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Evaluation of Biostar M7NCG400, VIA EPIA VR5000 with Mandrake Linux 9.2 ProSuite edition :

Version 9.2 is the latest edition available from Mandrake. Figure1 shows an image of the boxed ProSuite edition.

Figure1: Box-image of the ProSuite version of Mandrake-Linux9.2

Manifest:

The ProSuite edition box contains :

• 2x Install Server CDROMs,
• 1x Commercial applications CDROM,
• 1x Supplementary applications CDROM,
• 2x Installation sources CDROMs,
• 1x International CDROM,
• 1x IBM DB2 (RDBMS evaluation) CDROM,
• 1x Workstation install DVDROM,
• 1x Reference guide manual of 204 pages,
• 1x Starter guide of 366 pages.

The ProSuite edition also offers Mandrake club membership and 90 days web installation support.

The tested machines:

The distribution was installed on machines (provided by Basis Volume Limited ) with the following features:

Machine1:

MainBoard: M7NCG 400

CPU: Athlon XP2600+

Mainboard ASIC: nVidia nForce2

VGA: on-board mVidia gForce4 128 Bytes DDR RAM (X8 AGP)

Memory: 2x512 MBytes DDR 3200 RAM (for 128 bit addressing)

Hard Disk: 80 Bytes ATA133 by Samsung

DVDROM: Sony 16x24x48 CDRW/ DVDROM

Display: 15inch high-viewing-angle Video7 L515 LCD display

ADSL: Speedtouch 330 ADSL modem

Printer: Epson Stylus Color CUX400 printer.

Machine2:

MainBoard: via EPIA VE5000t

CPU: Fan-less VIA Samuel 500

MainBoard ASIC: VIA 8601/VT8231

VGA: on-board Trident blade 8 MBytes

Memory: 256 bytes PC133 RAM

Hard Disk: 40 Bytes ATA133 by Samsung

DVD/CDR: 52 Speed CDROM

Modem : External serial voice/fax modem

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Machine3:

MainBoard: Elite Group P6BAT A+

CPU: Fan-less Intel Pentium Il 350

Mainboard ASIC: VIA 694

VGA: S3 Trio 3D/2x

Memory: 256 MBytes PC100 RAM

Hard Disk: Temporary

DVD/CDR: 52 Speed CDROM

Modem : Speedtouch 330 USB ADSL

The installation results:

Machine 1 was for a high-performance workstation,

Machine 2 was for a low power-consuming SAMBA server/fax server,

Machine 3 was for a low power-consuming network router/network firewall.

All installations went without hitches. The on-board network card on the first machine could not be detected though data from the nVidia site suggest that it should be. This appears to be an artefact of the motherboard as similar behavior has been reported for other Linux distributions.

Machine1: workstation installation - bad features:

OpenOffice1.1 is configured to produce Microsoft Office format documents by default. This is surprising- Linux-based company; proprietary file formats; a mistake -surely?

Mandrake was the first main distribution to implement CUPS (the Common UNIX Printing System). However one was unable to enable network printing on this occasion. We have a LAN server with an SMB file/print service. This latter machine runs Fedora Linux and CUPS (for non SMB service). This workstation insisted on seeing the only printer on the network as this printer and as an SMB printer only. This was not observed with other distributions.

Workstation installation -good features:

The installation gave a very fast machine. The (added) network interface seemed especially fast. Whilst connected to a 100MBit network switch, data transfer speeds of 11.5 Kilo-bytes-per-second were obtained (i.e.92% of the theoretical maximum). The same line and switch regularly gives 6-7 kilo-bytes-per-second.

The machine connected to a network with a Windows-based router and obtained an IP address by DHCP and then to DNS-servers automatically. It was able to access the Internet in an otherwise all-Windows environment very easily.

