Attracting Open Source Contributors

Making such a cool device as the Gdium Liberty also means getting strong community and developers support.

The best way to achieve this is probably to attract talented Open Source contributors and get them excited about our cute little machine. The first candidate on our list is Coly Li, a famous kernel and file-system expert who among many things regularly give talks at conferences such as the Linux Developer Symposium in March or the GNOME.Asia Summit last month. This time Coly will be presenting at the upcoming FreedomHEC in Taipei, a Linux device driver unconference on November 20, 21 and discuss about “File System Performance Tuning for Gdium”.

As you know the Gdium operating system runs out of a USB key and has had already multiple performance and reliability improvements from Mandriva. Coly has been spending the last few weeks collaborating with the same team and will bring his experience as a file system developer to reveal his findings. So if you’re in Taipei don’t hesitate to drop by and say hi to Coly and his Gdium, or keep on reading this blog to get the presentation after the talk.

Coly Li and Frederic Muller, Dexxon General Manager Greater China

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In and out in Paris and Shanghai

Here are some precisions and pictures of the G-world accessories. Designed by the same team as the Gdium Liberty (beware, the website is written all in Chinese…) for indoor and outdoor use, they form an elegant, smart and functional set, made to enjoy Gdium Liberty 1000 while you are on the road, at home or at the office. Most of these accessories will be available at the launch of Gdium Liberty 1000 early December in France, except the DVB-T dongle.

Let us have your suggestions if you think of other useful accessories for Gdium netbook. For the moment we are not considering an external CD / DVD drive, as optical technology seems less popular these days.

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Summary information from your comments (part 2)

Gdium Liberty 1000 Screen

Our screen is a mat, 10″ LCD panel with a 1024 x 600 resolution. We preferred a mat panel because it has not the glossy finish yet provides a better readability. The maximum VGA out resolution is 1280 x 1024, so that you can connect your Liberty 1000 to a video projector or a larger screen to view your files.

Our LCD panel has been treated with an anti-glare system and uses LED back light technology to ensure a bright yet energy efficient back light. Read the rest of this entry »

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Summary information from your comments (part 1)

The 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. Read the rest of this entry »

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Easy and powerful Movie Player

When it comes to multimedia players, we often use bloated software with so many button sthat we forget which one to use for watching a simple movie on our computer.

Totem is simple. It follows the good old UNIX rule: Do one thing, do it well. And while it can also read your music files, its principal aim is playing video. We included it as the default movie player on the Gdium, for all its qualities.
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Gdiums in colors!

The Gdium will be available in three colors, black with white stripes, white with black stripes and pink with white stripes. Other colors may follow, such as those shown in the pictures below.

Fresh and punchy colors.

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Our opinion about Look ‘n’ Feel

Designing a whole new user interface is not an easy task. You have to enhance the user experience, keep in mind ergonomics and user habits, freshen the boring desktop up and allow the final user to adapt the interface to his tastes.

The Gdium Liberty holds several bundles of applications and we had to find a way to make these apps within close reach without cluttering the 1024×600 display. We use tabs in a main launcher to tidy the desktop up and add some widgets around so that the simplified interface will get neater and more useful.

Easy access to most-used applications.

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Availability of the Gdium

You are all excited about the Gdium, and that’s right you should be.

As we aim for the best user experience possible (and we encountered some problems with the FlashLite integration on Firefox, now resolved), we decided to delay a bit our final launch.

Just know that the Gdium will be available in France at the end of September 2008, through specialized outlets.

As far as Europe distribution is concerned, our netbooks will arrive in November.

We are planning to distribute our Gdium Liberty 1000 in the United States and China after our European Launch.

Stay tuned.

Gdium, announcement | 12 Comments »

IFA event in Berlin

Some of you may have read on Slashgears (or even better in our Event page ) that the last versions of the Gdium Liberty 1000 were introduced to the professional public at the IFA exhibit in Berlin, from August 29th until tomorrow, September 3rd 2008.

The EMTEC booth.

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Gdium in the computer hall of fame!

A Gdium unit has been placed in a showcase of laptop PCs in the computer science museum of Paris. Philippe Nieuwbourg, head of the museum, has accepted the gift with pleasure and organized a little private visit for Bahram Nabet, Electronic and Computer Science Professor at the University of Drexel, Philadelphia.

Bahram Nabet, holding the world first portable computer, Osborne 1 made in 1981 and Michaël Benaudis with one of the next-gen computer in his hands, the Gdium.

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