This message was originally intended for Michael, but I thought the
community as a whole would benefit from it.
As I mentioned earlier, I will be working with Michael to set up a demo
Linux PC at McKinley. Our original thought was, due to McKinley's
unique student mix, it would be beneficial to have an English lauguage
based computer that has at least CJK-localized environments. Red Hat
fits this bill better than anything anybody could have ever imagined
(including commercial operating systems such as Windows, of course). If
we should have enough Japanese students participating, this demo Linux
PC will allow me to practice my Japanese. Furthermore, in conjunction
with our state's strong desire to attract Chinese tourists, a
JACK-enabled machine ("JACK" means CJK plus "American English") can also
become an important selling tool to promote McKinley's adult education
programs.
I am still deciding on the best software configuration (mainly RH8 vs.
RH9) for this demo. The hardware will be VIA KM266A-based ShuttleX
SK41B2 with Athlon XP 2000, 512 MB DDR, DVD, and a single 17" LCD
monitor. For office applications, I couldn't tell much difference if
any between KM266A and nForce2 based ShuttleX PCs. However, the former
is about $150 cheaper. For one or two machines, this is not much of a
difference. But if someone wants to get into Linux business (the best,
if not the only, way to promote Linux is to have an army of Linux
vendors), this could mean break or broke. The KM266A-based ShuttleX PC
is very quiet, it also allows network booting (though I have not had a
chance to try). A DVD drive is included instead of a CD-RW, as I would
like to see how well DVD movies play on a Linux machine.
It will be at least a while before I bring the final system to
McKinley. One of the main reasons is that there are no drivers for the
sound and video components of the KM266A chipset. I am currently using
the the generic VESA driver in RH8. (For office applications, the VESA
driver, running at 32 MB, is more than adequate.) The VESA driver seems
to be missing from RH9 (as well as from MDK 9.1 and Knoppix 3.2). From
the 2.4.21 patch logs, I have noticed quite a few kernel patches
relating to the KM266 driver. But VIA has already paid a hefty price
for not paying full attention to Linux (VIA is losing a lot of market
share to nVidia). Anyway, their loss is our gain. And this should
teach hardware makers a valuable lesson.
(I must apologize beforehand that I don't read e-mails regularly; plus,
I am out of town quite a bit. Once I have had a discussion with
Michael, I will set up a schedule where I will be at McKinley on a more
or less regular basis. If MonMotha is reading this message, I will
eventually need his help to see whether it is possible to squeeze a
modified, but almost full-featured, RH distro into a 256 MB flash disk.)
- [luau] Demo Linux PC Hawaii Linux Institute
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