The Speedtouch modem was detected and the appropriate device driver installed. It was able to connect to an ISP (Nildram ) here in Britain very easily. Here in Britain, many large ISPs bundle (Windows only) USB DSL modems with their DSL service. This modem appears to be the only USB-DSL modem with full Linux support. It has a slightly cheaper price most of the the Windows-only ones. So perplexing then is the apparent reluctance of major ISP's to bundle it with their service. Thomson, the makers of the modem quite understandably does not supply them in small numbers. Some preliminary research shows it is cheaper/more efficient for small Linux-based firms to try sourcing this modem from regions of Europe. Here in Britain one of the three 'Thompson' OEM modem distributers seem none-too-keen on supplying Linux-based firms. Another was unreachable.

Mandrake has long being aimed at 'the desktop' This distribution is a continuation. The program provides all expected of a modern desktop/workstation computer.

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Machine 2: SAMBA/fax server installations – good features

This machine was a dedicated file, print and network fax server. SAMBA 2.2.8, CUPS and Hylafax were installed. For file and fax service the machine functioned as intended. For network printing, there were problems to be explained below.

Machine 2- bad features

Network printing was tested with two standard ink jet printers. These were an Epson stylus colour 300 and Epson stylus colour 660. The Windows client machines tested were Windows ME and WindowsXP. The former printed with both printers, the latter only with the Epson stylus 300.

Machine 3: router/firewall installation - bad features

A main purpose of this evaluation was to generate installations for a router/firewall. The installations would then be used to generate CD-images that allow the machine to run hard-disk-less. An example of this procedure is given here.

The recipe followed in the link above does indeed generate useful images for read-only booting. The problem was the generation of the ISO boot image. A kernel recompilation is required. At the time of writing, this is in progress and fingers are crossed.

Router/firewall installation- good features

The ADSL modem was well supported.

Mandrake appears to be the only large distribution supporting the devfs file-system and the devfsd (dev-file system daemon). This simplifies mounting/unmounting or using devices (and possibly device driver writing) in Linux considerably. The naming system is different from traditional UNIX, but the system offers significant ease-of-use improvements.

A quick check on the literature has shown that sadly devfsd has generated flame wars between kernel developers. It appears that as a result, this excellent project is no longer supported. Whatever its faults devfs/devfsd proved a simple and reliable means to boot a read-only root filesystem. In this instance we were able to use the devfsd to mount traditional Linux directories on user-configured ram-disks successfully. Mandrake (when compared to other modern distributions ) gave the highest percentage of success in our attempts to boot a read-only root file-system. The project stalled as stated above at the making of the bootable ISO image.

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The distribution's main contents:

Mandrake 9.2 has over a thousand useful programs. The following are some notable ones:

Workstation/Desktop

OpenOffice 1.1

KOffice 1.2

Gimp 1.2

KDE 3.1.4

K3B and Nautilus CD burners

Gnome 2.4.22

Support for most analog TV cards

Support for some Digital TV cards

XINE DVD player

Embedded/Programming:

Kernel 2.4.22

gcc 3.2

Server Type Programs

Apache 2.0.47

MySQL-4.0.15

PostgreSQL-7.3.4

Samba-2.2.8

CUPS-1.1.16

and many more

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The M7NCG 400 mainboard:

The M7NCG400 from Bisotar is a micro ATX board with the following features

• Chipset : nvidia nforce2 /IGP (integrated Graphics processor) Gforce 4MX

• IDE: 2 IDE controllers slots

• VGA: IxAGPx8 slot compliant with AGP (specification 3.0)

• PCI slots: 3 PCI slots:

• USB2.0: 6 Ports (but connectors for only 4 provided)

• Firewire (IEEE1394): optional

• Audio: AC97 2.2 interface , 6 channels line-in and SPDIF.

• LAN: Realtek 8100BL network interface with RJ45 connector.

This board is a modestly 'no-frills' packaged board. But the modesty belies its speed and great stability. Modern Linux distributions (Fedora1, SuSE9 and Mandrake 9.2) run on the combination described above with notable speed and great stability.

Machine(s)/Linux-distribution availability:

Basis Volume supplies gigabit networks, LAN/fax servers, network routers/firewalls, small/modestly-priced workstations ( for video editing and other demanding applications). Some of these machines have Linux Mandrake bundled/pre-installed. We also provide training courses which cover Mandrake Linux.

For information on Mandrake Linux, please contact Mandrake .

TT

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