back to article What's black, sticky, and has just 8GB of storage?

Intel's Compute Stick, the Atom-powered, plug-this-into-your-tellie-over-HDMI femto-PC, is now available with Ubuntu pre-installed. The Compute Stick emerged in April with a Windows 8.1 version selling for a recommended US$149. For that price you score an Atom Z3735F pushing four cores along at up to 1.83 GHz, 2 GB memory, 32 …

  1. Grifter

    Wtf

    What assclowns, why couldn't they just have put up the exact same hardware. For fuck's sake.

    1. Salts

      Re: Wtf

      Not sure who is going to buy this, I would wait about 3 hours after the windows version is released for a Ubuntu image that can be installed on the better hardware.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Wtf

        Exactly: and another Windows "sale" to the Wintel propaganda dept. No-one wants Linux. See!

        I'd like to see the sales figures if this little ruse was reversed and Ubuntu was splaffed onto the less sarcastic stick.

      2. PNGuinn
        Happy

        Re: Wtf @ Salts

        Or stuff something decent on it like a cut down Mint, Debian or even one of the Puppies.

        I wonder how that Atom compares for grunt to the one in the asus EEE901? That's still a very credible little laptop even today.

        I presume the new Atom is 64 bit? Then Mint or Debian dual booting with FatDog 64 on the microSD for in memory only computing.

        MMM... an EEE in my pocket - I'll look into this one a little further. I wonder what the windows versions will fetch on Fleabay in a few months time?

        1. arnieL

          Re: Wtf @ Salts

          Not sure about that, unless it has 64 bit UEFI. Ones in existing Atoms are 32 bit even though processor is 64 bit.

    2. Shadow Systems

      @Grifter, Re: Wtf.

      Spot on.

      If I were in the market for something like this, I'd be "forced" to buy the Windows version (thus rewarding MS with the sale of a "Windows device" even if they're not getting any money off a Windows license), just to get the hardware that doesn't blow rancid monkey spunk.

      Fuck that. Utter bullshit.

      Now I feel like getting one of the Windows ones, giving it a script to send an email stating "You Suck & here's why..." to Intel once every sixty seconds until they find where in the Mall I've hidden it in order to disable it. At which point the next one kicks in to start sending the emails (from random compromised email accounts, through random proxies, to randomly chosen Intel email address') just to keep the fun going.

      And when they find that one, the next starts up, then the next & the next & the next. Like an "Annoy-O-Tron" from ThinkGeek.com only set to send email instead of chirping incessantly.

      Dear Intel. Thanks for offering a nifty product, but did you _really_ have to go the AssClown route in order to offer the Ubuntu model? Half the ram & piss poor onboard storage? Seriously? And it *only* saves Forty bucks? If those components only cost Forty, then here's another Hundred-&-Twenty to put it back then triple it. What's that? You can't do it because that's *not* the cost of the hardware you stripped out to bring the price down? Then what _IS_ the excuse for screwing the Linux community by offering such dubious "savings"?

      Grrrr...

      1. glussier

        Re: @Grifter, Wtf.

        If you buy the windows version of this device, you are not rewarding Microsoft. Windows is free on these stick, same thing for windows tablets 9" and lower. Most probably, since linux users think that hardware should be sheaper should be sheaper for them, Intel decided to give them what they want.

        I you really want the 32GB device and be done with it.

      2. PNGuinn
        Unhappy

        Re: @Grifter, Wtf. @ Shadow

        History repeats like a dish fried in old fat.

        The original EEE / Atom spec was borked, rumour has it, 'cos mikkysoft were terrified it'd give the Penguin a beakhold on the laptop market and thence.... So it was pitched as a small device for email and a bit of browsing etc. Shame ASUS did such a good job of the hardware. The Linux devices were actually far better specced than the Xpletive ones - 20 Gb storage on 2 ssds - a 16 GB one and a fast(er) 4 GB. That can, I gather be upgraded. Shame the memory can only go to 2 GB.

  2. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    Plenty of things I can do with 1G ram + 8G flash

    4GB SODIMM with 4 chips: £22 so £5.50 per 1GB chip.

    8GB SODIMM with 4 chips: £44 so £11 per 2GB chip.

    8GB microSD: £6. 32GB microSD: £16.

