Re: Quiet general purpose + music laptops?
- From: 7 <website_has_email@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:26:06 GMT
Jim Lesurf wrote:
Hi,
I am looking to buy a new laptop and there are some specific preferences
and wishes I have for its properties. Alas, the info I find on the web
generally omits some of the key details of interest to me. So I am hoping
people here can advise and suggest a laptop or two that may suit.
The main preference/requirements are as follows...
Basically a general purpose laptop, but with some features useful for some
sound/audio purposes. So it would be nice if it were (mechanically) quite
quiet. Ideally silent, although I have the impression that may be too
restrictive. This is to minimise audible noises from the machine (and its
PSU) when in use.
I'd be happy for it to have SSD rather than conventional HD is that helped
reduce the noise, although I suspect the noise might be dominated by the
fans anyway. Advice/ideas on that would be welcome.
Since a main use will be for sound I'd like it to have SPDIF output
(ideally optical), and input would also be desirable. And to have a CD/DVD
writer. If the internal sound system isn't ideal I will probably attach an
external USB DAC, but I'd obviously find it more convenient (and cheaper)
if I didn't need that. But I wish the digital output to be able to deliver
bit-perfect samples for the common stereo rates of 44.1/48 ksamples/sec
LPCM.
Again, would be excellent if the input also did that, but I won't hold my
breath whilst expecting that. :-)
No particular need for a lot of internal space on the HD/SSD as I can use
external. So I guess the order of 50GB would be fine. Perhaps 1GB or 2GB
of RAM. The CPU, HD/SSD etc should be fast enough for general stereo audio
uses or the BBC iPlayer. But I don't need ultra speed or power.
It would be convenient if it was 'x86' type to make things like installing
software simpler. Also my current plan is to start with Xubuntu/Ubuntu
plus ROX for general use, although I may change that after experiment. So
the hardware should be OK with choices like these.
As things stand I'll connect it via wired ethernet at home, not wireless.
If there are any specific shops/retailers you would recommend for the
above I'd be interested to know about them.
There are probably a few other things that will occur to me once I have
posted this, but I think the above covers the main important points.
FWIW I have recently got a 'Shuttle' small form factor machine/system
working nicely for similar purposes. That is totally (mechanically)
silent, but I am using it dedicated for audio playing. So I'd like the
laptop for more general purposes as well as for further audio experiments.
Thanks in advance for any useful info. :-)
Something like the EEE with 40Gb SSD will run for 6 to 8 hours and do all
the stuff you wanted and do a lot more if you set it up properly.
Here is a guide:
Using extlinux to convert a liveCD iso to bootable SD card
-------------------------------------------------------------
Converting an ISO file to a bootable USB stick or a bootable
SD Card for EEE is easy.
Without being able to convert a distro into a bootable USB flash /SD Card,
that distro can't be easily loaded into netbook like EEE
and stand to miss out on users installing it into netbooks.
So I would recommend all distro mainters look at their netbook
boot strategy and offer something to boot their distros
from USB flash and SD cards or miss out on users installing it into
netbooks.
Having done a few conversions, a pattern emerges that works well for
most syslinux / isolinux / extlinux based distros.
1. Put your SD card or USB flash drive into your desktop Linux PC and
then open a console and type dmesg
You should see some line indicating your flash drive as
being picked up and allocated with a comment like sdc / sdc1 etc..
Remember both names - the first is /dev/sdc which is your
device name, and the second is /dev/sdc1 which is your partition name.
(Don't get confused between drive /dev/sdc and partition /dev/sdc1
or your drive could become scrambled eggs later on. Also remember
it may be called sdg or sdh etc depending what you see when you
plug in device and type dmesg)
2. Install gparted on your machine using synaptic.
To run it you can type
sudo gparted
in a console window and select on the right side the drive name allocated
in step 1. Right click on the bar that represents the partition
and click on manage flags.
Enable the boot flag and click OK. This makes the SD Card / USB
stick bootable.
3. Format the partition /dev/sdc1 to ext2 linux format.
This format is not directly readable under WINDUMMY Osen, but there
are free drivers for it - try for example www.fs-driver.org
The ext2 format is many times faster than windummy FAT so
ditching WINDUMMY file formats is advised.
4. Identify that you have syslinux or isolinux in your liveCD by
opening the .ISO file in archive manager and checking that it has
isolinux or syslinux directory somewhere in the liveCD.
In ubuntu, the root directory of /dev/sdc1 will not be writeable
unless you are in super user mode.
You can run
sudo file-roller
to open iso files like xubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso in super user
mode and extract all the files in the iso file
to the /dev/sdc1 partition.
5. Go to the flash drive and locate the syslinux (or isolinux) directory.
rename it to extlinux. Inside the now renamed extlinux directory will
a file such as syslinux.cfg or isolinux.cfg. Rename that to
extlinux.conf
6. Get syslinux - this is a boot loader and menu system for FAT based
file systems. Download the latest version from here...
