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Splashtop Linux desktop to appear on every Asus motherboard!

geek.com — DeviceVM, the makers of Splashtop, just made a big announcement though. Their technology will no longer be restricted to the top-shelf motherboards and will see a much wider release. At first it will be featured on Asus ’ P5Q (high-efficiency design, Intel P45 chipset) family of motherboards, starting with the P5Q Deluxe, P5Q-WS, P5Q3 Deluxe....

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  • kcirtap6075, on 05/14/2008, -37/+13BACON
  • moo113, on 05/14/2008, -2/+22Hey if it comes to the P5K-Deluxe, I'm down. Remember reading about it awhile back, seems very cool.
    • Brandoskey, on 05/15/2008, -0/+2P5Q deluxe is the successor to that board pretty much
  • sputza, on 05/14/2008, -27/+3How did this make front page already?
    • styx31989, on 05/14/2008, -6/+5I don't think I've seen any comment asking that get dugg up. When will people learn?
      • ozid, on 05/14/2008, -4/+4because people don't always say things just to make people click a green button on a website.
    • linuxpenguin, on 05/14/2008, -3/+9People dugg it.
  • mark076h, on 05/14/2008, -12/+6i submitted a video explaining how this will work here http://digg.com/hardware/DeviceVM_s_Splashtop_inst ...
    • ileftfark, on 05/14/2008, -2/+6I watched a video about M-RAM and how it would soon change our world here: 1994
    • mark076h, on 05/14/2008, -3/+2this video is about splashtop not M-RAM
  • purelithium, on 05/14/2008, -4/+29Why doesn't my eee PC have this? I'm intrigued...
    • nitroburn, on 05/14/2008, -8/+12Because the boot times would likely be close to equal. That and it would just be another thing to increase the price. Something they seem to be avoiding at all costs.

      XP on my EEE boots 3x+ as fast as a desktop already.
      • nitroburn, on 05/15/2008, -2/+10Thanks to those who dugg me down, but I own both an 8G EEE PC and a motherboard with the SplashTop interface and like I said, the EEE already boots 3x as fast as a regular laptop/desktop and it is very true Asus has avoided any huge price increases on the EEE PC (Why do you think the XP and Linux versions of the new model are the same price with different hardware configurations... the low price point is VERY important to Asus.)
        • zongamin, on 05/15/2008, -7/+1Cry baby - why do you give a *****?
      • Theli, on 05/15/2008, -0/+4Here's a video of the EEE-PC running Splashtop. It apparently boots very quickly.
        http://internetbestsecrets.blogspot.com/2008/01/sp ...
  • leerayIG88, on 05/14/2008, -2/+13What kind of a linux desktop? Can you change it?
    • bratterscain, on 05/14/2008, -1/+21I assume so. Once it gets more popular, I'm sure there will be many user mods out there. I think it has potential. Instead of booting a cd or rescue disk when my OS takes a squat, I'll always have backup access to the net to google the problem do a quick internet search with my computer off. From what I've read, it's basically an OS on a small chip similar to a BIOS.
      • iiiears, on 05/15/2008, -1/+1What a great place to hide 10kb netcat!
        Unite the devious! Please add an OS to my NIC too. /sarcasm
    • DeFex, on 05/15/2008, -4/+1um, you know "splashtop" as mentioned several times in the article.
  • dualaudi, on 05/14/2008, -9/+2hahah geek.com welcome to digg... man you guys need to go back to the days where you didn't have to sign up to comment...
    • matt.rubin, on 05/14/2008, -2/+3you have to sign up for digg to comment.......
      • kryptobs2000, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2I don't think he was saying that's a bad thing. Just back in the day (I'm assuming this sites pretty old) the internet was not as fancy smancy as you youngsters might think.
  • jefuchs, on 05/14/2008, -2/+12I almost bought one of those this year. I was willing to pay the money, but the MB only used DDR3 memory, which is prohibitively expensive. Hope that changes.
    • Daggity, on 05/14/2008, -6/+1Hope you mean the prohibitively expensive part.
  • bumcheekcity, on 05/14/2008, -1/+7Wow. This looks like a really good idea. If only you could boot into the Linux Distro and then interact with the hard drive, it'd be brilliant. But this is great. I'm going to buy an Asus board this summer.
    • wmt9, on 05/18/2008, -0/+1if the hard drive is attached to the motherboard why could you not interact with it?
  • dogatemypron, on 05/14/2008, -12/+4not first
  • kowalzki, on 05/14/2008, -16/+13I smell a failure. What if I want to save a file? What if I want to access my address book? What if? Sure all the data could be stored on a remote server but then I wouldn't need a regular OS or I would have to sync the data from my regular OS with the remote server.