    £21.50 ≈ $33.33

    These prices remove economies of scale and add the cost of putting on a PCB, retailer's profit and delivery. On the other hand, Intel's compute stick comes with the chips on a PCB, and I assume this is a recommended retail price for one via mail order so my price comparison is not all that bad.

    For all we know, Intel contribute $5 per stick to the free software foundation and have installed -$10 of crapware on the Windows version. I do not see the price difference as unreasonable, although I would have preferred to see the 2GB+32GB version available with Linux as well. (Some crapware for Linux would be nice too, as I always install my own image anyway.)

    The big question here is has Intel put in a CPU that can compete with and ARM CPU in a $110/$149 stick. I have a few ARM's in that price range, and the OS+a hefty pile of software is just over 4GB. For that price, I expect Libreoffice to run without visible delays. (Libreoffice on an old pi is usable if you wait a second or two for it to catch up with your typing).

    1. kryptylomese

      Re: Plenty of things I can do with 1G ram + 8G flash

      I just used my Raspberry Pi2 via an remote desktop session (XRDP session linked to the console so it is going through several layers)) to run Libre Office and there is NO delay in typing whatsoever.

      Linux is more efficient than Windows so you do not need extra power to run it (think about all the routers and switches in the world and what CPU/Operating system they run....)

      1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

        Re: Plenty of things I can do with 1G ram + 8G flash

        I have a first generation Acer Aspire One (1.6GHz Atom N270, 1GB RAM and 8GB flash) which sounds like it's similar spec, and I have Trusty Tahr on it, and I still use it for basic web browsing, and playing some media.

        I use gnome-flashback, partly because I prefer the interface, and partly because Unity is painful with slow graphics and only 600 vertical pixels. The other drawback is the SSD is seriously slow, possibly because it does not support TRIM.

        The biggest problem is keeping enough of the filesystem free during updates. The update tool leaves a trail of downloaded deb files after they've been installed, and never cleans up old kernels.

        If I did not make serious effort to clean up after every update, it would have run out of space ages ago. I hope that the version installed on this stick has been tweaked to do some of this automatically.

        fwiw, ubuntu-tweak and computer-janitor are seriously useful for keeping this cruft down.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thin clients on wifi

    Pretty sure people used to run thin clients on 10BASE2 Ethernet. By thin clients I mean X terminals.

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: Thin clients on wifi

      Used to, but not any more. People requirements have changed, applications requirements have changed too.

      I have a big box of retired thin clients and the exec summary from using libreoffice and el-reg without the adverts in firefox over X as a test is:

      * 100Mbit and 600-800MHz 32bit in-order CPU (Crusoe, early Via Eden): barely usable. User experience is awful, you can see it redrawing, it stalls, etc.

      * 1Gbit and single power 1GHz low power Athlon: works. Just about. CPU load is regularly past 50%.

      * 1Gbit and dual core 1GHz Via (recent HP thin client models): works perfectly, but why? You might as well stick some flash into it and run things locally with the user data over NFS. That's what I did and it is now "happily ever after"

      * X terminal thin client on wifi is a complete oxymoron. I tried to run that in the past several times both with and without OpenVPN (for compression purposes - it actually improves things quite a bit). The most recent one was using Samsung chromebook. Same story - more flash (hacking a 64 SD card into it permanently), apps locally, data in the network and "happily ever after".

      There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to run "Terminal" type thin clients any more for performance/cost reasons. The sole reason is management. Even in that case it makes more sense to run the applications locally on the stupidly overpowered recent CPUs and have only the data in the network.

      Do we like it or not this is a reality - VDI is dead.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Thin clients on wifi

        Yeah, I wouldn't mind betting it was some X extensions used by modern windowing toolkits that made the difference. Modern toolkits make heavy use of extensions such as RENDER which would keep an older system rather busy.

        The other day however I was using virt-manager via X forwarded through SSH comfortably across a local area network, so provided the X server at the local end is recent enough and the hardware capable, the concept still works. However, as you point out, the costs for adding some storage have gone way down now, you might as well run the OS locally.

        I've also used VM consoles via SPICE over a 3G connection, and found the experience to be pretty good.

      2. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

        Re: Thin clients on wifi

        I still run a lot of stuff over X both at home and at work (obviously through SSH X forwarding).

