Buying new Hardware - need help selecting equipment that will work with Porteus

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drm7369
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Buying new Hardware - need help selecting equipment that will work with Porteus

Post#1 by drm7369 » 20 Nov 2017, 14:56

Hey guys,

I was approached by another team at my organization to look into finding an alternative device that can run Porteus. Full disclosure, I have never used porteus before and it is very new to me. Anyway, the team that is looking to purchase these new devices wanted to buy these computers that cost around $3,000 each, which is absolutely overkill. So, I am trying to find a less expensive alternative.

I am a bit worried about giving a professional recommendation because of how little I know about Porteus so I am here asking for some advice.

The requirements that I was given are as follows:
• Can run 64 bit Linux (no arm processors)
• Has an HDMI Out port for a touch screen monitor
• Can Pixie boot?
• Is small form factor
• Hardware specs aligns better with the application requirements (i.e. no 500GB ssd, 16GB RAM, I7 8 core processors etc)

The potential hardware alternatives I found are below. Has anyone ever used any of these with porteus and can confirm they are good options or have any similar solutions they have implemented?


ZOTAC ZBOX BI325 1.6GHZ N3160 BLACK,SILVER MINI PC*
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 82536.html
○ $190
ECS ELITEGROUP LIVA X2 1.6GHZ N3050 WHITE MINI PC*
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 76167.html
○ $166
ASUS E410-B0105 1.6GHZ N3150 1.1L SIZED PC BLACK MINI PC PC*
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 84415.html
○ $209
Intel 7TH GEN CORE I3 NUC KIT NUC7I3DNK1E W/S (BLKNUC7I3DNK1E)
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=2627
○ $294
ASRock System BeeBox-S 6200U NUC
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=2627
○ $333

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fanthom
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Buying new Hardware - need help selecting equipment that will work with Porteus

Post#2 by fanthom » 20 Nov 2017, 20:23

Is this question related to Porteus Kiosk or Desktop?
If kiosk then all these miniPCs should be working out of the box.

Thanks
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drm7369
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Buying new Hardware - need help selecting equipment that will work with Porteus

Post#3 by drm7369 » 20 Nov 2017, 20:31

Hey,

Thanks for your response.

I believe it would be running Porteus Kiosk. The person who asked me to look into this said something about "only need to run a web GUI", which is what makes me think it would be Porteus Kiosk. The person will be currently OOO, so I cant ask for any clarification.

If he was referring to Porteus Desktop, would these not work?

Thanks!!

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Post#4 by fanthom » 20 Nov 2017, 20:41

They probably would work also for Desktop.

I'm maintaining kiosk so can answer only for this system.
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drm7369
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Buying new Hardware - need help selecting equipment that will work with Porteus

Post#5 by drm7369 » 20 Nov 2017, 20:47

Hmm,

So, now I am bit concerned about whether these small form factor computers are popular enough to have linux/unix support. In the past, in unrelated personal projects I have ran into issues where the hardware wasnt supported for one reason or another and the devices dont explicitly list whether they are are supported by major opensource distributions.

If you dont mind me asking, what hardware are you using for your Kiosks?

THanks!

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Buying new Hardware - need help selecting equipment that will work with Porteus

Post#6 by fulalas » 20 Nov 2017, 21:10

When runnning Porteus Desktop (not sure about Kiosk, but should be the same), the major bottleneck is the amount of RAM memory, since the whole system runs in RAM and there's no swap file by default -- in other words: system will freeze if there's no RAM available. Although Porteus itself doesn't take much RAM (usually less than 400 MB), the problem are webbrowsers that nowadays eat memory like crazy. So I would consider getting a machine with at least 8 GB of RAM. :good:

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Buying new Hardware - need help selecting equipment that will work with Porteus

Post#7 by brokenman » 20 Nov 2017, 22:26

In the case of the kiosk version I believe every time the session is ended the memory is restored and the profile directory is cleaned so it would take a looong session to eat up your ram.

The desktop version should also support these out of the box. If there are any problems we can work through them. I am picking up one of these units next month which will run Porteus at my work. I can also say that the intel stick runs porteus flawlessly. Your boss is gonna love you. $3000 is certainly overkill.
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Buying new Hardware - need help selecting equipment that will work with Porteus

Post#8 by fulalas » 21 Nov 2017, 00:36

brokenman wrote:
20 Nov 2017, 22:26
In the case of the kiosk version I believe every time the session is ended the memory is restored and the profile directory is cleaned so it would take a looong session to eat up your ram.
The problem is not Porteus itself, but other apps, especially browsers. If the system runs out of memory, it will freeze and user will lost all unsaved data. :(

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Buying new Hardware - need help selecting equipment that will work with Porteus

Post#9 by fanthom » 21 Nov 2017, 07:38

@drm7369
In term of kiosk following hardware definitely works:

Code: Select all

Intel NUC Kit NUC6CAYH
Intel NUC Kit NUC6i5SYH
*Probably all other NUCs*
Intel ComputeStick second generation
ZOTAC PI221
Wintel Pro CX-W8 (very cheap - good performance)
These are only few which i dragged out of my inbox.
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