    Or maybe I'm missing something.
    • dezertrat, on 05/14/2008, -0/+17Turn the computer on ??
    • discoloda, on 05/14/2008, -1/+6You, my friend, just described a thin client. and sounds usefull. All this needs is a compiler and 3d acceleration and i could do game development. checkout my code, do some tweaks, compile and test, commit the changes!
      • charlietuna, on 05/14/2008, -0/+3Thin client doesn't resonate with many people nearly as much as say "web 2.0", though it should.
    • mark076h, on 05/14/2008, -0/+5it interfaces with some flash memory so you can save things
    • beachteen, on 05/14/2008, -1/+4these motherboards still have all teh norml computer functionality if u have a hard drive
    • 4321234, on 05/14/2008, -0/+3Hopefully, you could mount your hard drive and read or write files. It would be nice to have multiple boot options like a dual boot setup for windows or linux, etc. Even without that, it's still pretty cool.
    • synystar, on 05/14/2008, -0/+7But the idea here is that if you just need quick access to browse the web, run internet apps, and check your e-mail you don't have to wait for the OS to load. It saves power and gives you instant access. If you need access to your hard drive you just click the button to load your main OS. It's not meant to replace it. Yet.
    • ohplease, on 05/14/2008, -0/+7
      Imagine your computer doesn't boot and you need to access some critical file on your CD rom, or look up an error message, or download a driver. Doesn't sound so ***** now does it son
    • GalacticXenu, on 05/15/2008, -0/+5Hey Einstein, ever hear about a flash drive?
    • Aitese, on 05/15/2008, -0/+2A few months back my wireless card stopped working...with no internet connection I had no way of downloading the Windows drivers I needed to reinstall...I was aved by a live linux CD and USB drive. The wireless card worked in linux and I was able to quickly access support and get the proper drivers. Now if I didn't have a live CD this would be very useful and I wouldn't have to carry my desktop all the way to the part of the house with a wired connection.
  • PleaseJustDie, on 05/14/2008, -4/+43Personally I'd be much more pleased if I could run this While my OS of choice was booting. Then once my OS is loaded and ready maybe have some indicator letting me know so I can shut down the Splashtop and it'll go straight to the login screen for windows or linux
    • Burn, on 05/14/2008, -0/+13Now THAT would be a 'killer feature'!
    • daftman, on 05/14/2008, -2/+10Pointless. You don't spend that much time waiting for your OS loading anyway. 1 minute max?
      I think this is great for thin client in public places such as ATM, etc. There will be no virus as everything will run through ram and nothing is persistent once the computer is turned off.
      Or you can use it as a feature to fix your broken OS while your CD/DVD drive is also broken. Yes that's rare but considering EEE PC and Mac Air don't ship with a CD/DVD drive it would be important.
      • Wolfspirittt, on 05/14/2008, -0/+3exactly.. took the words right out of my mouth. I read his comment and thought.. "Does your OS really take THAT long to boot!?" Even if you already had Linux and had tons of services to load I think that it's maybe a couple of minutes tops and that's pushing it.
      • ubuwalker31, on 05/15/2008, -0/+7From start to finish, my Asus Eee PC takes 20 seconds. My Ubuntu desktop takes 30-40 seconds and then another 20 seconds to get past the login. My home XP desktop takes around 2 and a half minutes. My XP workstation takes around 7 minutes with all of the cruft on there from the company that needs to load. An instantaneous boot into a browser would be a lifesaver when I am rushing out of the house and realize that I forgot to find out the address of the doctor's office/restaurant/other place I am rushing to, to plug into the gps.
        • burrgrinder, on 05/15/2008, -3/+5Why not use hibernate instead of shutting down? It bounces back into action almost immediately while consuming minimal power.
        • bowe, on 05/15/2008, -2/+2Or instead of hibernate, just use sleep mode. With sleep it's instant on.
        • Theli, on 05/15/2008, -0/+5"...and then another 20 seconds to get past the login."
          You must use a very long password. :-)
      • polywaffle, on 05/15/2008, -0/+2one of the other posters suggested that this would be good if you hosed your main OS, you could use the splashtop to run whatever tools you want to recover it, rather than juggle around boot cds. But yeah its original purpose seems rather pointless.
    • ohplease, on 05/14/2008, -0/+7You want two OS's in ring 0?

