntu than LinuxMint? I've installed and deployed quite a few LinuxMint computers to folks with little to no computer experience. Throughout, I've never had any issues with not being able to quickly find answers for the few problems that I ran into.

Re: The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer

#36

Post by ekianjo »

crumblan wrote: post #2

For anyone thinking of trying Mint; they will install customized search engines in your Firefox and Chromium, it is a shit experience, and it is irritating to remove or avoid. I would suggest you do not use Mint if you plan on doing any internet searching.

And you don't have any problem with IE being packed with Bing search out of the box ?

Re: The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer

#37

Post by nl »

drostie wrote: post #29
noonespecial wrote: post #27

In the course of my business, I deal with dozens of different embedded PC's. There's one thing I wish players in this space would keep in mind: If you want to take a shot at this window of power and performance (the level at which people start thinking "set-top box") you really have to beat out the $250 netbook I can get at walmart. If my first thought is, "nice form-factor but a netbook/mini-itx/mac-mini solves the…

Yeah, the one big thing that this one has going for it is its noiselessness due to using its case as a heat sink. Torvalds has also talked about how he wants a "whisper-quiet" computing environment; I'm surprised that so few companies treat this as a design target. It's probably more popular among computers designed to be used as thin clients, which it looks like the mintBox is. It's nice to see how much you can comp…

(Most) Netbooks are fanless too.

Re: The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer

#38

Post by nl »

dbro wrote: post #26

Depending on what you're planning to use it for, there are some less expensive devices that are worth considering, eg. for about $90 shipped to the US http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/546571245-Mele-A2000-TV... I just received one and installed Debian squeeze on it, following the instructions here http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/hacking_the_mele_a1000... Shipping took about a month, but now that it's here i…

Shipping took about a month, but now that it's here it's as good as I expected.

It's not clear if as I expected is a good thing or not.

From http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/hacking_the_mele_a1000... I read:

X11 is not very stable and the Mali driver is being worked on. You can try running X11 with a frame buffer.

That's going to kill it for a lot of applications.

Re: The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer

#39

Post by baggers »

DanBC wrote: post #23
nabilt wrote: post #4

My family just got an Apple TV and I'm very impressed at the fit and finish, but I was disappointed at the lack of features. I would love a more open device where I could install whatever I want. For example I would love to mirror my display, have better integration with Android and web browse directly on the box. Any recommendation for good media center software to install on the mintBox that can do this?

GeeXboX ( http://www.geexbox.org/ ) OpenElec ( http://openelec.tv/ ) XBMC ( http://xbmc.org/ ) None of them have particularly good "elevator pitches" for what they are or do. I hear people like XBMC.

I second OpenElec, which is effectively a minimal OS which boots straight to XBMC. I threw it on my aspire revo and it ran beautifully while using under 300mb of HDD. It pulls media wirelessly from my server and I use the android XMBC Remote to control it. I would warn that it probably worked so well for me because they have a build specifically for nvidia ion graphics based machines. Saying that though, they also have builds for Fusion HTPCs, Intel, XTreamer, Apple TV, and a generic build with or without proprietary graphics drivers.

Re: The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer

#40

Post by idleloops »

drostie wrote: post #29
noonespecial wrote: post #27

In the course of my business, I deal with dozens of different embedded PC's. There's one thing I wish players in this space would keep in mind: If you want to take a shot at this window of power and performance (the level at which people start thinking "set-top box") you really have to beat out the $250 netbook I can get at walmart. If my first thought is, "nice form-factor but a netbook/mini-itx/mac-mini solves the…

Yeah, the one big thing that this one has going for it is its noiselessness due to using its case as a heat sink. Torvalds has also talked about how he wants a "whisper-quiet" computing environment; I'm surprised that so few companies treat this as a design target. It's probably more popular among computers designed to be used as thin clients, which it looks like the mintBox is. It's nice to see how much you can comp…

Noise bothers me, I even get bothered by the heads resting in a hard drive. It seems that the quieter you get your environment - the more bothered you can become. I've a pretty decent asus gfx card that remains unused, because it has an onboard fan. Both my desktop and laptop are whisper quiet.

I had a friend with a Pentium 4 machine, that he just kept in a nearby cupboard. Once shut behind the door, you couldn't hear it at all. If I was a home owner (and could modify my house at will,) I'd probably just place my PC in another room (preferably a store), and channel cables through the wall. Would be cheaper than wasting money on over-priced cooling. The good thing about this, is that you also don't have to worry so much about what your PC looks like. You can even mount a motherboard in something like a biscuit tin.

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