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$250 Desktop Runs Ubuntu, Windows 7 and OS X?

Jim — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:28:49 +0000

I recently wanted to get a new desktop computer to use for some programming projects. Seeing that I have a bunch of old computer parts laying around, I wanted to build my own computer. I started out by looking at some of the newest top-end Intel and AMD processors and motherboards, but the total price kept growing out of control, even if I used some of my old parts. Then, I noticed an interesting desktop motherboard from Intel that included a dual-core Atom processor. This got me to thinking, do I really need a top-of-the-line computer, or can I get by with something as cheap as this $90 CPU/motherboard combo?

After doing some quick googling, I realized that this motherboard series is actually quite popular and that people are using them for all sorts of tasks. Some make them into entertainment centers, low-powered servers, car computers and even hackintoshes. This peeked my interest and I decided to try it out for myself, after all, using some of my old computer parts (HD and DVD drive), I could make this new desktop for less than $200, what did I have to loose?

So, are these Intel motherboards with their low-power Atom processors really all that people claim? Could I run Ubuntu (my main goal), Windows 7 and OS X all on this dirt cheap hardware? Here’s what I found out.

My Hardware

Intel Desktop Board D945GCLF2D with integrated Intel Atom processor
Compucase Mini ITX case 8K01BS-SA12U
2GB of Kingston DDR2 RAM
Old 400 GB Seagate SATA hard drive
Old IDE DVD drive

Build your own

Intel Desktop Motherboard with Atom Processor, about $90 – Intel D945GCLF2
Mini ITX Case, about $60 – Mini ITX Cases
2GB of RAM, about $25 – Kingston ValueRam 2GB
Hard Drive, about $50 – Western Digital Caviar Blue 250 GB Hard Drive or pick out a bigger one
Optical Drive, about $25 – Optical Drives

This motherboard is really small, and you can buy some incredibly small cases to put it in. The smaller cases don’t have much room for add-ons (but really, how often do we really fill our cases with addons?). It seems that just about everything can be added by USB these days. In fact, I decided not even to install an internal DVD drive, because I don’t need a DVD drive for everyday use.

I found the case to be very nice and I have no complaints. Putting everything together was a snap and both the case and motherboard came with adequate instructions. The real question here is about performance with different operating systems.

Ubuntu 9.04

Since I do most of my daily work and programming in Ubuntu, this was the most important OS for me. I was going to try installing from a USB flash drive, which everyone claims is easy, but found it easier to just hook up my old IDE DVD drive temporarily and use my trusty Ubuntu Jaunty install CD. Everything went like normal, the Ubuntu install is incredibly simple these days. I had Jaunty up and running in less than 20 minutes.

I’m happy to report that all of the hardware worked perfectly with absolutely no tweaking – I never opened a terminal once while setting up this machine – it just works! I was immediately surprised by the performance of the machine. The dual-core Atom 330 processor runs at 1.6 GHz and I figured that performance would be pretty poor.

The machine boots Ubuntu quickly and launches applications seemingly just as fast as my Core 2 Duo system. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it works very well for daily use. I don’t use any really power-hungry applications (besides Firefox, which seems to demand more resources every day) and spend a lot of time in Vim and the browser. Video performance is acceptable and Compiz works flawlessly. I didn’t do any benchmarks, but I can say that I find the performance to be acceptable.

Windows 7

I decided to install the release candidate of Windows 7, again expecting poor performance. (Note, if you want to dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows, it’s best to install Windows first). Windows 7 also installed on this hardware without any tweaking, I didn’t even need to download any drivers. To my amazement, everything just worked. Even all the fancy visual effects worked out of the box!

Windows 7 takes significantly longer to boot than Ubuntu, but boot times were acceptable. Performance seemed reasonable to me (although, installing AVG anti virus really made things work a lot slower). I installed several applications and didn’t run into any problems. I’m not a heavy windows user (pretty much Windows free since late 2005) so I can’t compare the performance to other machines. I can say that I found it usable. For a part-time Windows user, or for those who just like to surf the web and organize their photos, this hardware should be sufficient for running Windows 7.

OS X

I did some quick searches, and found a lot of reports of successful OS X instillation on this motherboard. I have an old Macbook for when I need OS X (which is rare), so installing OS X was not a priority for me. I did give it a try, however, using one of the newer methods which allows you to install from a Leopard retail DVD. I’m not an advocate of cracking or stealing software, so this method seems more palatable to me (it still breaks Apple’s EULA, but not the DMCA).

I followed several different tutorials and was able to get OS X installed on a spare hard drive. I wasn’t, however, able to get things to work perfectly. I had problems with the video drivers that I found online, and all of my 5 attempted installations ended in a machine that either would not boot properly or had messed up video.

