[sclug] On ultra cheap machines

[Alex Butcher]

On Thu, 25 Apr 2013, David Given wrote:

> On 25/04/13 21:27, Alex Butcher wrote:
>> On Thu, 25 Apr 2013, David Given wrote:
> [...]
>> Sounds like something like an N2800 Atom desktop board (e.g. Intel
>> DN2800MT)
>> might do the job.
>
> I had totally failed to find those earlier as the box shifters file them
> under 'miniITX' rather than 'motherboards'. Sigh. But yes, that's the
> sort of thing I was thinking of.
>
> [...]
>> Only downside is that the binary graphics drivers need antique
>> versions of the kernel and xorg...
>
> He's mainly an Ubuntu user; and for all their (many) sins, Ubuntu do a
> decent job of supporting weird and proprietary graphics hardware out of
> the box; any ideas if they're supporting it yet?

They do; it's where I ported my Fuduntu packages from. I don't speak Ubuntu,
so here's a couple of links which should be of use.

<https://launchpad.net/~sarvatt/+archive/cedarview>
<http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1953734&page=10&p=11976680#post11976680>
<http://ef.gy/ubuntu-cedarview-drivers>

Some background:
<https://gist.github.com/Aissen/2925633>

Note especially:

"They don't even make 64 bit windows drivers for the machines.  Also, the
drivers will only ever work in 12.04 (where they will soon be uploaded to
for 12.04.1),

They wont update them for 12.10 and newer. Sorry to bear the bad news but
these machines are an absolute nightmare and this was the best we could get
:("
  -- <http://communities.intel.com/message/160444#160444>

Supposedly, there is/was an Intel-sponsored attempt to get drivers into
Debian: <http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/12/msg00330.html>, but
the Debian devs bikeshedded him away, it seems...

Given the (lack of) prospects for future support, the AMD Fusion equivalents
might well be a better option.

Best Regards,
Alex