Comments on: Entering dragon land—the Loongson laptop

By: Cedley1969

Cedley1969 — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:34:02 +0000

Be interested to follow this, I bought one of the second generation 360mhz 128mb flash 2gig netbooks and after a pretty steep learning curve am running the 3MX ultra debian port from little linux laptop (given the similarity between the alpha400 and the loongson oem software I imagine it could be ported across).
I love it in the same way I loved my Sinclair (Timex in the US) zx81 in the early eighties because I felt like I was part of something that would grow with my ability.
A £100 $150 dollar solid state device with open architecture seems like a better bet to me than a $500 ipad with closed architecture and software doled out like the ten commandments.
That and neither one has a license to play flash content!
I will watch the Chinese computer scene with interest in the next few years.

By: varadarajan

varadarajan — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:24:10 +0000

Hi !

Very nice coverage. I also got my gdium laptop last month. I got tired of Mandriva and now going back to my trusted Debian. I would to know more about what you have done ! Will you be writing about your version of Debian ?

By: Soete

Soete — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:19:46 +0000

The Gdium, unfortunately, seems to have a cooling fan, so I wonder if this one is absolutely silent under all conditions.

An interesting alternative are the Onda (Ainol, Gemei) players with an Ingenic ((mipsel) chip, as soon as they allow bluetooth dongles, etc. That shouldn’t take much longer, with the upcoming SmartQ 5 competition in mind.

Some people already have managed to install Linux on the Onda VX747, for instance.

By: Fred

Fred — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 04:42:51 +0000

hi Derrick and Steven, actually ST pulled out early last year (May-June 2008) so it has nothing to do with the economic crisis but they will continue to produce, market and sell the 2F (current version). They will just not invest as much in the next version of the Loongsoon (2G) but will continue to produce the chips. So Derrick is right and Loongsoon is everything but dead and we’ll see a new version coming out tentatively by the end of this year (2009).

By: Derrick Sobodash

Derrick Sobodash — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:01:25 +0000

Your friend is severely mis-informed. Even if ST pulls out of helping produce the chip, the Loongson isn’t over. They didn’t help with the 2E; only the 2F. If ST pulls out, they will just partner with someone else.

The Gdium project is still going strong and their system is Loongson based. Lemote is providing the chips. There is also the E-benton project (which is admittedly evil). Your friend is either completely wrong, or severely misinformed about what role ST has in the Loongson future.

By: Steven

Steven — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:50:59 +0000

I heard this news from my friend in ST Microelectronics. STMi are laying off people and will will stop producing Loongson processors. Too expensive production cost for non-existing market… in a financial crisis time.

You got hold of one of the last netbook with a loongson processor!

By: GnuGuru.org

GnuGuru.org — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:46:29 +0000

very nice review thank you.

By: gamer_boy

gamer_boy — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:38:33 +0000

Ok, thanks for this nice review D, for we can know more the product developed in China.

By: Graziano

Graziano — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:05:46 +0000

Wonderful post and nice photos D., thank you.
I will talk about it on my blog.

Now I run Debian mipsel on my Yeeloong but the wireless range is still very short.

By: James

James — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:09:39 +0000

Very nice!
Is that XFCE? How did you get the unified menubar on the panel like that?