I’m quite sure that it’s possible to install Leopard on this hardware, especially since so many others have reported success. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you can probably make it work. Personally, Ubuntu does 99% of what I need, so I’ll stick with the free, open source and legal OS that “just works” on my hardware rather than spend days trying to make a hackintosh.

Conclusion

I think this computer would be a wonderful addition to any household. It’s a perfect computer for anyone who’s not a power user (you don’t want use it for gaming, to do high-end video processing or run virtual machines), for kids, grandparents, anyone really. I would feel good about giving this computer for just about any of my friends or relatives. Why not build your own and give it a try?

Ubuntu: Still Popular?

Jim — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:35:37 +0000

Back in November of 2007, we wrote an article about the popularity of Ubuntu. At the time, it appeared that Ubuntu was the most popular Linux distribution according to many different web metrics. Of course, there’s no way to say for sure which distro is the most popular and to know exactly how many people use Ubuntu. That being said, we thought it would be interesting to take a fresh look at Ubuntu’s popularity. Is Ubuntu gaining in popularity? Is it being used by more people? Are more people searching and talking about Ubuntu?

So, how many users does Ubuntu have? It’s really hard to tell. In October, 2007, Canonical claimed that there were over 6 million users of Ubuntu. Then in October, 2008, in an interview with IneternetNews.com a Canonical spokesman claimed that

“In terms of numbers we’re very confident this is an 8 million plus user base of active users. That is a hard thing to count and there are lots of issues about methodology for counting but I have seen nothing that sheds doubts on that.”

With this in mind, lets look at some indicators and statistics from around the web to see just how popular Ubuntu really is. Has it gained in popularity since 2007, or has another distro come in to take Ubuntu’s place?

Note: this article is in no way a scientific study of Ubuntu’s popularity, it is just a collection of interesting stats from around the net. Have fun with it!

1. DistroWatch.com

Like last time around, we’ll start things out with distrowatch.com. While not the best indicator of a distro’s popularity, it is a traditionally accepted measure of popularity in the Linux community. When we wrote our original article back in November of 2007, PCLinuxOS topped the distrowatch list, but that apparently didn’t last for long, as Ubuntu is once again back on top (and overall yearly stats at distrowatch.com show Ubuntu in the number one position from 2005-present).

DistroWatch.com’s most popular linux distributions for the past 6 months

Ubuntu
Fedora
openSUSE
Mint
Debian
Mandriva
PCLinuxOS
Puppy
Sabayon
CentOS

This is the list that we’ll use going forward to compare the top distros.

2. Website popularity

There are several companies that specialize in ranking websites. None of these sites are perfect and many people discount them all together. We thought it would be interesting to see how some of the top Linux distribution websites stack up in these net rankings. Here are current rankings for the top 10 distros (from the Distrowatch list). The November 2007 results are included in parenthesis.

Netcraft Rankings

www.ubuntu.com: 694 (up from 1,649)
www.OpenSUSE.org: 1,823 (up from 4,622)
www.debian.org: 1,938 (down from 1,719)
fedoraproject.org: 2,164 (up from 4,314)
www.centos.org: 3,054 (not on the list in 2007)
www.linuxmint.com: 3,150 (way up from 41,331)
www.mandriva.com: 10,049 (down from 7,691)
www.pclinuxos.com: 10,479 (up from 11,144)
www.puppylinux.org: 14,196 (not on the list in 2007)
www.sabayonlinux.org: 36,494 (down from 28,549)

Alexa Rankings

www.ubuntu.com: 2,327 (up from 2,445)
www.debian.org: 4,475 (down from 3,499)
www.OpenSUSE.org: 10,889 (down from 7,878)
fedoraproject.org: 12,992 (down from 11,127)
www.centos.org: 16,198 (not on the list in 2007)
www.linuxmint.com: 29,146 (up from 69,753)
www.mandriva.com: 30,945 (down from 18,497)
www.puppylinux.org: 62,103 (not on the list in 2007)
www.pclinuxos.com: 80,114 (down from 57,390)
www.sabayonlinux.org: 120,109 (down from 72,331)

So, it seems that Ubuntu is, according to these sites, the most visited of the distros from distrowatch’s top 10. It’s also interesting to note that Linux Mint’s rankings have dramatically improved since 2007. Perhaps Mint’s popularity has something to do with their focus on being user friendly (and not brown)?

Blogging Trends

Sites like Technorati and BlogPulse allow you to track how often people are blogging about a certain topic. We compared Ubuntu’s blog buzz to other top Linux distros and found that people are writing about Ubuntu far more than any other Linux distro.

BlogPulse

We took the top three distros from distrowatch and compared them on BlogPulse.

Technorati

Technorati shows very similar results when comparing Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE and Debian over the last 180 days.