        My primary go-to system is a Thinkpad T43, 2.0GHz Dothan Mobile Pentium with 2GB memory running Ubuntu Trusty Tahr and Gnome-flashback. It runs very well as an X server connected to other systems, both more and less powerful.

        What kills X is the appalling way that some applications, particularly Java ones, are implemented. Too many client applications render the screen locally, doing thing like all of the font handling locally, and then sending the rendered screen to the server.

        Now I know that this is the only way that a client application can guarantee that certain fonts are available, and rendered as they expect, but it's seriously ugly in use, and it breaks the ethos of X11, where very efficient network primitive operations are sent across the network rather than the screen bitmaps.

        Certain things, like video, are clearly not suited to X, but properly written X applications can be exceptionally snappy.

        I think back over 20 years to running IBM X-Station 130s in a live operation (actually the IBM UK AIX Support Centre) from RS/6000 320H servers, about 10 X-Stations per server, over 16Mb/s Token Ring, and it was not X that slowed things down, it was the processing power and memory on the servers running the clients (isn't the X computing model confusing sometimes!). At the time, this was a very realistic proposition, and I'm sure that the increase in processing power and network speed could make thin-clients technically feasible again, but there is no cost benefit any more.

        With the rising popularity of delivering apps. through HTML, I can see future thin clients being <£100 android tablets with keyboards (and maybe mice), possibly built into desks rather than sitting on them!

        A stick like this could be useful in a scenario like this, but once you take into account the cost of whatever you are displaying it on, and the keyboard and mouse, the tablet option I described above looks much more attractive. The real benefit of these systems would be in a household that does not want to have a desktop PC, but may occasionally want more than can be done on a tablet.

        1. jelabarre59

          Re: Thin clients on wifi

          > I'm sure that the increase in processing power and network speed could make thin-clients technically feasible again, but there is no cost benefit any more.

          It could on a smaller scale for home usage. I've long wanted to set up this sort of configuration for home, where I could have a heavy-duty, mid-tower in my home office (running Linux Mint), and some sort of extra-lightweight laptop-like portable unit to carry around the house, which would run everything from the office machine. The original X11 specification (including XDMCP) would have been great for this, presuming you had audio forwarding as well as display forwarding.

          Now, I've tried to find if there were a way to do this with Chromebooks, but it seems the various display-sharing options these days are just that, with the shortcoming that the exported resolution will be locked to what the host machine has, rather than adjusting to the resolution of the remote/portable display.

      3. karakalWitchOfTheWest

        Re: Thin clients on wifi

        No, it is not dead.

        We are using LTSP-Thin/Thick-Clients regularly and yes, it is not because of speed or price but because of management. The users can't break anything, and if I have a breakdown I just change the client hardware and be done with it and can figure out the problem back in the office without annoying the users.

      4. the spectacularly refined chap

        Re: Thin clients on wifi

        * 100Mbit and 600-800MHz 32bit in-order CPU (Crusoe, early Via Eden): barely usable. User experience is awful, you can see it redrawing, it stalls, etc.

        I've used similar spec terminals and come to precisely the opposite conclusion - for most business apps - for most business apps you can't tell the difference if everything is properly configured and you are using high level protocols (X11, RDP) rather than the bitmap kludges such as VNC. Hell, I remember a few years back I tried full screen movie playback to see how well it fared, software rendering on the remote machine rather than locally. In fact it coped surprisingly well - no, I'm not going to claim it was silky smooth because the frame rate was well down and became distinctly cine-filmish in panning shots - but it was watchable.

        The only issue I ever observed in real use was with Firefox on X11 and then only fairly rarely - it seems the rendering code does pass large images directly over to the X server for it to scale before display. If you have a particularly graphically intensive page or a single large bitmap things would slow to the a crawl - displaying e.g. an 80MP image was not fun. However, how frequent is that for most of the target market? The fact it isn't much good for viewing high res porn is probably a plus.

        I can only assume that this is either completely groundless FUD or you are not capable of configuring this kind of thing correctly. Either way your comments are completely divorced from reality.

  4. kryptylomese

    Linux runs much better on crap hardware than Windows because Linux is far more optimised, performant, secure, scalable, opensource, free, portable and has huge software repositories for most distributions.

