The board
Nvidia ION2 GPU with Atom D525 Pineview CPU in an Mini-ITX form factor mainboard (17×17cm)

The memory
2x 2 gb (Dual Channel ) Kingston DDR3 1066MHz ram

The storage
Seagate 2.5″ Momentus XT hybrid 500gb SATA2 HDD

The operating system
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Misc hardware dongles
RT73 Wifi USB stick
USB bluetooth adapter (for use with Wiimote in XBMC)

The objective
Test run the board to run the default Ubuntu system with addon PPA repositories to ensure maximum performance for 1080p media playback using XBMC. Geekbench benchmarks to be used for testing the raw processing power of the D525 coupled with ION2.

This reference ION2 board came with an prototype ITX casing that is yet to be available in the retail market. Here are some first looks of the casing. There are ample space for the heat sinks of both the CPU and GPU. Unlike most other mini-itx casings where it’d require the heat sinks to be replaced with lower profile ones, this case doesn’t need replacement for the heat sink nor does it require any modifications to the hdd and odd brackets in order for the ION2 board to fit nicely. In short, this mini-itx case fits the board completely.

The ION2 board is produced by Pegatron (subsidiary of Asus), the boot up bios splash screen makes the branding very conspicuous and without any doubt. Within the bios itself, the CPU configurable parameters are limited with the options all greyed out. The rest of the configurable parameter such as SATA, ACPI, Bootup options are pretty standard and generic to all mainboards out there. Off the bios, there is no overclocking parameters that can be set for either the CPU or GPU.

17cm x 17cm Nvidia ION2 with Atom D525

The top view of the board shows that it only has 2 x SATA ports. A PCIE-1X slot is available for use but the restriction of a PCIE-1x means that it’d likely be used for non-GPU boards. Since the built-in ION GPU (aka Nvidia’s GT218) is superior than most PCIE-1x 3D graphics cards, the PCIE-1X slot seems to be a redundant feature here.

Another unique feature of this board is its use of 204 pins SO-DIMM DDR3 notebook rams instead of the normal 240 pins DDR3 ram for desktops. A single serial port is also available on this ION2 boards.

Looking at its rear IO ports, there are 3 video output options. HDMI, D-SUB and the DVI connector. From the lack of the rear output speakers jack, it seems that the manufacturer is suggesting to owners of the board to use HDMI for audio output for HD surround sound rather than to use 3.5mm audio jacks to achieve the surround sound experience. Since the ION2 is capable of transmitting various audio standards digitally via the HDMI, it makes sense to use a separate audio processor to decode the channels into the respective speakers.

For a mini-itx board, it has up to 7 USB ports, which is desirable for hardware addons. The limitation of space within the ITX casing give the only choice of hardware add-ons to be external via USB ports. Having 7 of such ports is beneficial for a multi-purpose expansions.

To be continued ( SGLNX takes Nvidia ION2 for a spin: Part 2/3 Installing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and XBMC )

At SGLNX, we regularly take a swing at M$ products for fun and laughter.

Mozilla Firefox at version 3,  Apple Safari at version 5, Micro$oft Internet Explorer at version 9!!!

9 major revisions and more to come from M$ for continual releasing unpolished products and software.

Source: Gizmodo, Internet Explorer 9 Beta Goes Live September 15 [IE9].

It is possible to now do M$ Windows Registry editing without having to boot into Windows.

This is extremely useful when there are glitches in the Windows Registry that prevents it from booting up properly even when in Safe Mode.

With this tip, Linux can rescue the Windows System by removing malicious registry entries and even perform password reset for Windows Administrators account.

Source : LifeHacker : Fix the Windows Registry from a Linux Thumb Drive

1) Don’t use very old or cutting-edge hardware

2) Verify support

3) Use proprietary drivers

4) Know your log files

Read the rest of the 10 ways and the details here! <——

Here are some tips of how we at SGLNX is able to generate some revenue from our ever-growing experience and knowledge of opensource and linux

1) Offer PC/software recovery services

a) For recovery of accidentally deleted files, Testdisk is able to recover most lost files and partitions as long as the harddisk is still readable.

b) For those whom need a temporary PC to use while their harddisk is removed for recovery, use a bootable USB linux OS to allow them to use the internet on the their own PC without the native harddisk.

c) For treating severe viral infections, use viral-treatment LiveCDs without having to boot into Windows first.
d) Offer backup and recovery services by using LiveCDs and gparted to backup the entire harddisk into another one using Ubuntu or any other linux OS.

