ASUS Motherboard Ships With Embedded Linux, Web Browser

Down the road it would be very nice if SplashTop would support mounting connected storage devices whether it be USB or SATA, which would make this environment especially handy for backup purposes as well as system recovery. It would also have been nice if ASUS could have gone with the LinuxBIOS for the P5E3 Deluxe as opposed to the American Megatrends (AMI) BIOS. Another nice addition would be to include a lightweight media player for CD playback support.

It would also be really rewarding if ASUS were to port their various motherboard utilities to Linux (for BIOS flashing, system monitoring, etc) and deploy them inside Express Gate. This would allow for an OS-neutral environment that not only would be handy for Solaris, *BSD, and Linux desktop users but those Windows users who may have just assembled their PC and need to flash their BIOS and would rather do that prior to the Microsoft Windows setup and those additional hurdles. Those overclocking their PCs would also benefit.

The P5E3 Deluxe motherboard is currently selling for about $360 USD and then you also need DDR3 memory which also goes for a premium. Once you have this kind of system assembled, it will have cost a lot of money so we do question how useful this may be to consumers as to why they would want to be sitting in a lightweight Linux desktop environment that right now only offers web browsing and Skype support.

As right now not much information is known about DeviceVM or SplashTop, we look forward to hopefully learning more on October 10. SplashTop looks to be extremely promising and yet another road where Linux is able to excel. We will pass along additional information as we learn them in the coming days and weeks (the GPL source-code will also be great!) and as new updates become available that will hopefully introduce new functionality. Stay tuned for our review of the ASUS P5E3 Deluxe as we test this Intel X38 motherboard under Linux and Solaris. The P5E3 Deluxe is hopefully just the start of a brand new breed of motherboards using the SplashTop technology.

Discuss ASUS Express Gate / DeviceVM SplashTop in the Phoronix Forums.