SplashTop "Instant-On Linux" Gets Hacked

[phoronix]

Phoronix: SplashTop "Instant-On Linux" Gets Hacked

Last October we were the first to deliver a full-review of DeviceVM's SplashTop which was an instant-on embedded Linux distribution at the time found on a lone ASUS motherboard. Since then there has been a commitment to SplashTop on all ASUS motherboards and even on ASUS notebooks. While ASUS has been the primary partner with DeviceVM up to this point, other manufacturers are exploring this market. One of our few gripes about SplashTop is that it's limited in the current applications available and doesn't allow for much tweaking with no terminal access. However, members of the Phoronix Forums have hacked SplashTop. They have been able to run SplashTop from a USB stick on non-ASUS motherboards, boot SplashTop within a virtual machine, run custom applications, and launch a terminal within this proprietary Linux environment.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12664

[ephracis]

The article said that they have yet to release all the source code of SplashTop, if I understand correctly. How come they haven't released it yet on a CD or something, which you get when you buy the motherboard? Doesn't GPL state that you have to distribute the source code with the compiled code?

Maybe I'm missing something here.

[bridgman]

I think GPL states that you have to supply the source code IF REQUESTED, and that you have to include information on how/where to request source along with the compiled code.

[Kano]

You can be sure no sourcecode was needed to analyse it. Even nothing was disassabled to get it working. You just need "the look" when you find some files to know which data is stored in it.

[DanL]

proprietary Linux environment

Heh. It's good to hear that Asus' Linux got "hacked", after the C-Media 8788 audio chipset monopoly story. I'm glad I haven't bought any of their products.

[jebus197]

So does the official Asus SplashTop environment use any proprietary code at all?

I just think that combining this with something like XBMC for Linux would be really insanely useful.

[Kano]

Do you really want to run Xvesa for videos? Thats not so good as running a suited Xserver and I still did not discover how to fix the german keyboard layout...

[jebus197]

I don't know. Probably not. But I do know that the guys over at XBMC are pretty interested in finding an 'instant on' solution in their efforts to port XBMC to Linux.

[Gamester17]

Yeah I for one would love to see XBMC media center on Slashtop/ExpressGate someday.
http://xbmc.org/about
http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=30679
http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=33327
http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=32853
http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=HOW-TO_c...om_source_code

Slashtop/ExpressGate would of course have to be hacked futher by someone else first, also Xserver and 3D OpenGL graphic drivers would have to be installed.

[Kano]

Basically you could replace the Xserver, but that would require much more space and of course would bootup longer. Then you can optimize your normal hd install with initng for example, get rid of any unused services and you are down to 10-15 seconds too on a fast hd. Counted only till X start, because the actual loading of Splashtop apps is not counted within 5 seconds.