2) Recycle old PC hardware by using them as an application server

a)  Offer services to install photo management/storage servers using old PCs [ eg Gallery2 ]

b) Offer services to install a local URL filtering server using old PCs for safe child browsing [ eg Dan's Guardian + Squid Proxy Server]

c) Offer services to install a SAMBA fileserver on old PCs so files can be shared easily between different PCs and laptops within the house

3) Offer to setup complete home entertainment media player using XBMC

a) Package a mini-itx system with XBMC and sell it for an attractive price

4) Set up a blog site to share linux happenings and teach others about linux

a) Earnings via advertisements

If anyone require more information on how to earn $$ using linux and opensource or if you have more ideas on how to earn more $$, you can reach us at admin@sglnx.com

This new system, Millennium Exchange, uses a combination of Linux with Oracle databases, will replace the existing “TradeElect” Microsoft’s .NET and SQL systems.

According to sources, the existing system suffered countless outages and failures which resulted in many embarassment to the LSE. The new Linux/Oracle system is said to be faster than the current Microsoft solution.

Another win for Linux!

Source : ComputerworldUK: Linux trading system to save London Stock Exchange £10m a year.

SGLNX firmly believes that if Linux is good enough
for a nation’s stock exchange,

It should be competent and secure enough for
any desktop user to use it as their main operating system.

It’s a pity that fragmentation of opensource linux operating systems has increased the popularity of some distributions such as Ubuntu and diminished the light of other distributions such as Mandriva.

But without competition, there will be no evolution.

Download the possibly last Mandriva distro before the company is sold…

http://www.mandriva.com/

News Source : Mandriva Up For Sale via Slashdot.

XBMC is a free opensource cross platform media player. It has its origins from the first generation XBOX game console, where XBMC was created as a homebrew media player making use of MPlayer sources as one of its cores. XBMC has since evolved with a huge and continuously growing forum with active discussions happening 24/7.

Its flexibility in allowing add-on scripts and user-created skins has also contributed to its popularity. User-contributed skins such as the “Aeon Stark” made it even more popular in the recent months. Video shown after the break.

Featured enhancements to XBMC such as the ability to use 3rd party infra-red receivers and remote and using the WII controller via bluetooth, gave XBMC the potential to become a full-fledged “Home Media Entertainment Centre”. Not surprisingly, the XBMC has also been ported to commercial devices such as the Myka ION., which is a set-top device based on the Nvidia ION chipset that allows full 1080p playback.

For 1080p video playback, it is recommended that the hardware specifications of the GPU supports VDPAU, which is currently only found on Nvidia ION and Nvidia GPUs of 8800 series and above. Though the Broadcom CrystalHD card is able to accelerate 1080p, support via the official XBMC channels is still relatively slow and because it is a complimentary add-on card, it doesn’t come with HDMI ports. On the contrary, all ,if not most, of the Nvidia chipsets supporting VDPAU, comes with a HDMI port, digital-multichannel audio and the HD video, can be passed to the LCD/Plasma screen using only one cable.

This HDMI cable can also be connected direct to an HDMI capable audio receiver which can then offer 5.1 surround sound for a complete home entertainment experience.

XBMC can also be run in a Live-CD mode, whereby it is not necessary to install the XBMC system. SGLNX recommends “unetbootin” to create the Live-CD on a spare USB memory stick.

XBMC, being one of the most popular home entertainment system software, is not impervious to competition. This competition, however, are development forks and derivative branches of itself, goes to show the popularity and recognition of XBMC to be the undisputed opensource software for home entertainment media center.

Here’s another video eye candy of XBMC running Aeon Stark skin on Linux using Nvidia ION for 1080p playback.

