Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 17, 2007 4:59 UTC (Tue) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

You can add flash storage as CompactFlash (internal, under battery, replaces the built-in flash) or as an SD card. You can now get 16GB CompactFlash cards for less than $200, and 8GB SD (SDHC) cards, which also work with Treo 680s and other smartphones. So if you need lots of storage, 24 GB today sounds pretty good, larger than many laptop hard disks only a few years ago.

The main expansion issue is that you only get 128 MB RAM, but if the software is light enough (OLPC-like in fact) then it should still remain quite a useful platform.

Posted Jul 18, 2007 8:12 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

My plan is to build a system image in Qemu on my desktop, then stick it in a cramfs image.

Then I will set up initrd so that when the laptop boots up it will mount the cramfs image with unionfs overlay with a writable directory on the flash.

I've done this before with USB Flash storage, to make a bootable. It's very similar to how Knoppix works, except that instead of storing read-writes to ram it saves it in a directory.

This way you can get a full 2 gigs of software down to about 700-800 megs pretty easily, and still be able to update it and everything.

I will be able to try this out without risk also. :) I can leave the original system intact until I am sure I have it running well.

With the 8 gig model, then I'll have 6-7 or so gigs reserved for my home directory.

Also I have a 80gig laptop drive from my Ibook, which crapped out. (yay apple quality. So far Asus has been better to me then anything Apple ever made). The laptop is still fine so I'll stick it in a USB enclosure. It would be fine for large media files and other things.

So I expect it to work out.

The only thing that irritated me was the stupid single laptop button. I lived with it on my Ibook (running Debian) and I know of 3 or 4 ways around this limitation....