Linux on a GQ1.1

In summer 2002, Fry's offered a turn key linux box called a GQ (Great Quality). This item came with a sticker price of $399 and was regularly offered at $299. At the end of August they marked them "while supplies last" and turned them out at $199. It took the $199 price to get me to bite. If you are reading this after Sept 2002, you will not likely find this box because they were surely cleared out to make room for the newer model which is a Celeron 1.8 offering at 500 bucks.

Update: as of 15 Sept 2002 the box is being offered again at 300 bucks locally and was still available at outpost.com. This is a turn-key Linux box -- you supply monitor and possibly modem and that is about all!

This box is the replacement product for the Gigapro 733. It comes in the same case and has the same pctel modem. It runs significantly hotter than the Gigapro. It provides a much improved installation "Thiz Linux" that is RPM-based.

GQ 1.1

• Intel Celeron 1.1 GHz processor output of "cat /proc/cpuinfo"
• No monitor supplied
• 128 MB RAM supplied -- no errors seen with memtest86 overnight run.
• 20 GB disk, ExelStor 3220 output of "fdisk -l"
• 52X CD drive
• floppy drive
• Mini ATX case with one open 5" bay and 2 PCI slots + 1 PCI/ISA slot. There is no AGP slot.
• Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1 (rev 6a)
• Multimedia audio: VIA Technologies, Inc. AC97 Audio Controller
• Ethernet controller: SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev 02)
• USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. UHCI USB
• Communication controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. AC97 Modem
• One serial port, one parallel port, game port, "modem" port
• 3-button mouse, "internet" keyboard, speakers
• Manuals, power cord, phone cord output of "lspci -vv" and output of "cat /proc/pci"

The keyboard is by BTC. Looks reasonable and has a moon (sleep) key.

Linux on the GQ1.1

Plug in power, monitor, mouse, keyboard. Power it up and the system boots and runs something called Thiz Linux. All works -- comes up in GUI mode and presents the various apps that have been provided by the vendor including Konqueror, Mozilla, and config tools. There is a full menu system within KDE. Documentation tells how to login as root, and user can run konsole if he likes. As such it is easy to see how this distro was built and what its problems are. More info is at Thiz Linux site. I fault the Thiz team for not suppling kword which I would have expected with all the nice KDE stuff that they have provided. It is also unclear whether the purchaser is entitled to Thiz support -- hopefully it is provided and purchaser can download packages from their site at the very least. Ideally the purchaser would be able to also get some email support as well. If the Thiz team would like to write to me and clarify the issue, I will update these notes.

Thiz seems to be reasonably well done. It comes with a 2.4.17 kernel. The manual clearly states "No Linux support" so user is on his own. No decent word processor was found so unless you are a RedHat person or unless you get download privileges at thiz.com, the reasonable procedure is to re-install whatever you want. If you want more from Thiz folks you must register.

System Details

While I will surely re-install what I consider to be a viable distro, the Thiz team has at least built a system that we can study, with the goal of making that pctel "modem" work if none other. Some pertinent details are RPM List and Modules typical listing of modules loaded and modconf your basic /etc/modconf file. Most everything else here is observations of the box and Thiz Linux distro as-supplied. For an example of re-installation, see my Gigapro page. I thought my rpm dump is neat but see Distrowatch for some charts for some 75 Linux distributions.

Graphics

X window system works in 1024x768 resolution with 16-bit depth. Here is the XF86Config file.

Advanced Power Management

Drives

Sound

Ethernet

Modem

External ports

Conclusions