About small OS
Now almost all ASUS laptops have a large “ 8 sec boot up instant online ” sticker, which many, as it turned out, do not attach any importance to. And in vain - this is an extremely useful and convenient function!
If you try to find a deep meaning in the phrase, then many will catch themselves thinking “ Hmm, upload to online state in 8 seconds? Yes, no, this does not happen - again deceived! "And they will be wrong. There is no deception - the fact is that it is not the main operating system that is loaded (for example, Windows, which no one promised), but some Express Gate , which is written in small letters just below. What kind of Express Gate is this? The guesses are correct - this is a small operating system integrated into a laptop.
I have never been a master of Linux, so I can make mistakes in the description (which, in principle, does not prevent me from using the device). So Slashtop is:
Accordingly, ExpressGate is a modified version of the above-mentioned Slashtop, in other words, ASUS's own work. Slashtop is used by some other companies, but ... well, you understand.
')
You can meet this operating system on almost all new laptops of the company, as well as on new motherboards. The only difference is that on motherboards it is installed on a wired SSD memory circuit, and on laptops - on a hard disk. In principle, on some rare netbooks (such as T91MT, 1101HA and 1201HA, etc.) this function also occurs, but, as I understand it, nothing prevents you from installing it on any other EeePC, where there is no useful feature initially.
Usually 40% of accidents begin with these words, but this time everything is much more optimistic. The main pleasant moment is that this OS really loads very quickly, in real 8 seconds (I heard that on some laptops it turns on in 5-6 seconds, but not a reprint of a set of stickers due to them).
On ASUS laptops, a separate hardware button is always allocated for downloading to EG, which in Windows performs the function of switching the performance mode (in netbooks this is the Super Hybrid Engine).
Unfortunately (fortunately?) There are no consoles - completely graphical user interface. After 5-8 seconds after starting the system, several icons appear in front of the user - in fact, you can already start using it.
There is support for working with the network (almost all salt disappears without it) - LAN, xDSL and WiFi (WEP, WPA and WPA2). There were no problems with setting up a wireless network connection, so I went in order.
Web . The browser role in Express Gate is played by the most common Firefox. Flash is supported, there were no problems with authorization on the sites. Unless the settings are much smaller, but there is enough built-in features for working in the network.
Files . Primitive file manager that allows you to work with data on the system disk, as well as with removable media such as flash drives. Agree that for, for example, discarding photos from an SD card from a camera, using express gate is much easier and faster than waiting for the full system to load.
Photo . There is a primitive image viewer - it does not support RAWs, but it will show JPEG without any problems. Simple transition effects, several photo display modes are just basic features.
Player . This is nothing more than a video player and music player. The first player is based on MPlayer and allows you to watch certain types of files. Honestly, I did not try the video, but something suggests that not all file types, containers, and other codecs are supported.
With music, everything is simpler - work with removable media is also supported, all musical compositions are located in the center of the screen. In addition to the basic functions of playback, there is something else non-core)
Games . A selection of small casual online-toys. I have not tried, for all this is self-indulgence.
Skype But this is much more interesting and useful! Full Skype. So comprehensive that ... in general, it works like a clock - it supports a webcam, a list of contacts (and all operations with them), calls, chats, collective conferences and all.
Like other applications (and the whole shell as a whole), Skype is Russified, and you can print in Cyrillic after selecting it in the drop-down menu in the lower right corner of the screen.
Im . An equally useful tool is a chat based on the Pidgin IM Client. Multiple protocols are supported - AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk , ICQ , MSN, QQ and Yahoo. I checked Google and ICQ - it works fine, although the functionality of popular clients clearly does not hold out.
If you wish, you can always boot up from the EG to a full OS in 1 click or, on the contrary, switch off.
Here, perhaps, the whole basic functionality of the integrated "baby." It turns out that this is not a full-fledged working environment, but still it can sometimes come in handy. For example, when the battery is completely dead, but something urgently needs to be thrown from a USB flash drive or to a USB flash drive; when the computer is needed only in order to throw off an important message to the interlocutor or to look at the map in the browser; when ... yes a lot, in fact, you can find applications!
