Which Linux Distribution For Via Epia-ME6000 Mini-ITX Motherboard?
Art
mini-ITX motherboard with a fanless Eden cpu, Via CLE266 North Bridge
and VT8235 South Bridge. I intend to connect it to the Net 24/7 via
DSL. With Linux of course. Downloading, file-sharing and web-browsing
will be my primary usage.
Which current distribution available is most suitable for this system?
I also have the May, 2003 issue of Linux Format with DVD containing
the following Distro ISOs: ADIOSBootCD, BBlangentRouter, Byzantine,
FdLinux, RPM-livelinuxcd, SoL-diag, and VectorLinux.
What concerns me is that the Via Eden cpu is not a Pentium- or
Athlon-derivative which may complicate my install. I have read that I
can recompile the kernel optimized for this chip but I need to get
Linux up and running first.
Also, I have an IDE CD-burner sitting in a USB2/FireWire enclosure. I
would like to boot and install from that because I intend to to have
no floppy or CD-ROM drive installed directly to the motherboard.
I suspect that I will have to find out how to do half of this myself
but I will appreciate any advice that will give me a head start. I'll
be more than happy to give updates on my situation if there's enough
interest here.
Thank you in advance.
Paul King
for quite some time and am very interested in how your install goes.
please, send us updates!
Wolfgang Fischer
> I am setting up a new mini-PC built around the Via Epia-ME6000 mini-ITX
> motherboard with a fanless Eden cpu, Via CLE266 North Bridge and VT8235
> South Bridge. I intend to connect it to the Net 24/7 via DSL. With Linux
> of course. Downloading, file-sharing and web-browsing will be my primary
> usage.
>
> Which current distribution available is most suitable for this system?
Debian. It contains nearly everything needed.
>
> I also have the May, 2003 issue of Linux Format with DVD containing the
> following Distro ISOs: ADIOSBootCD, BBlangentRouter, Byzantine, FdLinux,
> RPM-livelinuxcd, SoL-diag, and VectorLinux.
>
> What concerns me is that the Via Eden cpu is not a Pentium- or
> Athlon-derivative which may complicate my install. I have read that I
> can recompile the kernel optimized for this chip but I need to get Linux
> up and running first.
Debian is still compatible to 386 CPUs. So you won't have problems
installing it and then you can build an optimized kernel.
>
> Also, I have an IDE CD-burner sitting in a USB2/FireWire enclosure. I
> would like to boot and install from that because I intend to to have no
> floppy or CD-ROM drive installed directly to the motherboard.
I don't know weather the board supports booting from USB, but there are
two alternatives:
If you have an other Computer, you can insert the HD to it temporarily
and install Linux from it. If you have any Linux system installed on it,
you can install Debian using debootstrap. If you don't have Linux installed
on your Computer, you can download a bootable knoppix cd (www.knopper.net).
Then you need to install a kernel image, edit /etc/fstab and
/etc/lilo.conf and run lilo (lilo -r /mnt/hdxy). I've installed Debian on
a computer this way and it works fine.
An other idia is to install a cdrom drive temporarily to install Linux.
Art
drive sitting in FireWire/USB2 combo enclosure. I guess there's
something non-standard about this that the board can't deal with
despite having a BIOS option for booting from a USB CD-ROM drive.
Opening the mini-case that I have is trivial and I have a spare IDE
CD-ROM drive. There's no point in fighting this: I've hooked it to the
second IDE controller by itself. I was able to get it to boot. I was
worried that the 55W power brick that came with the case might be
underpowered for hooking up more than one full-sized peripheral but
this worked out. I'd been wondering why the case was made for
containing "low-profile" drives when, simply by making the case some
3/4" taller, it could accommodated regular-sized drives.
The Eden cpu on the motherboard is not suppose to need a fan on the
heatsink but it ran pretty hot when booting a Windows CD-ROM: 55C.
I was able to get a friend to download the latest Slackware CD-image
via DSL from http://www.linuxiso.org. There are some seven CDs
available to download for Debian. I'm not sure which of these are
essential and which are optional.
Anyway, I'll try Slackware for now while having my friend download
Debian at his leisure. I'll describe
Wolfgang Fischer <Wolfgang...@freenet.de> wrote in message news:<pan.2003.06.04.15...@freenet.de>...