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/
Unzip it and go to the extlinux directory.
On my machine path is something like this....../syslinux/extlinux
Run the program there by typing this - (note this command is updating
the partition /dev/sdc1)
./extlinux --install /dev/sdc1/extlinux
This puts a new file into your SD card / USB flash disk
7. from the extlinux directory change to the mbr directory
cd ../mbr
and then run this - again note this time its updating the device by
writing data to the first sector as opposed to the first partition.
sudo cat mbr.bin > /dev/sdc
(Note at this stage you may need to do some of the sudo commands after
entering super user mode to make it work properly.
So the above command would have been done as follows in Ubuntu.
sudo -s
cat mbr.bin > /dev/sdc
)
This makes the card bootable and useable in an Asus EEE and many other
PCs with SD card or USB flash disk boot facility.
After booting, you can install Linux on to local disk or an external
pocket drive. The pocket drive can be 7200 RPM giving you near desktop
speed.
This method tested and works for
1. Ubuntu
2. Slax
3. Knoppix
4. Puppy
5. DSL
6. GParted
7. gOS
8. Dynabolic
9. MoonOS Kachana
10. Xubuntu
11. TinyOS (incredible distro!)
(Note the method does not work for .ISO files built with grub bootloader -
need a different install method with grub boot loader instead of syslinux.)
Try installing something powerful like Ubuntu on to a netbook
and see it take netbooks to new heights.
3D Translucent Cube Desktop
---------------------------
The latest EEE1000 has fast enough graphics for translucent
3D desktops. An easy way to do all this with Ubuntu is:
Install Ubuntu on EEE (compiz itself
appears to be installed by default in the default install),
then install compiz settings manager using Synaptic
which allows compiz to be fully 'exercised'.
And then do the following to get the 3D cube desktop
working...
Go to General > Display Settings > Lighting and turned it off
Enable Desktop Cube and then Desktop Cube > Transparent Cube and set the
two opacity settings to 30%
then Desktop Cube > Skydome and check the skydome check mark
Enable Rotate Cube
Enable Enhanced Zoom Desktop
Right click the virtual workspaces panel and increase the number
of colums to 16.
And hey presto - 100% 3D translucent desktop with 16 screens!!!!!!!!!!
[Some shortcuts for the 3D screen
ctrl + alt + left or right arrow to spin cube
ctrl + alt + down arrow and then left or right arrow for a ring switcher
super + E for yet another switcher
super + mouse wheel scroll to zoom in and out of the 3D desktop.
]
You can run many applications simultaneously on netbook like a
real Linux desktop. You can open many browser tabs, run Open Office, video,
and developer stuff like MySQL server, Apache, PHP, Gambas, sqlite3
ALL SIMULTANEOUSLY while on a train for example, and rotate the
cube to switch between tasks instantly. Gone are the days when netbooks
were mis-represented as toys. They are fully functional Linux
Desktops on the move. Try it! It works!
Reducing Font Sizes And Turning ON Sub Pixel Rendering
------------------------------------------------------
The EEE can be astonishingly good to look at once the
font size is reduced to about 8 and sub pixel rendering
is turned ON. It is still absolutely
readable and everything appeared like a 'full screen' miniature
desktop equivalent of a big desktop PC.
System > Appearance > Fonts get to the font settings
in Ubuntu. On software like firefox and some other applications,
need to also to set local use of fonts ( Edit > Preferences > Content
will have font settings for firefox that also need to be changed).
VirtualBox
----------
Yes! VirtualBox can run on Ubutu set up with 3D translucent desktop.
http://www.virtualbox.org
Install virtual box and then install programs like windopws XP and run
it pretty much at it would run on a normal netbook. Its hard to tell
if the netbook is running Linux or the WINDUMMY OSen when the software
is run full screen becaue the speed and responsiveness is about
the same between a real windummy OSen install and a virtual box
virtual machine running it all in Linux.
Speeding up netbook to near Desktop speed
-----------------------------------------
With the EEE, you can speed up the netbook into a desktop PC able to handle
giant applications. Just fit USB 7200 RPM external pocket drive. Install
and boot Linux from the external drive. Data transfer rate is about 28
Megabytes per second so video and other stuff work at near desktop speeds.
Obviously it uses up a lot more energy and 2 USB sockets and so
drains battery very fast. Need to be plugged into a charger to
get best performance. You don't want to fit the 7200RPM drive
inside the netbook - it will heat up a lot. If you want 7 to 8 hours of
battery life from your netbooks you need to limit yourself to slowish SSDs
for now. As the pocket drives cost only 40 pounds, another advantage
is that you can have several to switch between tasks.
If netbooks start shipping with e-Sata, then that would be even better
option to get as the e-Sata and 7200 RPM pocket drives
desktop drive are common and cheap.
http://www.livecdlist.com
http://www.distrowatch.com
.
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