As you can see, people are blogging about Ubuntu far more often than other distros. (We’d also like to note that a good amount of blog posts that contain the word “fedora” are about the hat and not the Linux distro).

Google Trends

Again we decided to look at Google Trends to see which distros people are searching for. Of course, there is a lot of room for error as someone could be searching for the philosophy of Ubuntu, for a new Fedora hat, or for The Red Hat Society.

First we compare our top 4 distros from above. You can clearly see that from the second half of 2006, there are far more searches for Ubuntu than for Debian, Fedora (including Fedora Core, and Red Hat searches) or openSUSE (including SUSE).

Next we compare Ubuntu to the rest of the top 10 distros combined (including variations of the distro names such as Red Hat). It seems that since mid 2007, Ubuntu is being searched for more often than all the other distros combined.

Here we compare Ubuntu to Linux, Unix, FreeBSD and Solaris. Clearly Linux has the lead, but Ubuntu gets really close around release dates. In 2007, we thought this trend would lead to “Ubuntu” overtaking “Linux” as a search term, but this clearly has not happened.

Finally, for some perspective, we compare Ubuntu, Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Twitter

Since our original article was published, searching Twitter trends has become an interesting way of finding out what people are talking about. We used Twist to compare the same top 4 distros. Here is a graph comparing tweets over the last 30 days. (Once again, a whole lot of the “fedora” tweets are about the hat, not the Linux distro).

And finally, we compare Ubuntu with Linux, Mac and Windows.

Conclusion

It appears that Ubuntu is still the most popular Linux distribution. According to some stats, it’s more popular now than ever. Of course, these stats don’t really tell us how many people actually use Ubuntu. They do, however, give an interesting insight into Ubuntu’s relative popularity on the internet. They also re-emphasize just how far Ubuntu (and Linux in general) have to go to catch up with Mac and Windows.

Remember, this was all just for fun, no need to get upset if you don’t like something you see here (or if we left out your favorite distro). Whatever your favorite OS is, the most important thing is that it works for you and that you can be productive using it. So, until next time, happy computing!

“In terms of numbers we’re very confident this is an 8 million plus user base of active users,” Chris Kenyon, director of business development at Canonical told InternetNews.com. “That is a hard thing to count and there are lots of issues about methodology for counting but I have seen nothing that sheds doubts on that.”

Ubuntu: Just how popular is it?

Kevin Lynch Interviewed About Adobe’s Apollo Project

Jim — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:17:05 +0000

TalkCrunch recently interviewed Kevin Lynch about Adobe’s upcoming Apollo project. I’ve been keeping my eye on Apollo and it seems quite interesting. Adobe is calling Apollo “a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) to the desktop.” Sounds cool, but also a little confusing. The TalkCrunch podcast helps shed some light on Apollo and is worth a listen.

Using Backpack Offline with PackRat – Screencast

Jim — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 22:18:14 +0000

This is the first of (hopefully) many screencasts I hope to bring you over the coming months. Today’s screencasat is about how to use your Backpack account offline on your Mac with a new program called PackRat.

Textdrive and Joyent Merge

Jim — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 01:07:32 +0000

My favorite web hosting company, TextDrive, has merged with Joyent. I’ve had my eye on Joyent for a while now, thinking how cool it’d be to have their software in our office. They make what appears to be a great Ruby on Rails based suite of software to help keep your office organized. I’ve been wondering when the promise of “… hosted plans starting at just $15/month for your entire team” would come true. Looks like with TextDrive is gonna be part of that plan. Can’t wait to sign up!

RadRails, A Ruby on Rails IDE

Jim — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 06:55:06 +0000

I’ve been looking for a good, cross-platform IDE for doing my Rails work. I’m currently using Eclipse with a lot of plugins (thanks to this blog entry). It works great, but it’s a little slow, and takes a while to set up. Now there’s RadRails, an Eclipse based IDE made just for Ruby on Rails development. It’s free, open source, cross-platform, and it works. They’re now at version 0.5 and developing at an amazing pace. It runs much faster than Eclipse with all those plugins I’m using now. There are still some bugs, but I think any future Rails projects will probably start in RadRails. Also, be sure to check out the podcast that the developers put together. It’s quite random, but funny and informative.

Locomotive For Rails

Jim — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 21:56:12 +0000

Locomotive is a fast and easy way to get Ruby on Rails up and running quickly on your Mac. It includes Rails, lighttpd, FastCGI and tons of gems. There’s even a “max bundle” that includes just about every Ruby oriented thing you can imagine. So, why am I still using WEBRick? Because, while Locomotive provides all these things, it does make configuring them quite a pain (just try to configure lighttpd). If you don’t need to do a lot of strange configuration, download Locomotive and give it a try.