Asus' $179 Celeron-based Chromebox Shipping March 14

[JMcEntegart]

Cheap and cheerful little Chromebox from Asus.

Asus' $179 Celeron-based Chromebox Shipping March 14 : Read more

 

[XGrabMyY]

We NEED to know if this will have a locked bootloader and if it will have a BIOS with legacy options. I want one of these to install Linux over.

 

[XGrabMyY]

We NEED to know if this will have a locked bootloader and if it will have a BIOS with legacy options. I want one of these to install Linux over.

 

[JD88]

All Chrome devices so far have been completely unlocked. I've been able to run Linux on every one I've tried.

 

[rad666]

This would make a nice cheap, little Steam box for in home streaming.

 

[ferooxidan]

rad666, nice idea! I could install Steam OS and then login to Dota2 just to stream online tournament on my bigger screen HDTV.

 

[malman]

I would be really tempted depending on the price of a 4GB i3 variant. The base model is still quite appealing, but if it was an affordable upgrade, I'd probably consider it.

 

[salgado18]

The base model seems good for streaming, Netflix, and very light gaming (old consoles emulation, maybe). I like it.

 

[MrBo]

Doesn't look like there's space for expanding with a GFX card. Isn't this box sort of the worst kind of steambox? No serious GPU is terrible for everything gaming related, and SteamOS/Steam is based around gaming. It's like they took the longest step away from the intent of Steam machines possible and made a product.

 

[novaguy]

Doesn't look like there's space for expanding with a GFX card. Isn't this box sort of the worst kind of steambox? No serious GPU is terrible for everything gaming related, and SteamOS/Steam is based around gaming. It's like they took the longest step away from the intent of Steam machines possible and made a product.

No, but it might work as a receiver from steam (beta) streaming device to an hdtv. All you need is a good connection and the video decode should work.

 

[JD88]

Doesn't look like there's space for expanding with a GFX card. Isn't this box sort of the worst kind of steambox? No serious GPU is terrible for everything gaming related, and SteamOS/Steam is based around gaming. It's like they took the longest step away from the intent of Steam machines possible and made a product.

No it's not gaming oriented, but nor was it intended to be. This is a Chromebox, not a Steambox. Very different things. The Chromebox is designed to run Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system based on the Chrome web browser running mostly web based applications that require very little processing or graphical power. Those suggesting using it as a Steam Machine are planning on replacing Chrome OS with Steam OS or some other Linux distribution.

 

[ntgam1ng]

We NEED to know if this will have a locked bootloader and if it will have a BIOS with legacy options. I want one of these to install Linux over.

Chances are it won't come with a standard "bios", the chromebox's use a limited uboot configuration however you can use something like chrubuntu to install ubuntu onto the system, I own an i5 chromebox and I run 12.04 LTS and use it as a server & htpc and it handles light gaming pretty well with the crappy hd3000 graphics. If you want you are welcome to use my modified script located here https://github.com/austinksmith/fixmyserverwhich will make your life easier if you decide to take the plunge