Laptop Multimedia-Only DSL Version Idea.

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: Laptop Multimedia-Only DSL Version Idea.
started by: chief

Posted by chief on July 09 2006,15:20

I've been toying with this idea for a while now, although I don't know whether it's possible or not because i'm still somewhat a novice to linux.

I have been thinking of a multimedia laptop version of DSL designed purely for multimedia playback while getting as much life out of a battery as is possible.

To do this, the OS would be even more cut back than the current DSL.
It wouldn't include browsers, games etc, just Xine (or maybe MPlayer etc) and the neccessary codecs for music and dvd playback - though would commercial dvd playback be a problem for distribution ?.

It would be set to disable (and thus prevent power being given to) all non-essential hardware that is unneccessary for dvd/music playback (modems,PCMCIA,USB,network cards etc etc etc).

Now I also wondered if it's possible to limit the amount of power given out to devices, for example an 8mb graphics card is quite capable of dvd playback, so why give a 256mb card full juice when it could (possibly?) cope with reduced consumptiom, is it therefore possible to limit the power to graphics cards to reduce their performance down to the bare minimum required for dvd and audio playback and thus conserving battery life, could this be done to the CPU, Sound Card etc etc etc? or would this be bad for the components?.

And if you ran off a usb key you could even disable the harddrive from powering on.

I can also see it being popular for windows users who could get more battery life out of their laptops than windows allows, while having the opportunity to boot up linux every so often for dvd watching.

I dunno, maybe it's just a pipe dream, but the I think the idea sounds good, though as I said, I don't know if it's possible,but maybe someone else can say if it is or not