The idea of a silent, dual-core, 64 bit solid state workstation seemed brilliant to me at first. I ordered up one of these little machines along with a 16 GB solid state drive and two 2GB DIMMS. I install Ubuntu Workstation 8.10 on it, and away I went.
These one drawback of this machine, which is why I'm not recommending it for use as a Linux workstation, is the video chipset. It comes with a proprietary SiS AVG 771 chipset that has very poor linux support. I've only been able to get basic 2D working at 1600x1200, and only through the VGA port. The DVI port refuses to run at anything higher than 800x600. 3D and 2D acceleration refuse to work.
I have since upgraded the machine to Ubuntu 9.10, but the graphics chip shortcomings still apply.
Next time I go looking for a solid state machine such as this, I'll ensure it has an Intel GPU in it, or at the very least an nVidia or ATI chip.
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