SGLNX recommends XBMC to be installed with Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx coupled with Nvidia ION GPU on Atom dual-core processor board preferably in a Mini-ITX enclosure that is small enough to be vesa-mounted behind a 42″ LCD/Plasma TV.

Over at Mini-ITX.com, they provide a very concise guide to install a full linux based XBMC system.

For those whom are oblivious to what the above poster meant…

Here are some clues.

Android seems to be friendlier than its fruity competitor.

Adobe ceases efforts to bring Flash to IPhone

Adobe says bye to Apple, goes to Android

Adobe Flash Project Manager gives up on IPhone Packager

Adobe Ditching Flash for the IPhone

I think we get the point.

Yay for Android, Nay for IPhone.

It is opensource and a large part of this framework focuses on the user interface, which is mainly large icons with an easy point & click user navigation interface. The outlook of the interface resembles most of what Intel have had for Moblin.

Primary designed for netbooks and nettops, it is beginning its port to smartphone devices as well.

A move by Intel to, probably, promote its Atom’s Moorestown platform for mobile smartphones in direct competition to ARM CPUs currently powering popular smartphones such as the Android mobiles and IPhones. Intel has also recently announced the port of Google’s opensource mobile OS, Android, to its Moorestown platform.

Apple’s Iphone aside, this may mean Intel trying to get a piece of the mobile CPU market share by allowing multiple OS since the x86 Atom based Moorestown is able to support both Meego and Android. And since its well-known that most linux applications are more readily available on the x86 platform than the ARM platform, Intel might just give pro-sumers a better run for their money since the x86 platform is more versatile than the ARM.

If that’s the case, what would be Nokia’s agenda in this collaboration? Will consumers be seeing Nokia producing a smartphone using the Moorestown platform?

It would be interesting to see how the Meego collaboration unfolds and reveals the new direction of opensource in mobile communications and how opensource is shifting the strategies of Giants such as Nokia and Intel.

Now who said that anything that is free is usually worthless?

Read about SGLNX’s last review on the Moblin OS before it became Meego..

Two school of thoughts in argument over if Ubuntu should look more like “Windows” or should it emulate the “Mac” when it comes to the window buttons placement…

At SGLNX, we shall quell this rhetorical debate….. by letting the users decide what to put on the top-left or the top-right for every window in Ubuntu. The solution is actually simple and a no-brainer.

Hidden in the Applications menu button, there is an item that is installed but not shown. This application is known as the “gconf-editor” or “Gnome Configuration Editor“. This gconf-editor will allow the user to configure many aspects of the Gnome look and setup, including Power Management  and window buttons layout.

To enable the gconf-editor in the application menu to be shown and clickable, simply right-click on the Ubuntu icon on the top-left of the screen, select “Edit Menus”. Click on “System Tools” and check the box that says “Configuration Editor”. Once that is done, click the “Close” button.

Now, the gconf-editor should be visible in the applications menu. Left click the Ubuntu button on the top-left corner of the screen. Move the pointer over “System Tools” and click on “Configuration Editor” aka the “gconf-editor”.

To change the layout of the window buttons, expand the “apps” branch and scroll down to search for the term “metacity”. This “metacity” is the windows composition manager. Expand the “metacity” branch and click on the “general” branch. On the right sub-window, there should be an option “button_layout”. Double-click  on this “button layout” and change the value to “close,spacer,maximize,spacer,minimize:menu”.

This will change the position of the buttons to the following layout. [aka Mac style with a spacer in between each menu button to prevent accidentally clicking on neighbouring buttons]

To modify it to suit your taste, a description within gconf-editor is shown for guiding those whom want to change the button locations.

Arrangement of buttons on the titlebar. The value should be a string, such as “menu:minimize,maximize,spacer,close”; the colon separates the left corner of the window from the right corner, and the button names are comma-separated. Duplicate buttons are not allowed. Unknown button names are silently ignored so that buttons can be added in future metacity versions without breaking older versions. A special spacer tag can be used to insert some space between two adjacent buttons.

If the old Windows look is preferred, simply change the values to “menu:minimize,maximize,close”.

Ed: What’s there to argue over? Just make your own changes to your hearts desire!

