Re: free software mini pc
I'm glad to see this thread, because I hadn't heard of the Raspberry Pi
before- way cool!
But I'm curious about the original query- what's the need for such an
ultra-quiet machine? I too hate fan noise, but even when run hard I have
to _try_ to hear my laptop fan. Is there a special reason you need a
machine that's fanless other than noise level, or are you doing something
stealthy?
Keith
> On 12 February 2012 15:06, green <greenfreedom10@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Stan Hoeppner wrote at 2012-02-11 21:15 -0600:
>>> On 2/11/2012 8:09 PM, green wrote:
>>> > I need a fanless mini PC; it will run Debian. It will be used in a
>>> > production environment.
>
> Hi,
>
> I share your sympathies. I really hate fan noise! There are ARM
> computers that run at 5 watts, and can be passively cooled.... but can
> they be used as a 'desktop'?
>
> I've been thinking about that question a lot. The main difficulty is
> that I frequently use Iceweasel and it requires a lot of memory (or,
> at least, it does the way I use it), so these computers with 1
> gigabyte of RAM aren't really going to cut it.
>
> What I could do is use one of these ARM computers as a thin-client and
> use vnc or xwindows forwarding to run Iceweasel in the cloud
> somewhere. The problem with that is, for me, since I live in
> Australia, I'm going to need a cloud that is hosted in Australia due
> to the latency. But cloud hosting in Australia is nowhere near as
> affordable as it is overseas, this is due to economies of scale and
> Australian hosting is always going to be more expensive.
>
> So my next plan is to build a 'beowulf cluster' out of ARM computers,
> and use that as my desktop. You've probably heard of Raspberry Pi?
> Well that's a pretty nice system, and costs on $35, draws 3.5 watts,
> but has only 256meg of RAM. I'm sure, in the not too distant future,
> there'll be system's like this, at a similar price, with at least a
> gig of RAM. Then I could buy 10 of them, for $350, and I'll have a
> system with 10 gigabytes of RAM and drawing 35 watts. Plus a network
> switch of course.
>
> Anyway, getting back to the original post. I actually bought a Trim
> Slice. One of the first ones they rolled out. Unfortunately I haven't
> been able to spend much time playing with it, although I was using it
> as a VNC client for a while, plugged into a TV. It did ok. The Trim
> Slice kernel has been updated since then so some time I am going to
> upgrade and see how it can perform. Actually my Trim Slice lacks a
> couple of hardware features, for instance the power light doesn't come
> on and the system cannot power-off unless you pull the plug out. I
> actually need to send my TS back to CompuLab for that because it is a
> problem with the first systems they produced.
>
> If you have specific questions about the Trim Slice I'll try to help.
>
> Cheers,
> Alex
>
Reply to: