Miffo wrote:
What do you think of the Amiga One Lite? I have a Via MiniIITX motherboard allready, but I think that a powerful and fanless PPC CPU will be much nicer. The fan on the Via is not big, but the small ones is usually the nosiest, don't you agree?
Not to rain on the parade, but as far as I can tell, the G3s we've been using (G3SE, G3XE) have required fans. Last I checked the power (consumption/dissipation) numbers, they were about on par with what Via claims on the latest C3s or Nehemiahs or whatever they are.
That said, a well-designed case with one good fan (power supply or auxilliary) is supposed to be enough to cool a Via, so it should be enough to cool a PowerPC with an equivalent 'passive' heatsink.
As you move down below 600MHz, the PowerPCs get cooler, to the point where they can doubtless run without a heatsink, but then you start losing the performance margin. (I expect a 600MHz G3 beats a GHz Nehemiah on raw 'grunt,' but so might a 500MHz P-III.)
We still don't know what CPU Eyetech will bundle with the Lite, but I'm guessing they'll stick with the same range available for the XE, possibly adding a 'budget' option around/below 400MHz that runs cool to the touch. Since you should be able to get the same out of a 600 with a simple underclock, and the G3s aren't all that expensive to begin with (think Duron prices for the chips themselves?), that doesn't seem particularly necessary; get a 600 or better, clock it down for the box in your entertainment center if you have to, then you're free to slap a fan on it and know it'll work at 600 when it starts feeling obsolete. :-D
I understand that there will be some Linux OS'es for it? I like Gentoo very much, I like the fact that everything is compiled just for your system. Optimal! :-)
I tried to tally this up the other day... Little help, anyone? Ole-Egil? :huh:
As far as I can tell, Debian is the current choice. YellowDog and SuSE's last PowerPC release (7.2?) are also supposed to run/have been ported. Gentoo seems very likely to support the hardware (Genesi claims them a supported distro?), but as I understood it, they barely have things on the Mac ironed out?
What really matters:
1. Has the distro been built for, or does it support building for PowerPC at all?
2. Does it play well with the AmigaOne/Articia-supporting kernel trees?
3. How much will it hurt to get it copied/installed to your disk so you can find out? (Did anyone make/distribute an install disk that *uses* one of those kernel trees? Do they still?)
Anyone want to remind me what Eyetech's bundling with the boards these days? Just noticed/remembered Genesi claims Mandrake and Gentoo on Pegasos... Forgot about the Mandrake release, that's nice and 'fresh,' so I imagine it includes a kernel and installer that works fully on the OpenFirmware machines at least... Maybe I'm totally wrong about Gentoo's present state?
If someone could provide a list of distros categorized by [ bundled | available-shrinkwrap-and-works-out-of-box | available-as-private-or-unmerged-tree | works-out-of-shrinkwrap-but-needs-unmerged-installer ], that'd be great. That goes for either hardware.
What Linux will the Amiga One Lite have? When can I buy it? And what will it cost?
1. Tried to answer that above.
2. Not before next year?
3. We don't know! (Larger AmigaOnes are on sale now;
look at the list of dealers, compare some prices, and cross your fingers that the Lite comes out lower. :-) )