    Having said all that, would be nice if the option was there to have the same hardware. It will not be long before the better hardware is hacked to install Linux. Intel are not the only manufacturer of the style of sticks so you have a choice.

    If Ubuntu was installed then running "sshuttle" would be very easy way in hotels to watch TV originating from your own country whilst abroad.

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      That is half of the story

      Linux also does not have a corporation behind it which has been burned once by a class action suit (the early Intel onboard IGP case). That is the reason why MSFT is quite strict as far as the minimum spec nowdays.

      Windows can run on lower spec machines than that (albeit not anywhere near as low as Linux). It is MSFT which is refusing to endorse such low spec machines for end-user shipment. You cannot get discounted OEM licenses and you cannot sticker the machine with the precious MSFT stickers if it does not pass their min spec tests.

    2. Sandtitz Silver badge

      "Linux runs much better on crap hardware than Windows because Linux is far more optimised, performant, secure, scalable, opensource, free, portable and has huge software repositories for most distributions."

      Wipe the foam off your mouth first.

      Can you please give an in-depth explanation how being (supposedly) more secure, more open source, more free, more portable and having huge software repos result in Linux running better in crap hardware?

      After that, please explain how Linux is far more optimized, performant and so forth. Please don't cite your usual "TOP500" references since this stick belongs to the BOTTOM500.

      1. JEDIDIAH
        Devil

        Just bad corporate culture.

        Microsoft is run from the sales department and not engineering. They have always been deficient. This isn't just a Linux versus Windows thing. This goes all the way back to dog+world versus DOS.

        Plus Linux (and Unix in general) is transparent and modular. They're designed that way. So you can tweak to your hearts content and make Linux even more suitable for limited hardware (like the PI).

        1. Sandtitz Silver badge

          Re: Just bad corporate culture. @JEDIDIAH

          "Microsoft is run from the sales department and not engineering."

          You can say that for any corporation that's out to make money.

          Whenever engineers run companies they usually run them to ground.

          "They have always been deficient."

          Nonsense.

          "This isn't just a Linux versus Windows thing."

          I'm not making this a Win/Lin fight.

          I'm just asking kryptylomese why Linux runs better on low-end hardware because Linux is (according to him) more secure. Simple as that.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Stick form factor

    This plugs into a HDMI port. However you can't power things over HDMI. And even if it were a USB stick it couldn't be powered over USB (it takes 2A @ 5V), so it has to be powered from a separate wall wart.

    In that case, why not just put the whole thing in the wall wart and be done with it?

    1. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: Stick form factor

      Might need a little bit of design work on the wall wart so it doesn't overhang adjacent plug sockets.

      I hate to say this, but the Apple charger format looks pretty good - an inverter/regulator which clips onto the relevant country plug (or at the end of a standard figure8 cable). There must be room in that body to fit a stick form factor, and still have a USB port for charging and/or peripherals.

    2. AIBailey

      Re: Stick form factor

      Is the wall-wart factor common with Intel hardware (I've never looked)? I've just ordered a NowTV box and want something small and quiet to act as a Plex server to transcode video for it. A Windows-in-a-Wall-Wart box would probably be ideal.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Stick form factor

        "A Windows-in-a-Wall-Wart box would probably be ideal."

        To be honest, if you want to do video transcoding on a low power device you really are better off with Linux or FreeBSD. Plex server AFAICS will run on a headless box with no GUI running so you minimise CPU & RAM overhead and you manage it remotely from it's own web server .

        My own non-exhaustive testing tells me FFMPeG can transcode about 8-10% faster on a command-line-only Linux box compared to the same box with KDE loaded and running in default config but otherwise idle.

  6. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    FAIL

    Still not really seeing the point of this. Except as a way of bumping up Windows X sales

    Ah. That's the the point.

  7. The Eee 701 Paddock

    Arch Linux ARM

    If my experience with my RasPi (or, on Intel, my venerable Eee 701SD) is anything to go by, the Stick sounds like a good candidate for Arch Linux (ARM version). Instead of a full-fat Ubuntu installation, with Arch you can "roll your own" system - choosing "lighter" applications and only installing what you want/need.

    I bet a few folk in the Arch/ARM community have their "test-labs" ready as we speak...

