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AMD Intel Hardware

Linux Mint Ditches AMD For Intel With New Mintbox Mini 2 (betanews.com) 46

Posted by msmash from the new-shiny-objects dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Makers of Mint Box, a diminutive desktop which runs Linux Mint -- an Ubuntu-based OS, on Friday announced the Mintbox Mini 2. While the new model has several new aspects, the most significant is that the Linux Mint Team has switched from AMD to Intel (the original Mini used an A4-Micro 6400T). For $299, the Mintbox Mini 2 comes with a quad-core Intel Celeron J3455 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 60GB SSD. For $50 more you can opt for the "Pro" model which doubles the RAM to 8GB and increases the SSD capacity to 120GB. Graphics are fairly anemic, as it uses integrated Intel HD 500, but come on -- you shouldn't expect to game with this thing. For video connectivity, you get both HDMI and Mini DisplayPort. Both can push 4K, and while the mini DP port can do 60Hz, the HDMI is limited to 30.
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Linux Mint Ditches AMD For Intel With New Mintbox Mini 2 More

Linux Mint Ditches AMD For Intel With New Mintbox Mini 2

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  • "you shouldn't expect to game with this thing" - Well of course not, it is running a flavor of Linux. I have honestly tried doing Linux based gaming once a year or so just to see where it is at. Currently, Steam for Linux is amazing, but the content after the storefront itself just isn't. I basically had the option of a handful of indy games and Rocket League. Not much else was available, sadly. And then, the Linux gaming box was once again shelved for the next several months while I continue to play games

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Sadly, your anecdotal experience doesn't really explain much. If it is anecdotal, perhaps one should say how many games they actually have, as I certainly have more than a handful, and more particularly, what games you actually play. If you do not play Civ,, if you do not play Witcher, if you do not play Saints Row, If you do not like Euro Truck, American Truck simulator, on and on and on, then sure, nothing but Rocket League(I would crush you), but really, the way you put it feels more dishonest, and also

    • I was hoping the newest major release of WINE was going to fix issues with gaming and allow me to bring my Windows games into my Linux environment. NOPE, NO WAY, NO HOW. Have yet to get a game newer than 2010 to work, be it Mafia II, GTA IV, GTA V, Naval Action, etc. Native gaming on Linux is cheap, unsatisfying, and frankly is the reason why I keep trying WINE and why I keep rejecting Linux for my personal machines. (Note: I'm running a media server, VPN, and firewall using linux boxes.)

    • What would be your the top 25 games (both commercial, and indie) that you wish you could play natively under Linux ?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by CRB9000 ( 647092 )

        GTA:V

        Naval Action

        Mafia II

        Mafia III

        Red Dead Redemption (and pretty sure I'd want II to work as well.)

        Call of Duty: WWII

        L.A. Noire

        PGA Golf

        Madden '15

        many many many more

  • Actual Mint Team announcement... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Can be read here [linuxmint.com], instead of going to another site.

  • quote: "...but come on -- you shouldn't expect to game with this thing."

    I expect to game on a Raspberry Pi, you insensitive clod!

  • AMD is dead and Netcraft confirms it. Sell your stocks now!

  • I presume a mini box in this day and age is going to use USB-PD i.e. power over USB-C

    In reality, it's likely using some 12v barrel adapter.

    USB-C PD offers a 12v option...

    I love these little boxes, but what happens is that they go in the closet and then a year or two later they come out and they use some semi-proprietary DIN plug pin-out and you've lost the power adapter. At least the Raspberry Pi uses a standard USB-Micro cell phone cable port. All the new Chromebooks are using USB-

    • You can usually just order a 12v adapter with appropriate amperage and connector off Amazon or EBay.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      I love these little boxes, but what happens is that they go in the closet and then a year or two later they come out and they use some semi-proprietary DIN plug pin-out and you've lost the power adapter.

      I keep the boxes, then when I put it in storage, I put the adapter and the device back in its original box. That way I also have all the little fiddly bits that it came with too that everyone loses.

