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Taking Linux On The Road With Ubuntu 184
Zebrahead writes "Tom's Hardware has a nice review of the Ubuntu H2. How about storing your operating system, including some applications, on a highly mobile device? This is exactly what the Ubuntu H2 was designed for. In theory, the Ubuntu H2 package can be run on virtually any computer that has at least one empty USB port. A tiny 1" hard drive with 3 GB capacity was teamed up with the Debian-based Linux distribution Ubuntu. Bundling a tiny storage device with a fully-featured open source operating system enables the user to take a system installation, all its settings and applications, and a limited amount of data with him. It would be great to take this pretty interesting product to an Internet café, a computer at a friend's location, or any other system you can think of."
3GB == Tiny? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:3GB == Tiny? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:3GB == Tiny? (Score:2)
Re:3GB == Tiny? (Score:2)
My Nuts != numb (Score:1)
Re:3GB == Tiny? (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed, but when the article suggest to put install applications like OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Firefox along with Evolution and rest of the Gnome desktop, you sure need those 3GB. Perhaps the reviewer was refering to the physical size of the drive as small ;-)
Re:3GB == Tiny? (Score:2)
Re:3GB == Tiny? (Score:2)
I don't agree. Physically, it's the same size as any other USB key. Smaller, even, since it is newer. In the grand scheme of things, a 3GB USB pen vs. 250GB internal HDD is very tiny.
Re:3GB == Tiny? (Score:2)
What I'm guessing is that it doesn't need the 3GB, that's just the device used.
Re:3GB == Tiny? (Score:2)
Gotta Love Ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gotta Love Ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)
If you wanted both onboard and PCI graphics card to work (in some form of xinerama setup), set the PCI card to be the default display device in the BIOS, as opposed to AGP (most onboard video chips are classed as AGP devices in the BIOS). A number of PCI graphics cards aren't happy unless they're the first video device to be initialised.
Once you've got the card running, you can use either the opensource nv driver that ships as part of Xorg, or you can use the closed source drivers from nvidia that are custom compiled for your distro. You need the closed-source licenced drivers to do 3D-acceleration properly, but for basic 2D work the nv drivers are fine. Depends on your distro how best to do this - ubuntu does have support for the closed-source drivers, but I believe it's a bit of a pain to get working.
As part of the wider picture though, I've always been amazed by the hardware-detection and support on linux LiveCDs (or indeed, the H2). Given the lack of co-operation from hardware manufacturers, the amount of machines that work perfectly well 'out of the box' (i.e. without manually installing drivers) is much higher than windows XP; sata drive support, for example.
Re:Gotta Love Ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)
I did this on someone else's box recently, and it's actually a matter of just installing the right package (from Synaptic).
Re:Gotta Love Ubuntu (Score:2)
Sure (Score:2)
Internet Cafe (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, this could be one of the best things to happen to network admins in a long time. Right now, a network admin has to spend ungodly amounts of time going to local machine after local machine to install patches, fix registry errors, change /etc settings... or to run ghost floppies to restore the machine... o
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:3, Interesting)
For schools especially, all internet access must be monitored, and schools in Leeds (Which ain't a small city) use an individual-user-login based service. This means a proxy server, and most kids wouldn't know what a proxy server was if it came up and slapped them in the face.
I'd love to be able to run a portable distro in school, but at the moment it's just
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:2)
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:2, Funny)
*chuckles*
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:2)
Much the same in Canada, but that doesn't mean it won't work. As an example, I go to Seneca College. In order to use any of their PCs, you have to log into them with your college username/password. OR, if you bring in your own com
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:2)
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:2)
Wouldn't
export http_proxy="http://user:pass@proxy.domain:port" work?
It does for me. Apt, synaptic, and aptitude all work just fine. Of course, you still have to tell firefox about the proxy.
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:2)
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:2)
When I see something like that, I just quit watching . . .
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:2)
-Jar.
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:2)
And people accuse the U.S. of being creepy and censorious? Glad to hear that the field is being pioneered elsewhere.
Granted, I haven't been to a highschool in this country in a while, but I have it on good authority that there is not nearly that level of filtering or access control. I think most filtering here in schools is aimed at curbing file sharing, and there isn't any content filtration in any libraries that I'm aware of.
I think you lost this... (Score:1)
but you can have mine
Re:Internet Cafe (Score:2)
Good for librarians too... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, I fully expect a new law that makes USB ports on public computers illegal.
Re:Good for librarians too... (Score:2)
I really would hope to see the opposite... The PC has no hard drive and if you want writeable media you can burn a disk, read/write you need a stick. The facility can offer you a read-only image on loan to boot or you can bring your own if, say, you need a specific app.
Spamming type activities should be prevented by upstream limits or port blocking (dropped by arrangement only - for large file transfer perhaps), and any 'nasty
Other Distros? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Other Distros? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Other Distros? (Score:2)
SLOOOW.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:SLOOOW.... (Score:1)
Re:SLOOOW.... (Score:1)
Scary thing is thinking about the new Lenovo/IBM Thinkpad Tablet PC. That costs over $2000 and has a 4200RPM HD.
Re:SLOOOW.... (Score:2)
4400 RPM Hard Drive... 4-5 minute boot time?
I skimmed through the article and towards the end there is a graph of the throughput of this drive. It seems to max out at around 8 MB/sec. It is probably the slowest 4200 RPM hard drive you will be likely to find since the platters are so small. A 3.5 inch drive and a 1 inch drive using the same technology will both have save bit density.
I am sure the platters are not quite these sizes, but... The outter most track on a 3.5 inch platter is nearly 11 inc
Re:SLOOOW.... (Score:2)
Yeah, and as much as I like Ubuntu in general, I have to say that their live CD is about the slowest thing I've ever seen in terms of boot speed. Debootstrap was never meant to "go there"
Poor choice of name (Score:5, Insightful)
The name "H2" definitely doesn't scream "efficient" to a lot of people. In fact, another product called "H2", a gas-guzzling SUV designed as a military-style façade on a Chevy Tahoe engine, has shown itself to be worthy of the F-bomb: Fsck you and the Hummer you rode in on [fuh2.com].
Re:Poor choice of name (Score:2)
If you want to count by numbers, I think that the count of hydrogen molecules are a wee bit ahead of Hummers. Also by date, since hydrogen appeared a bit after the Big Bang (although it took a bit to cool enough for molecular form), while the Hummer H2 was released in 2003 C.E..
I'd imagine that hydrogen has less of an advertising budget since 2003, however.
--
Evan
Re:Poor choice of name (Score:2)
wtf's this C.E. crap??? please, A.D. is the correct form. Anything else is pandering to the PC brigade
Re:Poor choice of name (Score:2)
--
Evan
Re:Poor choice of name (Score:2)
Go find a worthy cause to get all pissy over.
Meaning of Ubuntu (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Meaning of Ubuntu (Score:1)
Common omission (Score:2)
Re:Common omission (Score:2)
Re:Meaning of Ubuntu (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Meaning of Ubuntu (Score:2)
Re:Meaning of Ubuntu (Score:2)
Ten minutes?... WTF?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
Re:Meaning of Ubuntu (Score:2)
Re:Meaning of Ubuntu (Score:2)
To each their own, and that is the strength of OSS.
Re:Meaning of Ubuntu (Score:2)
Great, but not the first distribution to do so (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Great, but not the first distribution to do so (Score:1)
Re:Great, but not the first distribution to do so (Score:2)
USB Live HDD (Score:3, Interesting)
Another thing people could do if a machine doesn't have a BIOS that is USB boot friendly is mirror the /boot structure on a 3" mini-cdr and keep that in the case with the drive. Set the Live CD up so that it seeks out the USB drive for /usr /home /etc partitions.
The $140 price tag is a little steep for me to have something I'd only use as a toy, though. With USB keys as cheap as they are right now, I'm not sure how well the market will accept this today.
Re: (Score:1)
good idea, needs a better implementation (Score:1)
Not all old machines can even boot from usb, and the install on a flash disk approach doesn't make since Ubuntu would need to be resinstalled every time to get everything set up properly for the hardware that you booted with. For example, if you install Ubuntu on a machine with an nvidia video card, then try to boot th
Re:good idea, needs a better implementation (Score:2)
Check it out: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ [damnsmalllinux.org]
Re:good idea, needs a better implementation (Score:2)
So why would that not work with a usb boot device?
Blackdog (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.projectblackdog.com/ [projectblackdog.com]
Re:Blackdog (Score:1)
Re:Blackdog (Score:2)
Linux support is better, although takes a bit of
When you can't reboot? Portable Apps (Score:3, Insightful)
Until something like that comes along... and doesn't have a 5 minute startup timeframe... I'll stick to Portable Apps [johnhaller.com].
(Full disclosure: Yes, that's my website.)
Re:When you can't reboot? Portable Apps (Score:2)
Re:When you can't reboot? Portable Apps (Score:2)
Yup, I played with the Portable Virtual Privacy machine which runs DSL. It was just too slow.
Kinda stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
When you look at the graph [tomshardware.com], you see that you're getting less than 10MB/sec. Two questions: what are the numbers on the bottom referring to, and why does the graph look like it does? Is there some caching mechanism going on?
Device drivers (Score:2, Informative)
This idea is not new.. (Score:2)
It's nice to see others comming up with it too, as that keeps it from being bitch slapped with patent crap.
The smaller the OS the more room you potentially have for applications and data.
Its obvious that technology allows storage media to get smaller in size, bigger in space and faster in access.
