I'm considering the Zotac and Asus mini-pcs for the basis of a home-office system. It won't be used for gaming, just spreadsheets, word processing and internetting. I'm looking for a box with a bunch of usb ports, hdmi port, wired network connection. Wi-fi and a second hdmi port would be a bonus. Has anyone installed Linux Mint on one of these types of machines? Thanks - Peter -- Peter Hiscocks Syscomp Electronic Design Limited, Toronto http://www.syscompdesign.com USB Oscilloscope and Waveform Generator 647-839-0325
| From: phiscock@ee.ryerson.ca | I'm considering the Zotac and Asus mini-pcs for the basis of a home-office | system. I have a few of these. Low-end versions. I'm not sure that they are the optimal choice for your use. It depends on what things matter to you. I might well be focusing more on price than you would. For me, it is part of the game. - ones with real CPUs (i3 or better) are not that cheap - I have old ones with older Atoms (Acer Revos). Great for the time, but not now. - I have a Zotac with an AMD E350. Better than old Atoms, but limiting. - I have Zotacs based on Celerons (847 and 1007). Those have non-trivial crunch, but not main-stream crunch. I run more-or-less current Fedora on them. - they generally take notebook components (RAM, HDD / SSD) which seems OK but has its quirks. - you can buy them bare-bones or populated. In some ways, you might be better off buying a carefully select notebook that you leave closed. Perhaps cheaper for the same crunch. The packaging isn't as nice. Also: might take some hunting. The Intel NUC is another to consider. Also Gigabyte Brix. Here's a random example of a Zotac Zbox bare-bones with a Haswell (non-Atom) Celeron: <http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856173102CVF&cm_re=zotac_zbox-_-56-173-102CVF-_-Product> I'm not sure, but I think that Haswell is a win over even the pretty good new generation of Atoms. Note: I have not carefully selected this to be a good choice. Here's a Bix based on a Celeron of the Atom family: <http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856164017&cm_re=gigabyte_brix-_-56-164-017-_-Product> It might be quieter than the Haswell-based Zotac. Notice details like that there is only one SODIMM slot. If the stars align (actually if the holes align) sometimes you can mount the little box on the back of the monitor. The key is "vesa" mounting holes. Only some monitors have them. Only some little boxes have brackets to fit on them. I've only done that once.
On 15-02-28 10:09 PM, phiscock@ee.ryerson.ca wrote:
I'm considering the Zotac and Asus mini-pcs for the basis of a home-office system. It won't be used for gaming, just spreadsheets, word processing and internetting. I have an ASUS VivoPC-VM40B-01 (win8.0) now -02 (win8.1) :
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220628 - runs Ubuntu 14.04 easily I bought it originally to run the last two windows apps I need - personal and corporate tax programs - turns out I can run new versions of these with wine 1.7 I would happily buy another if I needed another desktop box. [sorry for the html]
Now that the Raspberry Pi 2 is even capable of running Windows (and promises to run Linux. XBMC etc even faster), I wonder if it might be enough for your needs. 4xUSB 1xHDMI 1xMicroSD 1xRJ45 (for wired Ethernet) 1xMicroUSB (for power) Wifi is usually offered by a USB dongle. Probably not much luck about a second HDMI, tho. But can't beat the price. http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-sale/ http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/02/02/windows-10-coming-to-raspbe... On 1 March 2015 at 05:33, Herb Richter <hgr@buynet.com> wrote:
On 15-02-28 10:09 PM, phiscock@ee.ryerson.ca wrote:
I'm considering the Zotac and Asus mini-pcs for the basis of a home-office system. It won't be used for gaming, just spreadsheets, word processing and internetting.
I have an ASUS VivoPC-VM40B-01 (win8.0) now -02 (win8.1) :
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220628
- runs Ubuntu 14.04 easily
I bought it originally to run the last two windows apps I need - personal and corporate tax programs - turns out I can run new versions of these with wine 1.7
I would happily buy another if I needed another desktop box.
[sorry for the html]
--- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- Evan Leibovitch Toronto Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56
On 2015-03-01 05:34 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Now that the Raspberry Pi 2 is even capable of running Windows
Note that that's the text-only Windows 10 IoT edition. Text-only Windows would be … VMS, I guess.
(and promises to run Linux. XBMC etc even faster), I wonder if it might be enough for your needs.