EeePC-Wiki as a plus notes that “the system is read-only, which means that malicious programs cannot damage it ” and at the same time as a minus, that “the system is read-only, therefore, there is no possibility to expand its capabilities and modify ". I repeat, I have never been a Linux user, and I cannot comment on this point somehow, but a superficial search produced the following:
I have no reason to disbelieve the authors of these lines, so I think it is even possible to increase the functionality of the integrated system if desired.
And the most interesting thing - on January 7, 2010 at CES in Las Vegas, the second version ( Splashtop 2.0 ) of this remarkable development was announced, in which there was a place not only for blackjack (you can read about the innovations on the official website and in the blog ). So far I have not met a single device with the new version of the OS, but I believe that all the changes are only for the better.
As you can see, marketing is sometimes helpful. One catchy inscription was a very useful feature. From the closest competitors - sleep mode, but there are some nuances. For example, for hibernation, you need the same Windows) And this is at least an overpayment upon purchase. With Express Gate, you can perform a number of tasks without having a full-fledged operating system on disk. I mean, the working environment for basic tasks is always at hand.
Most of the technology functions are relevant only in the case of an available network connection, so it makes sense to take some * nix-raeady modem from Skylink or a wifi-egg from Yota on the road. And there you can do anything - online-services are now for every taste.
In general, a useful thing, anyway.
ps The review does not claim to be new - this technology exists far from the first day. Picture before kata taken from Hacker magazine
Successes!
If you try to find a deep meaning in the phrase, then many will catch themselves thinking “ Hmm, upload to online state in 8 seconds? Yes, no, this does not happen - again deceived! "And they will be wrong. There is no deception - the fact is that it is not the main operating system that is loaded (for example, Windows, which no one promised), but some Express Gate , which is written in small letters just below. What kind of Express Gate is this? The guesses are correct - this is a small operating system integrated into a laptop.
who is who
I have never been a master of Linux, so I can make mistakes in the description (which, in principle, does not prevent me from using the device). So Slashtop is:
“... a commercial distribution of Linux, oriented to be used as an embedded solution on motherboards and other devices. Developed by DeviceVM. Technologies used: Bootsplash , SquashFS , Blackbox , SCIM , Linux kernel version 2.6. "
Accordingly, ExpressGate is a modified version of the above-mentioned Slashtop, in other words, ASUS's own work. Slashtop is used by some other companies, but ... well, you understand.
')
You can meet this operating system on almost all new laptops of the company, as well as on new motherboards. The only difference is that on motherboards it is installed on a wired SSD memory circuit, and on laptops - on a hard disk. In principle, on some rare netbooks (such as T91MT, 1101HA and 1201HA, etc.) this function also occurs, but, as I understand it, nothing prevents you from installing it on any other EeePC, where there is no useful feature initially.
See how I can
Usually 40% of accidents begin with these words, but this time everything is much more optimistic. The main pleasant moment is that this OS really loads very quickly, in real 8 seconds (I heard that on some laptops it turns on in 5-6 seconds, but not a reprint of a set of stickers due to them).
On ASUS laptops, a separate hardware button is always allocated for downloading to EG, which in Windows performs the function of switching the performance mode (in netbooks this is the Super Hybrid Engine).
Unfortunately (fortunately?) There are no consoles - completely graphical user interface. After 5-8 seconds after starting the system, several icons appear in front of the user - in fact, you can already start using it.
There is support for working with the network (almost all salt disappears without it) - LAN, xDSL and WiFi (WEP, WPA and WPA2). There were no problems with setting up a wireless network connection, so I went in order.
Web . The browser role in Express Gate is played by the most common Firefox. Flash is supported, there were no problems with authorization on the sites. Unless the settings are much smaller, but there is enough built-in features for working in the network.
