The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer
blog.linuxmint.com
blog.linuxmint.com
This is what really caught my attention about the Raspberry Pi. It was OpenWRT sized and priced, but promises netbook sized abilities. I just wish I knew how to get a case of them.
It's nice to see how much you can compress into that small package, though.
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.
I like your idea of having the PC in a different room than the actual screen and controls. But that's not really an option if you rent an apartment and cannot drill holes through the walls :)
Recommended cases: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Case_Basics_and_Recommendation...
They have similar recommendations for PSUs, heatsinks, fans, HDDs etc.
A friend of mine just picked up a Pentium 4 (yes all my friends have P4s), for £20, with a nice thick case, but the thing sounded like a helicopter taking off - the fans were so loud. We replaced the CPU fan (something like an Arctic freezer), and now it's quite easy on the ears.
My PC case is hugely bloated for my needs, I barely touch the DVD unit anymore, so I could just throw it in a trunk. Or make a new chassis for it. I only keep it as the size doesn't make me curse whenever I have to go in there. How about a piano stool for a case?
I think my favourite case I ever had was a micro ATX case that I modded to accommodate the PSU on the front. I could then keep it on the floor and still turn it off easily. As it was low down it was quieter. It also served as a rather nice foot warmer.
I am going to disagree with that: IMHO the one big thing being fanless has going for it is lack of need for maintenance. Specifically, without a fan, the case can be designed so that much less dust gets into the case, and dust and moving parts are the main causes of need for maintenance.
The cost-effective way to lower noise is to use better fans (longer blades, better bearings, lower-RPM motors) or to use solid-state drives.
The company that makes the computers featured in the OP also makes a fanless computer powered by an Ivy Bridge Core i7: http://www.fit-pc.com/web/purchase/order-direct-intense-pc/. But they want $836 for the barebones (no RAM, no HDD) version!
One reason the price is so high is that they are forced to use an ultra-low-power (17-W-TDP) processor. If you add just one fan to your design, you can easily accommodate a 65-W-TDP processor, and in fact Intel does not even sell a retail processor (i.e., a processor marketed to people who build their own boxes) with less than 65 W TDP. To be precise, they didn't sell any such retail processors before Ivy Bridge started coming out -- I have not checked since then.
ADDED. I am talking here about systems with some oomph: if an ARM or an embedded-class processor will do the trick, then obviously being noiseless (and compact and low in power consumption and low maintenence) is easy.
In short: they're not selling to you, so your not buying it doesn't mean they lose.
Check out BeagleBone - more expensive than RasberryPi, but they are available. I'm running a BeagleBone as a DNSMASQ server. Linux with package management and full-blown development tools running inside an Altoids tin - yeah! All of these small/cheap/silent linux boards are pretty incredible & there is more to come.
When I need graphics (mostly we drive plasma displays for signage) I usually use a Lanner. (http://www.lannerinc.com/Embedded_Computing) Fanless, cooled through aluminum case, generally indestructible and less than $300 each in bulk.
If you just want to throw a switch via wifi, a TP-link 703N with OpenWRT can do it for you for even less than the cost of a RasPi. I've got one opening my garage door from my iPhone.
By the way, anyone who is using Gentoo should really try to compile your own OpenWrt images. It is a fun exercise (if using Gentoo is fun for you ;)).
My customers have products that run for that long, even longer. I can't be changing hardware every year because the chip has been end-of-lifed or has become suddenly scarce and the price has quadrupled. And this happens a lot. Even the pico-ITX stuff disappears and reappears constantly, especially when it's from Asia.
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.
If they were even closely comparable I'd consider it.
(sort of kidding)
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 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.
The mintBox is available in two versions.
mintBox Basic ($476 + shipping, duty & VAT):
250GB HDD APU G-T40N (1.0 GHz dual core + Radeon HD 6290 – 9W) 4GB RAM Flat metal case mintBox Pro ($549 + shipping, duty & VAT):
250GB HDD APU G-T56N (1.65 GHz dual core + Radeon HD 6320 – 18W) 8GB RAM Ribbed metal case
Do you just like Unity? (For what it's worth, I actually like it as well.)
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.
That being said, I prefer Unity to any of the DE in Mint. Plus there's HUD and I'm going to assume all the other stuff Canonical is going to put out soon. I'm one of those people REALLY looking forward to being able to buy an Ubuntu for Android phone. I mean REALLY looking forward to it. In that case, I'll like the consistency of Ubuntu everywhere (Perhaps we'll see a TV soon with Ubuntu TV on it...that would be sweet. etc.).
Nothing against Mint. They are doing something pretty cool, just not my cup of tea.
I think a product like this is a great idea for a Linux distro.
It functions extremely well and makes me wonder why no serious manufacturers are pursuing this avenue right now .. it seems to me to be a very powerful combination of parts.
Ripe opportunities abound for anyone with the skills to bootstrap a hardware startup constructing such things. I sure wish I had the gumption to do it (I could handle the software side, anyway..)
This sentence really turned me off. If you're going to sell something as well engineered then don't say it feels that way. Give the results of drop tests or heat dissipation tests.
I would suggest you do not use Mint if you plan on doing any internet searching.
Search engines help fund Linux Mint: Search engines share with Linux Mint the revenue generated for them by Linux Mint users. The following search engines share revenue with us: Yahoo!, DuckDuckGo and Amazon. By using these engines for search or to make purchases, you help fund the Linux Mint project.
Easy installation of other engines: Clear explanations and easy instructions are there in Linux Mint for users to understand why some engines aren't installed by default and how to easily install them.
e: Clarification
Edit: no, they weren't so sinister as to install it with another package, it's part of the Firefox extensions in the default install.
From there you just have to click the icon of the one you want. They should put them at the top of that page and not the bottom though (I added the anchor to the bottom of the page).
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?!?!?")
You loose suggest which is slightly annoying, but I can live with that.
As a convenience to its users, Linux Mint has a dedicated webpage where you can easily add search easily with one click: http://www.linuxmint.com/searchengines.php You can of course add search engines in any other Firefox supported way also.
I really think the parent comment is an overreaction.
The photos are made with a cheap digicam with no lighting. I'm not saying this to complain, but to praise.
That's because the photos prove (at least to me) that the project is done in someone's bedroom at almost no cost at all.
That someone at this level of business development can defy laws of business and offer something like the mintBox is amazing and is a sign of how the times have changed.
Ten years ago, no one would have dreamt of this sort of thing.
Then again, forty years ago they would have. That was also the most amazing time for computer science, when the seminal advancements were being made that still continue to resonate with the world. So maybe, with the whole maker crowd, and statup biz, and this sort of mintBox ramshack business mentality, we're looking at another golden age?