Smallest Linux desktop PC, smaller than an apple (fruit) | Hacker News Reader

Smallest Linux desktop PC, smaller than an apple (fruit)

handlewithlinux.com

20 pointssuperberliner21 comments

The image of the setup with the keyboard and the monitor gave me an idea: Open a coffee shop/internet cafe type place where people could bring tiny computers and/or cell phones in and plug them into a docking station attached to a keyboard and a monitor.

I'll bet that's the future of the desktop/notebook, when cell phones become a little more powerful.

The hard bit isn't even the hardware. It's the ui. Phone ui and desktop ui going are always going to be different, so how jarring is it going to be to have two different uis on the same machine?

That seems very solvable though, and importantly: solvable in ways that could be a real competitive advantage if done well.

The hard problem is how to get cell phones into people's hands that would work with it.

Smart phone users already have to switch between their computers and their phones. At the very worst, combining them would mean using two incompatible UIs as we do already, but your data would all be in the same place and you would save money. Any integration of the two UIs would be the icing on the cake.

If you have a Mac and an iPhone, it's all OS X. Just have the system start up the "Desktop" window/UI management system when you dock the phone. Lots of Linux users are familiar with the same machine, with the same OS having 2, 3 or a dozen different window managers.

People are already used to having one set of UI conventions on their phone and another on their laptop/desktop. Doesn't seem to jar too many from where I'm sitting.

I'm pretty sure the first such device will be a future iPhone.

It looks to me that the current mobile corporations (let's say Nokia) are so used with business as usual and the tight lockin they don't want to make this step.

iPAQ "blue dock" was somewhat similar but never caught on for some reason, perhaps too early ?

Technically it's been feasible since forever. My cellphone is way faster than my Cyrix CPU that ran Windows 98 just fine. Yet, there is no hardware and software support for this.

Add a bluetooth mouse, this keyboard dock[1] and either have an extra wire for the display or go entirely wireless. That would be something nice to see in the corner of Starbucks.

1. http://store.apple.com/us/product/IPAD_KBDOCK?mco=MTcyMTgwOT...

You can get this thing for $200. Not quite as small, but it has a 1.6 GHz Atom and it will handle streaming of HD video.

http://amzn.com/B002O3W44Q

If I were Apple, I'd be releasing an upgraded Apple TV using the tech that went into the iPad. (But trade off a bunch of speed for efficfiency.) Otherwise things like the Acer AspireRevo are going to eat away at sales of the Mac Mini and Apple TV.

Speaking of the Atom I have noticed that just about everyone had put out little mac mini type computers except that they use the Atom. The mac mini on the other hand is pretty much a laptop in a box. It uses a mobile core 2 duo which results in better power usage and way better performance. Why hasn't any manufacture out there created a mac mini clone? I spent last weekend trying to find one to buy, but in the end it looks like I will be buying a mini to put Linux. The closest I came on the PC side was to get a laptop and turn off the screen.... I was honestly expecting it to be easy to find a PC version of the mac mini.

The thing is, a modern laptop in a box is way more power than lots of typical users need. If you're not a gamer, all you really need is something like an Atom and some hardware assisted video decoding.

desktop?

You know... You could hook up VGA and a couple USB ports to a microcontroller, run Linux and call it a desktop computer, but you would be lying.

Yeah, because how could anyone use a computer without wobbly windows!?

(Go back in time 20 years, and multiuser timesharing systems had lower specs than this. And a lot of good CS work was done on these systems; UNIX written, Emacs written, Vi written, gcc written, etc.)

Well, and then there was Firefox. Which simply won't run on old hardware, at least not in a current version. And not at all to mention YouTube or anything a more powerful computer requiring site. (GMail anyone?)

As much as I love keeping old computers alive using Linux, the nowadays common way using the web puts the spoke into the wheel.

the common way using the web puts the spoke into the wheel

Wheels fall apart if you take the spokes out. Pretty sure this was not the analogy you were looking for.

Using current browsers with fast javascript engines sites like GMail work fine on 300Mhz machines.

> (Go back in time 20 years, and multiuser timesharing systems had lower specs than this. And a lot of good CS work was done on these systems; UNIX written, Emacs written, Vi written, gcc written, etc.)

I was there. That doesn't change the fact people expect different things from a desktop computer these days.

You know... You could run CP/M out of something the size of a coin if you really wanted to.

It says "300MHz Atom", which would be a nonsensical clock rate, the manufacturer's website says it is actually a 300MHz MIPS cpu. That isn't a lot of horsepower by desktop standards of even a decade ago.

I like these small devices, but as a practical setup, a good choice is just a very small Ubuntu laptop with a large external monitor for when you happen to be working at your desk. Inexpensive, not a lot of wires, and portable when you need it.

http://www.linutop.com/index.en.html

Looks like the wearables.stanford.edu stack from a few years back.

That's pretty funny

... but basically useless

Reply on news.ycombinator.com