    1. Fuzz

      Re: Arch Linux ARM

      You're going to struggle running ARM anything on an x86 CPU such as an Atom.

      1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

        ARM code on x86

        Don't laugh too hard. One way to flesh out a Debian root file system for your first ARM CPU is to copy the x86 build of qemu-arm-static to the ARM root fs, and chroot in from an x86. The first time I did this, I could not believe how well it worked.

        Setting up all the libraries and header files on x86 for cross compiling to ARM is a pain. The simplest solution can be to use qemu to run an ARM native build of gcc in an ARM root file system. (These days, I only cross compile for MIPS because the ARMs can take care of themselves.)

        Emulation is quick these days, and processor speeds are insane. Brute force and laziness is often sufficient to get the job done.

  8. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    ARM stick?

    "Not sure who is going to buy this, I would wait about 3 hours after the windows version is released for a Ubuntu image that can be installed on the better hardware."

    I wouldn't, I will not be statistically counted as a "Windows customer" or whatever when I'm not going to use it.

    That said... I don't know if the Linux version will be as popular as the Windows one anyway. Why? COST! You "lucky" Windows users have a choice of x86 or nothing (since the ARM version of Windows turned out to be a bit crap)

    But, I got a quad-core ARM with a GB or 2 of RAM and (indeed rather paltry) 8GB of storage for like $70, and that was effectively paying some guy about $15 to put Linux on it.. they were like $55 blank. That was a year or two ago so they probably are less now. And to be clear, this isn't a compromised system, it shipped with a slightly stripped desktop but Ubuntu's regular "classic" desktop ran fine on it (Unity did too but Unity is crap), OpenGL 3d acceleration worked out of the box, and MPEG2/MPEG4/H.264 video acceleration worked out of the box (set up so vlc, mplayer, etc. can all use it.)

    Don't get me wrong, the $110 Intel stick should also be able to run a full install of whatever you want... I just didn't want anyone to think, based on Microsoft's attempt at ARM Windows, followed by a retreat to x86 and saying ARM is for lightweight "Internet of Things" type use, that this is really all ARM is good for. Running Linux on there you honestly wouldn't know it's an ARM until you look at hardware info like /proc/cpuinfo or the kernel logs describing the hardware.

  9. MrMur

    Am pretty sure that I read somewhere that flashing over your own O/S is going to be problematic (= possibly impossible), so those that are planning to buy the Windows version and reflash with Linux might want to check that it is even possible. This isn't just a tiny PC.

  10. Shadow Systems

    Ok, a semi-serious question...

    If one of the Windows versions were used (for the improved components) with a copy of DOS & MAME, would it make a good mini arcade machine for the kids?

    How would you connect the controllers? Could it handle a multi player game without lagging, stuttering, or becoming unuseably slow?

    Could you fill the SD card full of FLASH games & use it as a stand alone (offline) video game consol for the munchkins to play upon?

    I envisioned filling it full of video games, taking it (and a keyboard, controllers, & whatever other bits I might need) with us on vacation, plugging it into the Hotel/Motel tv, & playing games even if the place doesn't have an internet connection.

    Even better would be to couple it to a smallish LCD screen (think "fits on the back of the seat headrest"), give it a controller, a power lead to the cig lighter, & let the kids have fun while the car is in motion. No more whining about being bored, moaning about the lack of a signal (No shit? Funny how that might happen when we're fifty miles / a hundred-fifty KM from the nearest place you might call civilization!), and no more getting kicked in the small of the back by a child that's tempting me to fling them out a window as I accellerate away cackling.

    *COUGH*

    Where was I? Oh yeah. Would it make a good stand alone, offline, MAME unit to keep the kids occupied? Would it require a lot of work to get it to do that role, or would it be something as simple as filling up an SD card with the game files, installing MAME on the stick, & finding a suitable controller?

    1. KjetilS

      Re: Ok, a semi-serious question...

      You could always get a Raspberry Pi for a fraction of the price, fill up a thumb drive with game files and plugging in a suitable controller.

      There are premade SD card images for the purpose.

  11. Inertia

    Don't bother.

    Picked one up for a crack. It's complete arse. It manages to not even run Remmina smoothly to a host on the lan.

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