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Check out this Xi3 thingy. Please tell me what you think. I'm interested but I haven't tried one. I'm waiting for their refresh, coming soon most probably. But the original looks pretty darn good, if they put them on sale I might buy and try.

Here's a site that posts press releases about embedded Linux devices/SBCs/etc all this time (and has for at least a decade, I believe): http://www.linuxfordevices.com/

They appear to have ceased operation in February of this year.

GIYF: https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+sbc Come back and complain about my stating the obvious once you've finished reviewing those 1.7M results (this query just scratches the surface - try linux+arm, linux+mips, or linux+[processor model] to get even more options, ranging from SoCs through SoMs and SBCs).

Here's a site that posts press releases about embedded Linux devices/SBCs/etc all this time (and has for at least a decade, I believe): http://www.linuxfordevices.com/

The only thing these new products have are marketing departments that can catch the attention of a big tech press site or two. The spin from there is incredible, considering they're not really doing anything that hasn't been done thousands of times before.

The first time I saw an iPhone, i bet the bloke who was with me that Apple had bought Mizi Research's Prizm Linux stack. http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Korean-Linux-smartphone-stack-achieves-new-release/

I lost the bet of course.

But to anyone who was involved with mobile devices at the time, the precursors of Apple's designs were clear; they took bits from PalmOS Cobalt, Prizm, Maemo and others.

As far as the physical design of the phone goes, it's all about fashion. Before about 2006, smartphones were all silver or grey, had a curved lower "chin" where the button cluster lived and still-curved but flatter top. By late 2006 though, most phones marketed as stylish (LG Prada, Samsung Chocolate & F700 etc) were dark or black, becoming much more squared off and had minimalist button designs.

I think Apple did well, they designed an iconic phone with components like processors and capacitive screens that were just becoming available at reasonable prices. However, I have no doubt if the iPhone hadn't been released, there would still be dozens of similar looking phones on the market, because that's where fashion and technology was taking them.

Apple's been clever to ride that fashion, but that doesn't mean they're entitled to a free ride.

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Vic-NaviSurfer-II-Ubu3G/

$400 gets you a nice computer with ubuntu, 3g, bluetooth, and like 3 open USB slots so you can add in anything you feel it's lacking. For another $10 you can add a usb SDR device and keep your AM/FM radio and get access to an expanded portion of the spectrum.

You should probably do a bit more fact-checking before saying stuff like that..

There's nothing below that invalidate what I've said, on the contrary. So let's go for some fact checking...

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Embedded-Linux-powers-first-handheld-software-radio/

An old prototype from 2003 handling low bands. Nothing commercial seem to have followed.
Yes, for low frequency systems you could do direct sampling. With a big badass A/D converter you just sample a huge band, filter out in software (DSP) the channel of interest and decode it also in software. The problem with this approach is that it's not necessarily the most efficient (many DVB-T systems still use a RF) although this may change, and doesn't address the part I mentioned about filtering.

Because in real life, you can have adjacent systems transmitting at high power while you receive a low power. This is called the near/far effect. For example, a close GSM phone transmitting at 900 MHz while you try to receive a far base station in a close band. You will have a HUGE power difference. There are only two ways to deal with this:

1. 1) Use a RF filter to extract all power but the channel of interest. Then you're not blinded by adjacent interferers anymore and can use a reasonable A/D with a lower dynamic;
2. 2) Have a very high dynamic on the A/D converter. The problem there is that there's a trade-off between speed (and how much band you can handle) and dynamic. There's no magic converter that can offer both at reasonable price and power consumption for mobile devices, if at all.

That's why we're still living with RF front-ends which are band specific, and SDR is in most cases restricted to the baseband processing.

That won't prevent people from dreaming of a universal wireless device anyway, because it's a very sexy idea. It's been a very sexy idea for more than 20 years actually. It's made significant progress. But plenty ignored the fine details to their detriment. My point here by the way is not to ridicule the idea or kill the dream. Just to instill some doze of hard nosed practical sense.
For a truly universal practical radio modem, we would need programmable filters and wide-band or programmable power amplifiers, with acceptable cost / size / power consumption. I'm sorry to say I don't know of anything practical there, not even on the radar. But with LTE huge amount of bands (40+, and increasing) there would definitely be a use for that. So we'll see, the big carrot may lead to a breakthrough one day?