      • iiiears, on 05/15/2008, -0/+1"Blue pill or Red pill." - Cancel or allow?
  • tschau, on 05/14/2008, -1/+4I really hate those full-page ads though.
    • Twee, on 05/15/2008, -2/+5What ads? I use AdBlock Plus with Firefox so web ads are a thing of the past.
  • wettestwillie, on 05/14/2008, -3/+8This is pretty interesting. I'm curious to see the marketing behind it. If they expect it to be someone's main OS then the chip would have to be a more then few gb's, making it expensive. If they expect it to be someone's backup OS then it would have to be small enough to not cost much at all, and if people are going to install their own OS anyways, why pay the extra money to have this feature.
    • xerox, on 05/14/2008, -1/+6or you could RTFA and see that they want to have this for.

      Despite the obvious convenience factors, Asus is most interested in Splashtop for its energy efficiency. Using Splashtop the computer is still powered on (pretty much like normal, less the disk activity) but the key here is that you don’t have to leave your computer on all the time. If you just want to check your email or go to a web site, you can simply leave the system off and boot into Splashtop, which takes just a few seconds.
    • mark076h, on 05/14/2008, -0/+3also these will probably be great for distributed computing farms, like folding@home etc
    • Theli, on 05/15/2008, -0/+6I think this makes more sense on low-cost systems designed for grandma who wants her computer to work like her TV, than on high-end gaming PC's.
  • whiteguysamurai, on 05/14/2008, -12/+2I like the idea, even though it will never catch on.
    • nitroburn, on 05/14/2008, -0/+5Never catch on? I have this feature in 2 laptops and a desktop at the moment. Apparently it has caught on to someone. (no matter how useless it is)
      • flygirl62, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2Which laptops and desktop?
        • nitroburn, on 05/15/2008, -0/+1Two Dell laptops with "MediaDirect' (essentially the exact same idea (and just as useless)) and a Asus P5E3 Deluxe motherboard with the actual splashtop.

