2013-11-14

Update before the end of 2013

I didn't write any blog updates this year except CPU collection updates but actually it was a calm year. If you look at my plans for this year only a small part of them were implemented into reality. Nevertheless I think it is a right time to write one new blog post.

I didn't updated my NAS server. Jetway JNF76 based computer still serves this purpose. However one of the Hitachi 3TB hard disk drives died and it was replaced with Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB model. I bought the system in the of 2009 so it had served for three years already (hard disk drivers had been changed from 1.5TB to 3TB once).


VIA VT-310DP and Microway Streamer PC164 were standing still this year. I installed several new versions of NetBSD on VT-310DP but that's all. Unfortunately I didn't used NetBSD that much. I haven't reached my goal to participate in this OS community more actively this year.

Fedora was updated to 19 version only about a month ago (after I read about "new" way to update distribution using FedUp). Unfortunately Fedora partition broke for unknown reason one or two weeks after upgrade. Any recovery was unsuccessful (probably the saddest thing about this that I lost my Descent 2 campaign progress). I saw that Fedora 20 beta was realeased two days ago, so I will install it probably.

I haven't tried any other alternative OSes in 2013.

I slowly update my CPU collection photo gallery but I won't write about all of them. Though I still have to make photos of some interesting chips and I will write about them here once I would be ready.

I attended at FOSDEM'13. It was held at the beginning of 2013. Unfortunately, I wasn't very satisfied. Firstly, most rooms were just quite small classes. If the topic was "popular" one you needed to be where much earlier before the beginning. Otherwise the classes quickly were becoming overloaded and you couldn't to enter them anymore (my tight plan to visit selected presentations was totally ruined). Secondly most presentations were quite boring or too simple. If you was interested in the topic before the conference you wouldn't find anything new. Some presentations were more interesting but they still lacked deeper technical discussions I was looking for. Finally, Brussels weather was terrible at that time and food selection was limited to hotdogs and hamburgers. The town is very pricey by itself. So I won't attend at FOSDEM'14 but I'll look at other conferences in the future.


The biggest change in my hardware and user experience was the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. My dream to buy this QNX based BB10 platform was realized sooner than I thought. It was my first smartphone so I couldn't compare it to Android or IOS or Windows Phone devices. However I can write about my experience with it as a new user. I bought it in July about 6 month after its release and I updated to 10.1 release just after purchase. Q10 model have been already available too. Major applications I used was facebook, endomondo, email for g. gmail and cb10. I also used skype, waze and several games to lesser extent. Some of them received numerous updates (facebook, gmail), the others don't received any (endomondo). OS usage is very easy. You need to learn some slides on the screen and you are ready to go. Everything works smoothly, multitasking is great. Blackberry hub feature (all your messages like sms, facebook, bbm, whatsup are gathered in one place) is very good too. Facebook received numerous updates but features just caught up this other major OSes. Application for gmail wasn't free and it is web based by I satisfied with it. It gets updated constantly too. Skype is android port but works very well. It received one but big update with totally renewed interface. I made one long call from Germany using hostel wifi. No issues at all. Endomondo is android port too. It worked great until 10.2 OS release. Voice countdown broke for unknown reason but still everything else is ok (gps accuracy, voiced checkpoints and so on). 10.2 release received interesting features to OS too but I won't describe them. You will find them in other sources. The major problem with this phone that it reboots quite constantly from small falls or higher pressure. I would say that this phone is great but this issue is really annoying and the value of the phone becomes a little bit smaller. Overall I am happy with it and my next phone can be BB10 too if they will be alive until then :).

VIA CPUs still dominates in my house. Second desktop computer, NAS server and VT-310DP test board are based on Nano X2, Nano and Eden-N (Nehemiah) CPUs accordingly. Though this situation won't change for the next year (I will leave for one year) but I can't go against the line for very long too. S3 graphics is more or less dead. They have never released chrome 6xx line except the integrated one in VX11 chipset. Drivers are outdated and I am not sure if Windows 8 is supported by 5xx line (no official download). Centaur technology (CPU design division at VIA) doesn't have any roadmap. The last update was VIA QuadCore which consisted of two updated Nano X2 cores on one chip (like early Intel dual core CPUs). So they didn't make any major architecture updates from 2008. If I am not wrong VIA Embedded switched their business focus to enterprise and embedded worlds with complete solutions and less to consumer users. They also increased their focus on ARM based systems. Intel and AMD made lots of steps to increase power efficiency and performance. They also created numerous CPUs for the small form factor and mobile markets where VIA targeted with their CPUs earlier. So Nano CPUs doesn't have any advantages anymore (even padlock encryption features can be replaced by AES instructions in lots of cases). Probably they lost competition in x86 space and it is natural to see that the company strategy changes. S3 graphics is sold to HTC and has no visible activity, Centaur is quiet too, VIA Embedded is announcing more and more ARM products, retail sales are shrinking. My second desktop computer is based EPIA-M900. Performance is too slow even for simple everyday tasks like browsing, office or image processing. SSD helps a little bit but not too much. I probably will replace it with some AMD APU based system sometime next year. I don't know about NAS server because I still want to change it to some real NAS system to simplify administration and lower power usage (it may be based on various platforms, x86 including) but it might not happen next year. Major computer still use Sandy Bridge-E Xeon CPU. Ivy Bridge-E just appeared but I'll wait for more diversity and cheaper prices. VT-310DP is ok as testing board but I would like to change it to 64 bit CPU based system too. So there is a possibility that this motherboard will go to rest with my other old hardware even next year (or maybe it will serve as secondary test system :)).

That's all for this year update. I will probably spend my next year abroad so I don't think that this blog will be updated soon. However I will continue to write it after I will return.