The original Raspberry Pi was laughable as a desktop, but I just set up a Raspberry Pi 2* yesterday, and it's not half bad. Browsing is pretty snappy, and LibreOffice — though by no means fast — was usable. It doesn't feel like a small machine. I'm definitely considering recycling my old ThinkPad R51 (1.4 GHz Pentium-M, 1.5 GB RAM), as the Raspberry Pi 2 seems faster than it ever could be. No x86 compatibility, though, but I don't really need it. cheers, Stewart *: Canada Robotix up on Denison had them. They'll be sold out by now.
Here's the outcome of that project: I purchased the Asus VIVOPC-VM40B-02 and a 22 inch Samsung LCD screen at Canada Computers, total $557 (including HST). The computer comes with a keyboard and mouse. (Thanks to Herb Richter for that suggestion.) I was impressed by the packaging and build quality of the computer. I was not impressed by Windows 8.1, which is a real dog's breakfast of Selling Stuff and Requesting All Your Information, and a really badly designed UI. So I downloaded the latest version of Linux Mint and installed that as a dual-boot system. For those that haven't done this - first you use the partition tool in Win8.1 to reduce the size of the windows partition, freeing up space. Then, in the Linux install, you divide up that partition and assign it. Fortunately I had gone through this process in a previous install and I had good notes. I can't imagine the average user doing this. Thank heaven for Google. At the end of the installation we have a dual-boot selection menu that comes up on power-on, and we can select either operating system. Both operating systems detected and connected to the wireless network without any fuss, which is convenient. In the previous install process, on an Asus laptop, the grub boot menu is somehow accessible only from inside Windows and there is a lengthy song-and-dance needed to get to it. So this one is much more convenient. Thanks to everyone who had suggestions for this project. Peter
On 2015-03-01 05:34 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Now that the Raspberry Pi 2 is even capable of running Windows
Note that that's the text-only Windows 10 IoT edition. Text-only Windows would be ⦠VMS, I guess.
(and promises to run Linux. XBMC etc even faster), I wonder if it might be enough for your needs.
The original Raspberry Pi was laughable as a desktop, but I just set up a Raspberry Pi 2* yesterday, and it's not half bad. Browsing is pretty snappy, and LibreOffice â though by no means fast â was usable. It doesn't feel like a small machine. I'm definitely considering recycling my old ThinkPad R51 (1.4 GHz Pentium-M, 1.5 GB RAM), as the Raspberry Pi 2 seems faster than it ever could be. No x86 compatibility, though, but I don't really need it.
cheers, Stewart
*: Canada Robotix up on Denison had them. They'll be sold out by now.
--- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- Peter Hiscocks Syscomp Electronic Design Limited, Toronto http://www.syscompdesign.com USB Oscilloscope and Waveform Generator 647-839-0325
| From: phiscock@ee.ryerson.ca | I was impressed by the packaging and build quality of the computer. I was | not impressed by Windows 8.1, which is a real dog's breakfast of Selling | Stuff and Requesting All Your Information, and a really badly designed UI. When you first log into Win8.1, they want you to use a Microsoft identity (i.e. in the cloud). Only when you cancel do they offer you the choice of local credentials. This is not obvious and most folks get tricked. | So I downloaded the latest version of Linux Mint and installed that as a | dual-boot system. For those that haven't done this - first you use the | partition tool in Win8.1 to reduce the size of the windows partition, | freeing up space. In my experience, the Windows partitioning tool will only reduce the space to about half. That's not good enough for me. Instead, I use a Linux tool to shrink the Win partition a whole lot. But that damages the Win parition so you have to immediately boot into Windows (before creating new partitions) and have it do a repair. This is witchcraft. (I think that Windows puts something immoveable in the middle of the partition and linux just ignores that.) | At the end of the installation we have a dual-boot selection menu that | comes up on power-on, and we can select either operating system. Both | operating systems detected and connected to the wireless network without | any fuss, which is convenient. Are you using UEFI or old-fashioned BIOS/MBR booting? Does MINT support Secure Boot? | In the previous install process, on an Asus laptop, the grub boot menu is | somehow accessible only from inside Windows and there is a lengthy | song-and-dance needed to get to it. That sounds odd. I guess you are using some Windows boot manager.
On Thu, Mar 05, 2015 at 10:14:51AM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
| From: phiscock@ee.ryerson.ca
| I was impressed by the packaging and build quality of the computer. I was | not impressed by Windows 8.1, which is a real dog's breakfast of Selling | Stuff and Requesting All Your Information, and a really badly designed UI.
