Summary information from your comments (part 1)
15 September 2008 – 18:28 by LeelooThe Gdium Liberty 1000
The Gdium Liberty 1000 will be sold at 379€ (VAT included), or $479 for the 16GB G-Key version. The 8GB version will be found at 359€ (VAT included), or $449.
The Gdium Liberty 1000 will be first available in France at the end of September 2008. Other European countries will follow. China and the United States of America will be the next markets we target.
We won’t distribute early / unfinished version of the Gdium, there is no program available for early adopters / beta testers.
Mandriva G-Linux
Mandriva G-Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution specifically designed for the Gdium. It is based on Mandriva Linux Powerpack 2009, so that you benefit from the latest innovation from Mandriva and the comfort of most-used plugins (such as Flash and Java). Unlike the Mandriva Linux One (a live cd version you can download from their website), the Mandriva G-Linux is not downloadable as is. It is a special bundle version that will only work on MIPS processors.
The interface has been designed to be as simple as possible, but remaining powerful and comfortable. Applications shortcuts and labels under each tab may be configured (as anything under GNU/Linux is) by power users that do not fear the command line and configuration files. Our aim was not to render everything easily customizable. We think over-customization can be too complex for an end user that only want its computer to work. But far from us the idea to impede people from tweaking their environment, if they really want to.
The Mandriva G-Linux system will be upgradeable via our community portal gdium.com (soon to come). You may also install other software that were not preloaded on you G-Key but are available for the MIPS processor.
The G-Key
The Gdium Liberty 1000 comes with a 8 or 16GB USB G-Key, pre-loaded with the operating system and about 50 applications.
A back-up & restore application will be available from the support part of the educational and community site we are putting together (the future gdium.com) or from a DVD that will be included in the package when you’ll buy a Gdium Liberty.
Without any bootable device in the USB port, being a G-Key or other, the Gdium is numb.
The G-key acts like a regular USB key, so that you may access your personal data on another computer.
The MIPS processor
Our processor is a MIPS 900 Mhz 64bits Loongson™ 2F CPU by STMicroelectronics and it consumes only 4W in full page. You may read the complete official documentation from STMicroelectronics if you want to. We do not have official benchmarks between different types of processors, but the Loongson is equivalent to a P4 in terms of performance. It is not recommended to overclock the CPU at all. It may result in damaging your Gdium unit.
Suspend-to-ram and suspend-to-disk modes do not exist for the MIPS processor yet but are under development.
You may boot on another MIPS-compatible operating system, given that you use the same kernel G-Linux relies on. The latter has been tweaked thoroughly to comply to the hardware specifications.
Northbridge and Southbridge are irrelevant when it comes to Gdium, since the Loongson processor handles the communication with RAM and the video chipset directly . The lack of a hard drive makes up for the lack of a southbridge.
to be continued…
11 Responses to “Summary information from your comments (part 1)”
do you plan to ship to South America? in particula: Argentina?
thanks in advance
By orlando_ombzzz on Sep 15, 2008
Great update. I appreciate it.
Is it possible to use the video card for 3D accelaration? What about Compiz?
Will the tweaks of the G-Linux kernel go upstream into the main kernel? Thus Debian would be able to be used on the Gdium etc. Debian has a branch for the MIPS.
By David Treumann on Sep 15, 2008
Hello,
what will be the price of buying additional G-Keys?
By Alejandro M on Sep 16, 2008
@ orlando
Argentina and other South American countries are part of a second time planning, not before January 2009. The G-Key language pack in particular will be adapted.
@Alejandro
The price of Flash memory is very fluctant and changes almost every month. Our idea is to sell the separate G-Keys at a price close, though slightly higher because of enclosed codecs, to a regular USB key of a comparable capacity.
By Sari on Sep 16, 2008
@David
The [1]SM512 do not have 3D aceleration. ¿Realy you need Compiz in a Netbook?
[1]http://www.siliconmotion.com.tw/en/en2/products_sm502.html
By angeld on Sep 17, 2008
I like eyecandy
Besides, it comes in really handy to use the scale (or as apple calls it, exposé) feature of compiz with the small resolution and screen estate of the most netbooks.
Anyway, I am looking forward to see the Gdium GUI. It looks interesting.
Any information concerning the question about upstreaming your patches? I would love to use Debian as an alternative. It has got a really vast choice of software…
By David Treumann on Sep 20, 2008
Hi
looks pretty internestng!
what about power consumtion?
cheers
btw, me too would be more interested, if your kernel patch would find its way upstream
By Tran on Sep 21, 2008
I don’t get all the technical aspects some of you are having questions about, but the design and the concept is just great…I’ll patiently be waiting to get mine, come on Gdium team
Question, I heard there will also be an accessorie line along the Gdium…is that true? Which type of accessories would you propose?
By nikita on Sep 29, 2008
September is no more. Has the Gdium been released in France now?
The mentioned prices don’t seem competitive enough to me, compared to Eee/Aspire One. I’m interested mostly because of the MIPS-compliant CPU, not for the general spec or the G-mania.
I wish for this hardware to stay around and so I think that you need to ally with the open-source community beyond Mandriva, even beyond Linux. There are literally hundreds of non-Linux operating systems: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, QNX, Haiku, etc. Some of them are equally great, some are even better than Linux in some niches. Of course some others are just crap. We don’t use those.
So anyway, is there a serial port (or something similar enough) in there hidden somewhere on the mobo?
Would it be possible for a skilled person to netboot a Gdium without a USB drive?
The reason I ask is because not all OS have a USB stack to begin with, and I imagine it would be kinda hard to bring up an OS on the Gdium without having a USB stack..
By kirilla on Oct 6, 2008
@David, @kirilla: we already have Debian running on the Gdium and the machine will definitely be geared towards the Open Source world. Dexxon/Emtec has surrounded itself with experts from the OSS community and has definitely a long term plan in that direction.
@nikita: lost of USB peripherals, bags, etc. Are you looking for something specific?
By Fred on Oct 16, 2008
@Nikita
You can take a look at this page, you’ll get more information about the set of accessories proposed with Gdium Liberty 1000:
http://www.gdium.com/2008/10/27/in-and-out-in-paris-and-shanghai/
@kirilla
The release of Gdium has been postponed to early December in France. If you want to be notified in advance as to when and where, please register on the regular newsletter, we’ll notice you a few days before actual availibity
By Sari on Oct 27, 2008