          I don't often use the feature on any of them. Just a few times and I'd rather boot into windows.
  • netneutrality, on 05/14/2008, -3/+27If this concept becomes popular, Microsoft will suddenly announce they're collaborating with motherboard manufacturers to offer something exactly like this, and they will make them all sign vendor lock-in agreements, and act like they came up with the idea in the first place.
    • Olfster, on 05/14/2008, -1/+14Tell us something we don't know. You have described the MS business model to a T. Good job.
    • badassninja, on 05/15/2008, -3/+8TO bad windows could never boot in 2 secs ever. Open source is to powerful, it is too unlimited for Microsoft to compete with in the end.
      • CarzorStelatis, on 05/15/2008, -2/+1'To bad WIndows'
        What are you saying to bad Windows? Or did you mean 'Too bad Windows'?
    • mossblaser, on 05/15/2008, -0/+8That's when the real problem occurs: you have to pay Microsoft for the privileged of having a motherboard. Now if that wouldn't be a monopoly then tell me what would?
      • paulsmith288, on 05/15/2008, -0/+4EU would have a field day. US Dept of Justice wouldn't batter an eyelid.
  • orgazmo, on 05/14/2008, -12/+7If you ABSOLUTELY cannot wait the 60-90 seconds it takes for your computer to power up then simply leave it on all the time and cough up the extra electric bill. The premium of motherboards with that feature will surely cover that fee for a couple of months and you won't have to deal with a toned-down OS
    • netneutrality, on 05/14/2008, -1/+6Also, if you enable hibernation, then hibernating and unhibernating is a WHOLE LOT QUICKER than a startup or shutdown.
    • mikedoth, on 05/14/2008, -2/+1Eh, just use standby.
    • shawnanigans, on 05/15/2008, -0/+3Because it's not always about your bottom line. Sometimes saving energy means good for someone else other than you.
  • nitroburn, on 05/14/2008, -7/+2My P5E3 Deluxe motherboard has this and It is pretty much useless. If anything, just makes your boot time slower unless you shut it off.
    Maybe one day I will find a use for it, but at this point I haven't seen any. Windows boots quick enough.
  • matt.rubin, on 05/14/2008, -0/+8this is good when windows isn't booting you can research your problem and you don't have to go to the car to whip out your notebook
  • digitallysick, on 05/14/2008, -0/+6This is nice, especially for a home computer you can just reboot and open up splashtop so if anyone else needs to use it they wont damage your os, they will be sandboxed
  • geekworking, on 05/14/2008, -2/+8ROM Virus !!

    A standardized layer that preempts any OS you load on the box. This is the holy grail for root kit writers. Entice a user to load some sort of *enhancement* into the BIOS and they will own the box forever. The default software cannot access the HDD, but if you load any patch - all bets are off.

    I hope that they put in some sort of hardware controls (ie a jumper) to make it so a user cannot alter the contents of the ROM in a few clicks or have the ROM altered through some 0-day browser exploit.

    • Twee, on 05/15/2008, -0/+8They can't alter the contents of the ROM. The thing loads up into RAM so every time you boot up its a fresh OS. You'd have to save any files created with it to a USB thumb drive or upload them online.
    • tech10171968, on 05/15/2008, -4/+6If it were already possible for a user to write to the contents of a ROM chip, wouldn't it be known as a RAM chip instead?
    • polywaffle, on 05/15/2008, -0/+4even if virus writers did write to the chip that contains splash top, how does that affect the bios? your computer wouldnt be 'owned' till you booted into splashtop. Really, they would have to write a virus into the bios, which makes it no different to any other motherboard when it comes to bios viruses.
  • TheZorch, on 05/15/2008, -1/+6This is going to really catch on quickly. Why wait until you are old and gray for Windows to boot in order to look up an address on Google Maps when you can turn on your PC and instantly be able to look it up online without waiting? It also helps save energy so its good for the environment because you don't have to leave your desktop and/or laptop on all the time. By the end of the year expect to see this offered by HP and Dell.
    • CarzorStelatis, on 05/15/2008, -0/+1Dell are doing it already - according to a previous commenter the MediaDirect on their XPS machines is essentially the same thing as SplashTop.
  • Hangly, on 05/15/2008, -1/+6Will this take the place of a BIOS? It would be neat if it did/could.
    • bratterscain, on 05/15/2008, -1/+4If it allows web access, I would hope not.
    • polywaffle, on 05/15/2008, -0/+1Yeah, if there was a tool in splashtop to configure the bios settings in a nice interface. Theres always the issue of security though.
  • grungegbunny, on 05/15/2008, -1/+1I could really make use of this. Nothing more annoying than waiting for the OS to load in the morning when I just want to read the front page of Digg real quick before work.
  • MajorApus, on 05/15/2008, -2/+0Its like no one has ever heard of s3
  • DteK, on 05/15/2008, -0/+12"Later Splashtop will be featured on all the company’s motherboards, over a million units a month."
    Nice move Asus.
    • tektalk, on 05/17/2008, -0/+1Actually, it would be more like "nice work deviceVM" since they are the guys who decided to partner up and collaborate with Asus, but in the end, it's nice work for both companies.
  • ratsg, on 05/15/2008, -0/+2This would rock with OpenSolaris Nevada on it.
  • RWTechgage, on 05/15/2008, -0/+3Here's an actual look at the latest version, rather than a simple news blurb:

