gOS and the gPC

[Brazen]

Wal-Mart just started selling a $200 PC made by Everex. I'm not sure which I like better about it: the fact that is has a linux distro installed, the fact that it's incredibly cheap, or the fact that it comes with the ultra-low power consuming Via C7-D processor.

If you want to play around with the OS (I'm downloading the torrent now), here is the gOS website: http://www.thinkgos.com/

And here is a direct link to the LiveDVD torrent: gos-live-1.0.1_386.torrent

One thing though, the version that comes on the Everex gPC "and other future gOS products" will have DVD, mp3 and other proprietary codecs installed by default, but the downloadable version will not (for licensing reasons, that most of you already understand).

Here is also a TechReblic article that includes some links on the gPC, especially check out the Wired article linked in the article: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-news/?p=1476
I believe there was also a Slashdot article on it a day or two ago.

I think the quality of the gOS will be the biggest factor in it's success and in boosting mainstream linux support. However, I see a lot of enthusiasts buying it just to put their favorite distro on it for an always-on home server or MythTV box, etc.

 

[Brazen]

The torrent is coming down FAST, too. I'm seeing 30 seeders and 50 peers, and I just started it a few minutes ago. It's already 53% down.

edit: 58%... you get the idea.

 

[loup garou]

Did you buy one of the boxes? If so, have you opened it up? Curious what VIA board they're using.

I think this would be perfect for my WHS box (large case, low power cpu/board).

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: loup garou
Did you buy one of the boxes? If so, have you opened it up? Curious what VIA board they're using.

I think this would be perfect for my WHS box (large case, low power cpu/board).

No I have not bought one. I would love to have one for a power-saving home server, but I just got a P4 system from a friend that is more than enough and I don't think the cost-of-electricity savings would be made up within several years of purchasing a gPC. I do think it's great it has a full case, so a person could pack it with harddrives for a file server, even though their reason is stated as because consumers are stupid enough to think bigger=better (I'm paraphrasing).

 

[nerp]

Via still leaves a bad taste in my mouth from the old days of terribly unreliable chipsets. Is this machine any bit stable?

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

Via is horrible. I don't care if they have gotten better, they've gave me to many problems.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

The website doesn't work for me.

 

[spherrod]

downloading now - looks good

 

[Jaxidian]

Originally posted by: loup garou
Did you buy one of the boxes? If so, have you opened it up? Curious what VIA board they're using.

I think this would be perfect for my WHS box (large case, low power cpu/board).

I'm thinking the exact same thing. I'm going to be building a WHS box soon but I need to be able to put bunches of HDDs into it.

Can somebody please post info about the expansion ability with this system? For me, I need to know how many (and what kind) of HDDs I can get inside it (both mobo-supported and case-supported). I'd also be interested in the PSU specs since this is gonna have many HDDs inside it.

Thanks!

 

[osage]

you might want to check out the gOS Develop kit for a base for such a system. you can add a case, PSU and as many HDDs as you need.
price seems OK. I may get one to replace the socket A system that I use to run my FreeNAS box. WHS is a bit of a dog to me, glad I didn't move all my stuff over from the NAS box

 

[Brazen]

Well, I did finally get around to trying out gOS. It's basically e17 on Ubuntu with a custom theme. The theme is really very nice and has a clean and organized feel to it. The windows decorations are very OSX-y, which I don't care for but a lot of people will probably like it. It has pretty much all the same standard apps that Ubuntu does. I meant to check where it's apt repos are pointed at, but I forgot. I suspect they have their own repos and don't rely on Ubuntu's. e17's default theme is included, which I tried out and is just... mind-bogglingly beautiful. I've seen screenshots of e17 before, but they just do not do justice to how beautiful the interface is.

Personally, I think I will stick with Gnome, but if you like "pretty", which a lot of people do and especially the type of people who will by a PC from Wal-Mart, then gOS will not dissappoint. Even for a non-gPC buyer who wants to use Ubuntu with e17, I would suggest seriously considering gOS.

 

[Robor]

Is e17 stable now? I would assume yes if they chose it as the default windows manager. I tried it out shortly after getting into Linux (I think Ubuntu 5.04?). The only way I could get e17 installed was via a script. Eventually it worked but was crash happy and some of the features just didn't work at all.

Another question, is this a 'LiveCD'? If not could be an interesting VM install later on.

Edit: Just noticed the word 'live' in the torrent download. I'm an idiot!

 

[Robor]

Download completely stopped here and we have a *sick* pipe here @ work. Restarted and resumed but only coming in @ < 5K/sec. FTP link doesn't work at all. I gave up. Maybe try again later from home.

 

[Brazen]

It's a LiveCD much like Ubuntu's "Desktop" install cd, meaning you also have the option to install from within the Live environment. e17 is still not listed as "stable" on the Enlightenment website, but it appears to be stable enough on gOS though, but then a lot of people think Vista should not be considered in the "stable" phase yet.

 

[Brazen]

Ok, I've restarted my seed for gOS and upped the bandwidth limit on it. I would encourage anyone to try getting it through the torrent first, but I don't know why Robor was having problems with it.

I went ahead and split up the files into 95mb chunks and uploaded them to MediaFire. The links to the downloads are below. You'll need 7-Zip to decompress and combine the chunks. There is also an md5sum file in there that you can compare to the md5sum of the iso (use winMd5Sum on Windows).

gos-live-1.0_386.iso.7z.001
gos-live-1.0_386.iso.7z.002
gos-live-1.0_386.iso.7z.003
gos-live-1.0_386.iso.7z.004
gos-live-1.0_386.iso.7z.005
gos-live-1.0_386.iso.7z.006
gos-live-1.0_386.iso.7z.007
gos-live-1.0_386.iso.7z.008

 

[Robor]

It finally finished here @ work. When I left last night it was going to take between 8-9 hours but it did complete. Burned the DVD (wish they could have fit it on a standard CD) and gave it a try.

Booted a Dell Latitude D610 in a docking station with the CD and it came right up. The video/display were detected correctly and set the right resolution. I launched Firefox and had network connectivity. Didn't try to play an .mp3 or DVD but I remember from the notes that it wouldn't work so I tried to grab w32codecs and it failed (couldn't find the package). I looked at /etc/apt/sources.list and there was nothing commented out that could be enabled. I guess other repos would need to be added.

The default desktop looks like a cross between Vista and OS X. I messed around with the theme and layout and there's some things I didn't like. I couldn't find a way to keep windows from stopping at the menu bar. The bar could sit on top but with Firefox at full screen the status bar and such at the bottom were hidden behind the menu bar. I could put the menu bar 'under' open windows but I don't like that either. I'm guessing there's a way to do it or workaround but I didn't see it right away. Also didn't like that the icons in the launcher bar didn't have a popup for their program name when I hovered over them.

That's about all I had time for now.

 

[Brazen]

Ach, you must have gotten the new 1.0.1 version which apparently requires a DVD. The 1.0 version which I got used a CD. Those links I posted above are for the 1.0. I can't imagine there is a vast difference, so I'm probably not going to bother with the new 1.0.1

 

[Robor]

Yep - I've got 1.0.1. Dunno the difference between them.

What did you think of the interface?

 

[Brazen]

mmm, I don't really have anything else to say about the interface than what I said 8 posts up.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: Brazen
mmm, I don't really have anything else to say about the interface than what I said 8 posts up.

Ah, sorry 'bout that. I tend to 'skim' posts a lot.