When you first log into Win8.1, they want you to use a Microsoft identity (i.e. in the cloud). Only when you cancel do they offer you the choice of local credentials. This is not obvious and most folks get tricked.
1. If the network is not connected, then it will give you opportunity to create "local" account. 2. When it asks for Microsoft id, type something common (ie. user=abc@com, pass=abc) and it will complain, and give you "local" account. -- William
On 5 March 2015 at 14:06, James Knott <james.knott@rogers.com> wrote:
On 03/05/2015 01:19 PM, William Park wrote:
2. When it asks for Microsoft id, type something common (ie. user=abc@com, pass=abc) and it will complain, and give you "local" account.
I wonder if Windows would choke if I used my Linux ID & password? ;-)
I'm sure it would be happy to tell everyone... Memories of the '80s Faberge commercial, "You tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on, and so on..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcskckuosxQ I can see how they'd do this thing of falling back to a less secure mechanism, but it makes my brain hurt that if authentication fails, they just degrade it and try again without saying anything. Very awful to depend on that, particularly if it was possible that you were going to send that intended-to-be-local authentication data to someone that shouldn't know it. Nice dosage of "yechhhh!!!" The Asus box seems nice enough; pretty similar, broadly, to my Zotac ID-88, which I also bought at Canada Computers, albeit just long enough ago that it seems to have gotten replaced by subsequent models. My one challenge in Linux installation was that my unit wasn't happy recognizing a Debian boot CD. I was able to use PXE booting instead, which worked out perfectly fine. I didn't get a Windows license with it, so had nothing to preserve in that regard. -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
On Thu, Mar 05, 2015 at 01:19:41PM -0500, William Park wrote:
On Thu, Mar 05, 2015 at 10:14:51AM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
| From: phiscock@ee.ryerson.ca
| I was impressed by the packaging and build quality of the computer. I was | not impressed by Windows 8.1, which is a real dog's breakfast of Selling | Stuff and Requesting All Your Information, and a really badly designed UI.
When you first log into Win8.1, they want you to use a Microsoft identity (i.e. in the cloud). Only when you cancel do they offer you the choice of local credentials. This is not obvious and most folks get tricked.
1. If the network is not connected, then it will give you opportunity to create "local" account.
So will being persistent about going back/canceling. It would sure be nice if it wasn't so insistent.
2. When it asks for Microsoft id, type something common (ie. user=abc@com, pass=abc) and it will complain, and give you "local" account.
-- Len Sorensen
The ASUS VivoPC-VM40B-01 suggested by Herb (actually, it's the -02 model) is available from Canada Computers (my preferred source) for under $300. I initially rejected it because the CC blurb does not mention any ports. But the Asus website spec http://www.asus.com/ca-en/ASUS_VivoPC/VivoPC_VM40B/specifications/ lists a whole slew of them: Back I/O Ports 2 x USB 3.0 4 x USB 2.0 1 x HDMI 1 x VGA(D-Sub)-Out 1 x RJ45 LAN 1 x Kensington Lock 1 x DC-in 1 x Optical S/PDIF out 3 x Audio Jack(s) (Line in/Mic in/Speaker out) Theoretically, one could run two monitors, using the VGA and HDMI ports, although I'm not sure if the Intel graphics could handle that. On the Raspberry Pi, it's an intriguing possibility, but a review mentions that some applications are not available for the operating system Raspbian. Peter
On 15-02-28 10:09 PM, phiscock@ee.ryerson.ca wrote:
I'm considering the Zotac and Asus mini-pcs for the basis of a home-office system. It won't be used for gaming, just spreadsheets, word processing and internetting. I have an ASUS VivoPC-VM40B-01 (win8.0) now -02 (win8.1) :
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220628
- runs Ubuntu 14.04 easily
I bought it originally to run the last two windows apps I need - personal and corporate tax programs - turns out I can run new versions of these with wine 1.7
I would happily buy another if I needed another desktop box.
[sorry for the html]
-- Peter Hiscocks Syscomp Electronic Design Limited, Toronto http://www.syscompdesign.com USB Oscilloscope and Waveform Generator 647-839-0325
participants (9)
-
Christopher Browne -
D. Hugh Redelmeier -
Evan Leibovitch -
Herb Richter -
James Knott -
Lennart Sorensen -
phiscock＠ee.ryerson.ca -
Stewart C. Russell -
William Park