This is where virus, worm and whatever badness can be stopped cold in its tracks.
Whan you have write protected media to hold the OS and a
..and it has the same old problems (Score:2)
And, to be absoluetely safe, you'd need to carry the BIOS on that stick too + have a way to determine there is no malware abstraction-layer between your USB port (that's where the problems
Puppy (Score:5, Interesting)
Puppy Linux runs off a 128MB USB memory stick. That is 24 times smaller and it also does everything you need and it boots about 10 times faster too.
Re:Puppy (Score:2)
A 60G iPod is equally cheap and convenient. Just not as small.
Mepis on the go (Score:3, Interesting)
The more options you have, the better things are.
Re:Puppy (Score:2)
Re:Puppy (Score:2)
Go here and download it. Since it is so small, the best way to explain Puppy, is to try it:
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/ [goosee.com]
Mediocre Experience (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mediocre Experience (Score:3, Insightful)
ATI is well known to have shitty Linux drivers, if you wish to complain then please send a letter to ATI asking them to make better linux drivers. In general, for desktop linux you need to pick hardware which will work with it.
The Ubuntu H2 can be ordered online here. (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a nifty idea, but not really practical (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is a nifty idea, but not really practical (Score:3, Interesting)
Say I'm traveling, and I don't want to lug a laptop with me. With this thing, I could run emacs, gimp, etc., in internet cafes or at friends' houses.
And although Ubuntu has good hardware support, etc. it's not an overly zippy distro to begin with so running it off of a USB hard drive is going to slow it down so much that anyone watching you wait for 4 minutes to boot up your new, supposedly better OS is going to laugh at you and run back to Windows (
Burning Dinosaurs (Score:2)
Nice one (Score:3, Interesting)
Time (Score:2, Interesting)
Open Office just seems to la
Huh? (Score:2)
Re:WOW (Score:1)
You can almost do this with the newer Sharp Zaurus [on.net] models. Pocketsized Linux box, 4 GB drive...you can even hook up a USB keyboard and mouse to it.
Supposedly there is an VGA output option, but no one seems to be able to get it to work. You could probably get it going to display on your desktop machine with VNC or with X Windows somehow.
The Zaurus C3000 rocks. For the past few months it's replaced my trusty pencila a
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Linux vs. Windows (Score:2)
Re:Linux vs. Windows (Score:2)
Not to mention installing a backdoor dialer to Uzbekistan on every other page, or a ActiveX rootkit. Where would college students be without Windows as a "grown-up" OS?
Re:Linux vs. Windows (Score:2)
BTW, I still have a WinXP in dual-boot, it's just for gaming and it isn't the one coming up automagically...
Re:You have to REALLY hate windows (Score:2)
What I need is a stripped down installation that boots to a minimal GUI, has firefox installed so I can check my gmail (and not use a public computer/logon to do it). I'd also like a bash shell, ssh and a few utilities - should be able fit easily on a 128 meg USB stick.
Re:You have to REALLY hate windows (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You have to REALLY hate windows (Score:5, Insightful)
B: No problem, it's great to get a chance to get together. The spare bed's all made up.
A: Oh yeah, could I use your computer tonight? I have some work I need to do.
B: Yeah, no problem.
A: I have all my data here on this keychain drive. Do you have Gimp, Scribus, emacs, pdftk, ImageMagick, and Inkscape installed?
B: Huh? No.
A: Oh, no problem, it'll just take a few minutes to install them with apt-get.
B: Apt-what?
A: Oh, you don't run Debian? That's cool, what distro do you use?
B: Windows XP.
A: Oh...I guess I'll go out and buy copies of Photoshop, PageMaker, InDesign, and Illustrator to install on your machine. Shouldn't be more than a thousand bucks, total, and I don't think it'll be too much work to convert all the files, work on them, and convert them back again.
Re:You have to REALLY hate windows (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You have to REALLY hate windows (Score:2)
Re:lol, geeks like you should be shot (Score:2)
Popularity and ease of use for the novice user is what made Windows what it is. Fortunately one does not remain a novice forever, and once one starts wanting more power, one starts looking at stuff like Emacs. I have not found (and believe me, I have looked) a Free editor that has even half the power of Emacs for the stuff I do (like LaTeX editing, multiple language coding in the same environment). If you have an alternative that will m
Re:general (Score:2)
Uncheck all the software categories at installation time, and there isn't any.
Ubuntu.. and their hardcore promotion of the word "Free" is also quite a plus..
But, doesn't help people understand the difference between price and freedom (ie access to source code etc etc).
i'll be damned if i ever pay a flippin' dime to RedHat, Mandriva, SuSE, or whoever else makes you pay for their crap..
Neither Mandriva nor SuSE make you pa
Re:general (Score:2)
Free Software is free as in free speech, not necessarily free as in free beer. Nothing in the GPL says you may not charge people for software.