Paul King
On 4 Jun 2003, Art wrote:
> this worked out. I'd been wondering why the case was made for
> containing "low-profile" drives when, simply by making the case some
> 3/4" taller, it could accommodated regular-sized drives.
the whole philosophy behind epias is: small, quiet & low-power computing.
that is why the case you have does not accomodate full-sized drives. 3/4"
doesn't seem like much, though. too bad.
> The Eden cpu on the motherboard is not suppose to need a fan on the
> heatsink but it ran pretty hot when booting a Windows CD-ROM: 55C.
right. in fact its more powerful sibling, the C3, is supposed to do
quite well without a fan (with a large heatsink attached) as well. this is
good to know, i had planned on getting the new nehemiah and running it
with passive cooling.
> via DSL from http://www.linuxiso.org. There are some seven CDs
> available to download for Debian. I'm not sure which of these are
> essential and which are optional.
the first debian cd is all you need unless you have special needs.
good luck. please, keep us updated.
..::paul
Jake
Its great to see someone else interested in quiet, small, cheap
computing!
Have a look over at the thread I started (also in comp.os.linux.setup)
on the topic of exact same installations on multiple PCs:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=d1f9bc17.0306050906.523fd438%40posting.google.com
I've got two EPIA ME6000's arriving on Tuesday, total price: £510.
They are intended to replace two anoyingly noisy computers in my
house. And the plan is to run Linux on them both, but providing an
interface and applications familiar to Windows users (my family).
(Note: I've never really used Linux before!)
I'm planning to set one of the new Eden's up as a 'Golden Client' and
install RedHat 9.0 on it (downloaded the three ISOs yesterday) and
then play about with other software, like Ximian (XD2 released this
coming Monday) and/or XPde.com to make it look and feel like Windows.
OpenOffice will replace Microsoft Office (with the option to 'save as
Windows 97/2000/XP file' so that the documents can be effortlessly
used on Windows machines as well, for the time being), Mozilla
Firebird will replace Internet Explorer and GAIM will replace MSN
Messenger. I expect GNUtella will replace Kazaa, and I'll have to find
some Winamp alternative too. That's about all the applications
everyone at home uses, but I'll have to deal with my mum's request
"Jake... I don't like the sound of this change you're making. I've got
lots of reports I need to do this coming week, and I need to be able
to put them on disk at work, bring them home, edit them, put them back
on disk and everything to work. I don't have time to muck around with
new things", and also my sister (in response to a usability test with
GAIM for Windows) "Its all different. How do I make my text pink? It
makes different noises." although she now says "I live MSN
messenger... but I don't care that much". Good good.
Fingers crossed that I'll be able to not only replace the noisy beasts
in the house, but also effortlessly introduce an open source OS and
applications to Windows people.
Art
Quantum with a 20GB Maxtor drive. The automatic installation even got
XFree86 up and running. I had thought that I would need to do some
massaging to get this to happen but i guess that whatever
customization that was needed has been put into XFree86 4.3 but I
suspect that I will need to recompile everything for it to be fully
optimized for this cpu.
I had always thought, until this time, that the Quantum drive was good
but I suspect that this may be a thermal issue because the drive is
placed in a cage that goes inside the Casetronic mini-ITX 2699R case
that I got. With the top open, the fans in the rear did nothing to
pull any ventilation over the drive.
The installallation with the Quantum drive kept hanging before
completion. I was only able to do a minimal install once by not
putting in XFree86, TeX and some other packages not absolutely
required to get Linux up and running. It still would freeze up when I
rebooted. It would run fine for a while (about 20 minutes or so) until
the hard drive started sounding like a small popcorn machine. Inodes
became inaccessible until I turned off the machine and turned it on
again (hard resets wouldn't work). The hard drive would come back
every time without exception.
I would also like to add that, for this installation with an internal
CD-ROM drive, I had used an old 250W ATX power supply instead of the
55W power brick that came with the case. I've read some accounts
claiming that there may be a grounding issue with this power supply
but I can't hold this responsible for my situation. After
disconnecting the CD-ROM drive & 250W ATX PS and reconnecting the 55W,
I find that everything is working fine so far.
Now, it's time to get DSL and try to wrestle with that as well. It
appears that there are quite a few people out there setting these
boxes up as firewalls but I have an SMC broadband router that I can
put to use.
ja...@lineone.net (Jake) wrote in message news:<d1f9bc17.03060...@posting.google.com>...