The package is meant to ensure power saving features on laptops.

However, at SGLNX, we discovered that this feature may be sub-controlled by another package that dictates if the “laptop-mode” settings is enabled or disabled.

It started out when we had a problem with hard-drive clicking noises on a recently purchased 320gb hdd to replace a lower capacity hdd within a working laptop. In our fact-finding mission to find out the root causes, we discovered that it was a hdd setting that could be controlled via the command  “hdparm“.

The hard-drive clicking noises was made by the parking of the heads of the hdd when it detected an idle period of a certain amount of time. To prevent the parking of the heads, the command “sudo hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda” was issued and it got rid of the parking/click noises from the hdd. Further research into the topic gave light to having the settings to be pre-set on boot by means of the “laptop-mode” package.

To automatically configure the hdparm settings upon boot, the configuration file of the laptop-mode package ( /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf ) has to be edited manually.
#
# Power management for HD (hdparm -B values)
#
BATT_HD_POWERMGMT=1
LM_AC_HD_POWERMGMT=254
NOLM_AC_HD_POWERMGMT=254


The values above had to be changed to “255″ for all 3 lines to turn off Advance Power Management on the hdd and thus eliminating the hdd clicking noises.

However, upon changing it and executing the start/stop script via “sudo /etc/init.d/laptop-mode restart”

The values did not stick when we displayed the current hdparm setting “sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda“. Only then it was realized that laptop-mode was not running at all with the command “cat /proc/sys/vm/laptop-mode“. It was then discovered that another package was dictating whether laptop-mode should be started upon boot.

The package “acpi-support” was actually preventing “laptop-mode” to be started at all during the boot process.

To ensure that laptop-mode starts during the boot process, a little tweaking is needed on the configuration files of “acpi-support”.

sudo gedit /etc/default/acpi-support

Find the line that says

ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE = False

Change the “false” to “true”.
Save and quit the editor.

Enter terminal and do a

sudo /etc/init.d/laptop-mode restart

With the above instructions, we were able to make the hdparm settings stick and you will be able to make use of laptop-mode and make the laptop last longer on battery……. And we certainly hope so!

The above illustrates our experience encountered with laptop-mode tools in Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10. The commands and configuration file locations may vary for your linux distros.

Affordable, lightweight and powerful graphics processor.

The Nvidia ION is actually an Intel Atom CPU coupled with a Nvidia 9400m graphics chipset.

Most linux distributions install fine on most netbooks and nettops. However, their default video player may not be optimized for the Nvidia ION chipsets. For HD video playback, without tweaking the parameters of the video player application, the end result may be lacklustre and the playback may even be not in sync or skipping frames.

To fully comprehend the power of video acceleration of the ION chipset with HD movies, SGLNX recommends MPLAYER.

MPlayer is present on most distribution’s repositories. To ensure smooth playback of HD movies (mkv, avi, mp4, etc), a slight tweak of the Mplayer’s config file is necessary.

To edit the config file, use these commands.

Open terminal

“sudo nano ~/.mplayer/config”

Insert these lines and remove any duplicate lines that may be present

vo=vdpau
vc=ffmpeg12vdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffvc1vdpau,ffh264vdpau,
#vo=xv
ao=alsa
#subcp=latin2
stop-xscreensaver=1
font=Arial
subfont-text-scale=3
subfont-osd-scale=3

Press “Control-X” to save the file.

The changes to the config file ensures that Mplayer will make use of VDPAU technology which is present on Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 series graphics card and above. For full compatibility of utilizing VDPAU acceleration, see here.

Next download a HD 1080p file from here.

Use Mplayer to playback this file and experience smooth HD playback with the ION chipset!

This guide would also apply for Nvidia graphics cards of the 9300 series and higher!

Source of inspiration for this entry : pts.blog

Introducing the OpenShot Video Editor for Linux!

Easy to use “drag & drop” graphical user interface

Combine video clips and insert in nice transitions between the scenes.

Videos can be in 4:3 or 16:9 format.

