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Teeny Linux PCs proliferate

linuxdevices.com — A small company has begun building its line of tiny, gumstick-sized board-level computers into miniscule packaged PCs that displace around 68 cc of volume and come with Linux pre-installed. Suggested apps for the teeny Linux PCs include webservers, printer servers, IP-telephony servers, security appliances..... you name it!

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deviceguru 2 years 20 days ago, made popular 2 years 19 days ago

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phoenixsrebirth, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I found this very interesting. I am surprised at how much progress is being made in the minimal systems area. Cheers to their work.
- r2d7, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1I love the way everyone keeps saying web server for anything that's running linux. How long do you think a site like Digg would last on one of these?
  
  It might be practical to put some near-static (if not static) site that nobody visits on one of them but there's a good reason why companies like Intel, AMD, Sun, IBM etc keep making bigger and better hardware.
- beplacid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@r2d7: You're obviously no expert. Perhaps read the article before commenting. If you'd have even bothered to investigate, digg.com does run on GNU/Linux (ref: http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.digg.com) but it'd probably do quite well on one of these. Noone, in the vicinity of our universe ever said these were aimed at enterprise level applications. The ida of these is to 'plug-n-play' features of your network infrastructure.
  
  In my opinion, these would be a great gadget for when say, an internal web server goes down, or the printer server is going ***** up!
- r2d7, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1@ beplacid - it's not the operating system I'm contesting, it's the hardware. Hence referring to several prominent hardware manufacturers.
Ub3rg33k, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Don't get me wrong, I think this is cool as hell, but isn't this a giant ad for Gunstix?
- hiscity, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Not at $180 per stick ... who can afford it? You can get a walmart PC for $300.
  
  I wonder how hard it would be for them to implement SD cards?
  
  You reckon they'll still be able to sell product at that markup after Negroponte's $100+ PC comes out?
  
  Of course if you want to build robots, $180 might be ok.... nahhh!
- JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0These are nice and small but not terribly cost effective IMO. All things considered, the mini-ITX form factor offers a *lot* more bang for the buck. My favorite mini-ITX vendor is: www.ntavo.com
  
  These are sold as thin-client terminals but I use them for other things as well. I've taken their low end $149 model, added a laptop HD and installed Win98, WinXP, Win2k3 Server, DSL Linux and FreeBSD. Not as small as GumStix but still very compact. The photos on their web site don't provide a good visual frame of reference to determine size.
- n1qaw, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I know its a lot of if and when, but isn't yellow river's Municator offering much cheaper and more powerful? yeah, bigger but if that means twice the speed and memory.....
josepuerto, on 10/12/2007, -18/+1omg myspace is soooo much better than digg lolz
- burke, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2lol I know, and crack+sewage is liek, so much healthier than applez!!
igutekunst, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1Yeah, um, I totally agree.
DarkSorrow, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2this is old news, i saw this before. i think it was on slashdot long time ago
noobalicious, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Essentially, yes, one giant add for Gumstix. But honestly, this is sweet. The only thing they'd have to add in order for me to be a big huge fan (and buyer) would be a USB port. Until then, I can't use it for what I'd like: A tiny, out of the way, quiet, innocuous file server for my home.
Saiing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6What I love about this company, is that they have a total of 6 employees and yet, one of them is a Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and another calls himself Executive Vice President (EVP) of Marketing. Presumably they're all heads of their departments (as well as the only person in each).

That said, I don't wanna be too hard on them, because their product does look kinda nifty.
- sixdays, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If everyone is chief of their respective departments, none is left out :D
gameguy43, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3needs more ports, at least usb. then it could be a badass thin client
Xeth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Welcome to two years ago.

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/wlg/4546

BTW they do support USB ports along with miniPCI devices, flash cards and any other sort of PC peripheral you can think of. You can do lots of really, really neat things with them. Homemade Linux PDA anyone?
futaris, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Old, old, old...
ziks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I use these boards for robotics projects and I'm very impressed with them. They're perfect for projects which have to be tiny and yet must still have reasonable compute power. Sure, a cheap PC may only cost twice as much as a gumstix but can you fit it in an R/C plane? That's where my gumstix lives - functioning as an autopilot. Embedded computing applications are where these boards really excel.
titivillus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I have a wonderful idea about using one of these as part of a clever plan to sabotage someone's security network so I might break into their vault and steal their millions. Not sure how it'd work, but half the stuff I see in things like Ocean's 11 doesn't really seem like it'd really work. But really, the only use I could see for it is dangling it from a central hub and packet-sniffing with it. Why else would you want a computer smaller than a cell phone?
Lobster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I was thinking about this only yesterday
carry your gumstick; your computer and your data on your keyring
HD - not needed - that is in CF format
CD - not needed data is in there

Software - stck DSL or Puppy in there
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HardwareTesting

Plug it into a USB port (most computers are running Widows - poor things)
and run a secure OS from a pack of gum

Come on Gumstick or someone. You are so close.

Chew on it.
Kharmakazy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I want a small ass computer... i can wire up to one of those sets of monitor glasses... have wireless and surf the net while I do *****.
- brianez21, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1pron!
sowdog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1i like the idea of gumstix and all but i suspect the only reason the article was dugg was because it had linux in it. AMD's PIC(geode processor, 10gb hdd, usb, vga out) for an estimated 185$(can't find proper quotation) would probably be a better solution for a small webserver.

http://50x15.amd.com/en-us/sol_tech_pic.aspx
Ouroboros, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Gumstix' are nice, but a BlackDog is better.

http://www.projectblackdog.com
mrynit, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0i really dont see the market for lowend small computers. i would have to see some preformace benchmarks before buying some thing like that.
rasputnik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1
Blackdog is absolutely dreadful; leet name and no useful features :

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/pocketserver.ars

To the 'I can buy a dell for $300' crowd : this is a wearable computer (does your dell run on 5V battteries? Can you sew it into your shirt collar?)

That said, this ships with php, and the webserver is lighttpd. ruby also comes as an option. This can do a lot more than static files.
rasputnik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Xeth: you can plug them into a usb port to draw power, or plug them in as a usb device. But the PXA255 doesn't have hardware for a usb host (so no usb drives hanging off it).

And they definitely don't support miniPCI (CF yes; I've done wireless with them that way).
MadOwyn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0How about this for cool.

http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS2142584362.html

"Flocks of unmanned aircraft form Bluetooth Linux clusters"
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Teeny Linux PCs proliferate

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