      Or, if it's something I've used for years and tossed the box, I leave the power connected, and then wrap the d

    • The standard may support it, but the vast majority of chargers are not going to support 100W. Worse, many offer out of spec power options and many of the existing chargers are broken and possibly dangerous. See, for example:

      https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/... [makeuseof.com]

      Further, there's the question of expense. Not only the price of the additional circuitry in the device, but the charger itself. If you look at that link above, for example, the cheapest 60W charger is $39.99. You can pick up a universal charger that

  • I just built an Intel NUC BOXNUC6CAYH for roughly $330 with the same processor, 8GB of RAM, a 500GB SSD, but most importantly, a full HDMI 2.0 port with 4K @ 60HZ support without needing a dongle (video decoding at 4K is still a bit lacking though). When the new Mintbox comes out this summer, it will be facing some stiff competition as Intel will have released its Gemini Lake platform based NUCs which benchmarks are showing to be much snappier than the current Apollo Lake ones. If you want to support the Li

  • No, COMPULAB Switched (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mousit ( 646085 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @02:19PM (#56314893)
    Linux Mint itself has not "ditched" anything. Mint, being Linux, still supports both Intel and AMD just fine. The Mint Team also did not ditch anything, because this machine is not made by the Mint Team. As they note in their own press release [linuxmint.com] that the summary failed to link to, the Mintbox is based on Compulab's [fit-pc.com] Fitlet microcomputer.

    The recently-released Fitlet2 [fit-iot.com] is what switched from an AMD SoC to an Intel SoC. The Mintbox is simply a branded Fitlet, with SSD and RAM included (Fitlet can be bought barebones) and Linux Mint pre-installed. Nothing more than that. So the Mint Team didn't really have a say in what SoC the new generation unit used.

    That being said, I have a Fitlet 1 myself and I love it. I'm quite a fan of Compulab's whole range of micro and mini computers. Which is why I'd like to see them actually get credit for this machine, which they make. :P At least Mint Team's press release credited them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Toshito ( 452851 )

      Your laptop or full size desktop is already a micro computer.

      And a mini computer is much larger than that.

      I don't know how you can call those very small computers... nano computer?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by AvitarX ( 172628 )

        I've seen them called mini PCs

        I don't think a mini computer counts as a PC.

      • Nitpicking very much?
        The terms microcomputer and minicomputer are no longer in use, in their original sense, since ... 30 years? 40 years? Ah, perhaps only 25 years ...
        Anyway, my university time I spend with PC (Macs and Windows), Workstations, mainframes and supercomputers ... there where no minis or micros ...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DeBaas ( 470886 )

      Second that. I have been running a fit-pc2 for over 8 years now as a (home) server. It has been running 24/7 at about 7-10 watts. I've upgraded the hard drive to get a bit more space, other than that everything is original. Great little device.

  • Overpriced... (Score:5, Informative)

    by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @02:27PM (#56314931)
    Intel NUC with J3455 is $125 new. 8GB is $75. 525GB SSD is $140. For $350, you can have a much better spec than the "Pro" model, and everything just snaps together in the NUC.
  • I can see a Linux project wanting to stay the hell away from the 'cherry trail' era Atoms(PowerVR graphics and Intel's position is, essentially, 'these were made to go with Microsoft's attempt to sell Win8 as a tablet OS, not our problem'(so much so that even Win10 support is atrocious), plus 32 bit UEFI); and some of the Bay Trail boards were pretty dicey as well, depending on how much the vendor cared(same risk of 32 bit UEFI, SD slots you can't boot from, HID devices speaking slightly eccentric i2c rathe
  • at 15W cTDP even outperforming a dual Xeon workstation (MacPro2,1) from a decade ago, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
  • How much did Intel pay the relevant company to switch? And/Or, were there any payments by Intel in terms of cash/stock/options to the managers of the company which switched?

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