To try it out on Ubuntu, you may follow instructions here

Here are some demo clips on OpenShot:

OpenShot: Demo Movie

OpenShot: Non-Linear Audio Editing

Source: MakeTechEasier.com

In the survey, a preselected list of apps for voting includes closed-sourced applications such as ITunes, Photoshop, Spotify and Pandora.

Would the upcoming Ubuntu distro include these applications if the demand is large enough? Will Canonical implementation be Wine-based of the popular applications originally created on only the Windows platform? Or will it be coded natively on Linux?

If these closed source apps are created originally for Windows, eg Apple’s ITunes and Adobe’s Photoshop, how is Canonical going to convince them to code for Linux?

Many argue the fact that opensource linux OS users aren’t a large significant market and therefore many paid apps are not developed for the linux platform. But the recent rise of popularity of Ubuntu and its variants may just shake up the market share of users on linux and attract such developers to write apps for the rising numbers of Linux users.

Source : WebUpd8 Canonical To Bring Closed Source Apps Like iTunes And Photoshop To Ubuntu?!?!.

1) is sick of dual booting just to play games using Windows?

2) Prefers not to corrupt hardened linux workstation with linux games?

3) Complains of not having enough games on linux?

Supergamer is a permanent fix if you answered YES to any of the question!

Fierce Looking Desktop Background

SuperGamer is a games oriented Live CD/DVD Linux OS. It has all the normal Linux desktop applications such as the Firefox Browser, OpenOffice.org, etc., but also has a great many native to Linux games added, as well as some demos of proprietary games.

Here is the list of games it comes pre-installed with :

Download torrent here

or

Purchase the Live-DVD direct from On-Disk if you feel 8 gigabytes will take too long to download.

Source : Linux Journal

Or visit Supergamer website!

You might also wanna read up what Distrowatch has to say about the Supergamer linux distribution here.

By Wikipedia’s definition of lm_sensors :

lm_sensors (Linux-monitoring sensors), a free open source software-tool for Linux, provides tools and drivers for monitoring temperatures, voltage, and fans. It also monitors chassis intrusion detection.

lm-sensors is already included in many popular linux distribution repositories.

For Gnome desktop users, values obtained from the lm_sensors can be placed in the “top panel” by installing “sensors-applet”.

Here is a good “lm-sensors” guide for Ubuntu users to add lm-sensors to your customized installation [ for both Gnome and KDE users ]

For those with bleeding edge hardware, the usual repositories lm-sensors package may not yet support all the latest sensors on their mainboards and graphics card.
However, there has been some new developments in the detection of new yet to be supported sensors that can be installed with a simple script.

More on this lm-sensors update here from Phoronix.

Source: Phoronix

via LM_Sensors Gets A New Configuration Utility.

2.0 GHz Arm-based processor

Wifi, Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, Mini-USB port and “Ready to download” Linux 2.6 SDK for developers.

Low power, low price, small form factor

Below is an extract from UberGizmo

[CES 2010] Marvell has just launched its Computer 3.0 platform based on the Armada 300 processor. New the system still uses an ultra-low power and thermal envelope, but manages to reach 2Ghz and includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and built-in 1.8″ hard drive. The overall package is also much smaller (and sexier) than previous generations. Once again the semi-conductor mantra “smaller, better, cheaper” is beautifully applied by Marvell to these tiny computers. Developers can already get their hands on the SDK, and we’ve heard that a number of big-name brands are working on products based on Plug Computer 3.0.

Source : Marvell Plug Computer 3.0.

Other links of same product news

Linuxfordevices : Plug-in computer rev’d with WiFi, 2GHz SoC

LoopyGadgets : Marvell Plug Computer 3.0 with Built-in Wifi and Bluetooth

In fact, the data centre that was in charge of rendering the visual effects of Avatar, uses up to 4000 blade servers and is positioned at 197 of the top 500 supercomputers in the world we live in today!

The operating system used for such a huge array of blades…

LINUX

Because, nothing else comes close..

News Source : Opendotdotdot

Since the launch of this hardware to accelerate HD video playback on netbooks, only Windows drivers were supported.

Just days ago, they decided to release the source code for linux kernels 2.6.11 and higher.

Read the full article at Liliputing.com: Linux drivers for Broadcom HD Video Accelerator