    http://techgage.com/article/asus_shows_faith_in_sp ...
  • rasmasyean, on 05/15/2008, -4/+5I thought Vista did the same thing. It comes out of standby with all your previous work.
    • shanesemler, on 05/15/2008, -0/+6You haven't actually read the article, have you?
    • Theli, on 05/15/2008, -0/+2Standby != OFF.
    • TheWindBlows, on 05/15/2008, -0/+1This would have driven a car 5 miles before Vista got in their car.
    • Buzzpatrol, on 05/15/2008, -0/+1Just asking myself the same thing as OP. WHY would I want this on a desktop? How often can I not wait 1 min?
      • rasmasyean, on 05/15/2008, -0/+0Vista Standby comes on like 5 seconds...
        I'm not sure what the difference between this is. It's very low power.
  • iiiears, on 05/15/2008, -2/+1 Would someone with an in depth grasp of bytecode explain how this could made secure?
    How would you back up/patch the Splashtop OS?
    Would companies like SecureROM see this as a threat and need to integrate their software with it?
    Is private data stored on EEPROM eraseble traceable?

    I am avoiding vers. 1.0


  • grg183, on 05/15/2008, -0/+3so now every Asus pc is a Linux pc ;)
  • neko, on 05/15/2008, -0/+3Cool! I wanted to buy the SplashTop-enabled motherboard at my last upgrade, but it wasn't available anywhere. Now I've just gotta wait until my motherboard breaks...
  • TheWindBlows, on 05/15/2008, -1/+7Linux Has begun its take over.
    • DestroyFascism, on 05/15/2008, -0/+4Prepare to be dis-assimilated....
  • truck87bp, on 05/15/2008, -1/+2Yes, Linux is taking over but this sounds like the way to lock in The Trusted Computing Platform no matter what OS you access the internet with. All is tied to the chip and the IP and the owner. The Neocons win. Other than that, this is truly fabulous. Any system builder can allow the buyer to choose what OS will be installed on the computer and it doesn't have to be Microsoft.
    MoBo manufactures should supply 3 Flavors of Linux Live CD's with the board also just because its free.
  • Buzzpatrol, on 05/15/2008, -2/+2WOW Cause I need a completely new shell just for browsing and skype on my DESKTOP to save (not 3 min, more like 1)!!!

    Almost a product?
  • Nextrix, on 05/15/2008, -0/+2I got this mobo and it was nice to notice that feature on boot. It's great if you need to check the web for some information if you ever come to an issue with your PC, and it also has support for a Skype connection as well. But it is purely only for browsing and finding out information and not capable of any downloads, but don't quote me on that as I have not play with it as much as of yet. I think this is a great feature and every motherboard should have this ability. But this is not like they are trying to replace the existing features of your installed OS, they are just trying to provide you with the ability to connect to the net in emergency situations, that or if you just too lazy to wait for your OS to start just to check your mail or make your daily Diggs.
  • joshuaun, on 05/16/2008, -0/+0i am a new linux user.......i'm a beginner.....
    without any linux knowledge is so hard for me,
    because yesterday i just install the kubuntu=)

    if any tips, please tell me ok???

    tq=)
  • fangor, on 05/18/2008, -0/+0Anyone else concerned with a rom chip (which you have no option to remove or disable) sitting on your motherboard with the ability to access your network device? Sounds a whole lot like "trusted" computing to me. If this becomes popular, what is to stop vendors from including software that will monitor activity and report it (possibly before you even boot to your OS)? I would have to see circuit diagrams and code, making absolutely sure that no hard drive access is possible before I would even consider putting such a thing in one of my computers.
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