CompuLab Fit-PC2 NetTop

Our CompuLab Fit-PC2 review sample was loaded up with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS by default. For a desktop system we would rather see this loaded up with Ubuntu 9.10 rather than the dated Hardy Heron release, but loading up a new version of Ubuntu can be done easily over USB or just upgrading without a fresh install. CompuLab really does not customize their Ubuntu installation much but there is the default wallpaper and it is pretty much a stock Ubuntu installation. For those interested in upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10, there is a guide from CompuLab that basically says to install a generic Ubuntu 9.10 desktop and then they have provided a Debian package repository from which you can fetch their custom kernel image and install the Intel IEGD Gallium3D driver for the Poulsbo as well as its DDX driver and then to also install the version of MPlayer that supports VA-API acceleration atop the Intel GMA 500 IGP.

The Fit-PC2 worked just fine with Ubuntu 8.04 and all hardware had worked, but we upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 anyways since we prefer to run with the more recent packages. Running Ubuntu 9.10 on the Fit-PC2 with the Atom Z530 and US15W SCH went well and we ran into no major problems, but alas, the binary-only Poulsbo Linux driver that is Gallium3D based but based upon the Gallium3D 0.1 interface hampered us.

The benchmarks we ran on the Fit-PC2 included FFmpeg, x264, 7-Zip, IOzone, PostMark, SQLite, OpenSSL, John The Ripper, GtkPerf, and QGears2. These tests were run through the Phoronix Test Suite. We compared the performance of the Fit-PC2 against the ASRock ION 330HT-BD that boasts a dual-core Intel Atom 330 at 1.6GHz, NVIDIA ION graphics, 2GB of system memory, and a 320GB Seagate ST9320325AS. Both systems were running Ubuntu 9.10 (x86) with the Linux 2.6.31 kernel, X Server 1.6.4, GCC 4.4.1, and the EXT4 file-system. The CompuLab system though was running with the Gallium3D + iegd 10.2.1450 graphics driver and the ASRock nettop used the NVIDIA 185.18.36 proprietary graphics driver.