Files . Primitive file manager that allows you to work with data on the system disk, as well as with removable media such as flash drives. Agree that for, for example, discarding photos from an SD card from a camera, using express gate is much easier and faster than waiting for the full system to load.
Photo . There is a primitive image viewer - it does not support RAWs, but it will show JPEG without any problems. Simple transition effects, several photo display modes are just basic features.
Player . This is nothing more than a video player and music player. The first player is based on MPlayer and allows you to watch certain types of files. Honestly, I did not try the video, but something suggests that not all file types, containers, and other codecs are supported.
With music, everything is simpler - work with removable media is also supported, all musical compositions are located in the center of the screen. In addition to the basic functions of playback, there is something else non-core)
Games . A selection of small casual online-toys. I have not tried, for all this is self-indulgence.
Skype But this is much more interesting and useful! Full Skype. So comprehensive that ... in general, it works like a clock - it supports a webcam, a list of contacts (and all operations with them), calls, chats, collective conferences and all.
Like other applications (and the whole shell as a whole), Skype is Russified, and you can print in Cyrillic after selecting it in the drop-down menu in the lower right corner of the screen.
Im . An equally useful tool is a chat based on the Pidgin IM Client. Multiple protocols are supported - AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk , ICQ , MSN, QQ and Yahoo. I checked Google and ICQ - it works fine, although the functionality of popular clients clearly does not hold out.
If you wish, you can always boot up from the EG to a full OS in 1 click or, on the contrary, switch off.
Here, perhaps, the whole basic functionality of the integrated "baby." It turns out that this is not a full-fledged working environment, but still it can sometimes come in handy. For example, when the battery is completely dead, but something urgently needs to be thrown from a USB flash drive or to a USB flash drive; when the computer is needed only in order to throw off an important message to the interlocutor or to look at the map in the browser; when ... yes a lot, in fact, you can find applications!
EeePC-Wiki as a plus notes that “the system is read-only, which means that malicious programs cannot damage it ” and at the same time as a minus, that “the system is read-only, therefore, there is no possibility to expand its capabilities and modify ". I repeat, I have never been a Linux user, and I cannot comment on this point somehow, but a superficial search produced the following:
“During the first study, it became clear that the OS stores all the information in * .sqx /*.idx / * .bin files in the section that we specified during installation. SQX files are nothing more than a container for the squashfs version 3.0 compressed file system, and you can work with them using the squashfs-tools utility. After we added a few Debian binaries to the archive, we encountered a quite expected problem: the OS checks the integrity of its “images” without recognizing the left sqxs. Bypassing this check is easy: the md5 amounts of sqx files are stored in the version file, and protection is easily disabled by cutting the file to the first 32 bytes. After this uncomplicated operation, anything can be added to the Express Gate system. ”
I have no reason to disbelieve the authors of these lines, so I think it is even possible to increase the functionality of the integrated system if desired.
And the most interesting thing - on January 7, 2010 at CES in Las Vegas, the second version ( Splashtop 2.0 ) of this remarkable development was announced, in which there was a place not only for blackjack (you can read about the innovations on the official website and in the blog ). So far I have not met a single device with the new version of the OS, but I believe that all the changes are only for the better.
The end
As you can see, marketing is sometimes helpful. One catchy inscription was a very useful feature. From the closest competitors - sleep mode, but there are some nuances. For example, for hibernation, you need the same Windows) And this is at least an overpayment upon purchase. With Express Gate, you can perform a number of tasks without having a full-fledged operating system on disk. I mean, the working environment for basic tasks is always at hand.
Most of the technology functions are relevant only in the case of an available network connection, so it makes sense to take some * nix-raeady modem from Skylink or a wifi-egg from Yota on the road. And there you can do anything - online-services are now for every taste.
In general, a useful thing, anyway.
ps The review does not claim to be new - this technology exists far from the first day. Picture before kata taken from Hacker magazine
Successes!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/88512/
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