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/17/12/2007/42781/intel-targets-wimax-with-software-radio-device.htm

Well, in this very article it says:

The test chip [...] links to three RF chips for the different networks.

So it doesn't even have a wide band RF, which is something available nowadays (the article dates back from 2007, which can explains this). So expect different network specific RF FEs too. It's really exactly as I described: SDR here purely refers to the digital processing part.

There are already chips that do direct-if conversion for DVB-T.. It's not a generic chip they use but a specialized that will have a high-speed ADC and then have hardware that do the 'tuning' to the wanted frequency...

For VHF TV this could be doable indeed. It's low enough for a high-speed ADC, and you can have a front-end protecting the TV band too. And the power consumption may not be a problem in many use-cases (even mobile possibly: when the screen is on, a bit more power on the modem may not be so significant). Still, this is not applicable to many domains

You should probably do a bit more fact-checking before saying stuff like that..

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Embedded-Linux-powers-first-handheld-software-radio/
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/17/12/2007/42781/intel-targets-wimax-with-software-radio-device.htm

There are already chips that do direct-if conversion for DVB-T.. It's not a generic chip they use but a specialized that will have a high-speed ADC and then have hardware that do the 'tuning' to the wanted frequency...

So... There is stuff already doing this on a large scale...

If you want something that works with any type of protocol then you need some type of generic CPU that can be loaded with software that can be reprogrammed, and this is probable something that don't exist outside some specific circles, but it do exist and is available commercially. This stuff is usually done on FPGA's to reduce the powerusage and get good performance....

Is the Linux Desktop actually growing? quotes a market share figure from Net Applications of 1.4%, up from 0.97% the previous July. Other estimates have put the figure at 1.67%. Some analysts are predicting the figure could hit 2% to 3% before the end of 2012.

The author states that 12% of visitors to his tech related web sites run Linux. If that is any indication, then the figure of technologically minded people using Linux desktops already exceeds 10%.

Keep in mind that Apple's global desktop market share is in single figures: Linux desktop market share doesn't have to exceed that of Windows to be considered important.

Intel made an attempt to enter this market before, and failed, circa 2005. They produced such legendary phones as the Motorola A910.

They probably got the idea from Google.

The difference of course being that Google gave patents to HTC to help mount a counter-offense against the already pending lawsuit from Apple. Whereas Apple gave the patents to a patent troll to start entirely new lawsuits against Apple competitors.

Otherwise, yeah, exactly the same.

They probably got the idea from Google.

Think of it like this, ARM is small and lean on power. You could pack dozens of cores onto a die giving it the power to compete with the Xeon. Blade servers can be shrunk down and more can fit into a single U of rack space since ARM does not dissipate tens of watts. We might see something along the lines of servers that are nothing more than a mini cluster in a box that appear as one whole system. A prepackaged beowulf cluster if you will.

There was an interesting video I saw a while back of a researcher who packed 196 of those ARM gumstix modules into a case not much bigger than a tower PC with no forced cooling. I cant find the video but here is a link to information about the cluster:

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Sandia-StrongBox-and-Gumstix-Stagecoach/

what about this? vaporware? Nokia preps Linux-based Meltemi OS for feature phones, says report http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Nokia-Meltemi-plus-Tizen-update/

That's a joke right ?

I like the fuzebox project. But that's a 8-bit console. That is never gonna sel massively.

But I guess you were talking about community driven hardware and gaming system. I am still not sure these guys will leave well as well. Why haven't we seen a linux ARM-based or x86 based open gaming system appear ? That's basically, buy a computer and 2 USB gamepad and plug them on your TV. the software is mainly written in the GeeXbox. Still no one knows about it ?

Perhaps he doesn't understand what a niche market is. As for a Linux based gaming system, there are things like The Evo 2 from Envision: http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Envizions-Evo-2/?kc=rss

I'm not going to say it's a realistic alternative to the current generation consoles, because it's most likely going to appeal to a similar niche market as the Uzebox (Note, the Fuzebox is a specific implementation of the Uzebox.)

*shrugs* I may not like it, but that's just how things are currently.

Uzebox is cool!

While on the subject, I'd also like to point out some other projects I've found interesting:

OpenPandora, a community-designed, Linux-running handheld. The specs are pretty impressive, by today's standards, but were even more impressive when it was first introduced. Best thing is, they're now manufacturing and shipping!

For those who like to tinker themselves, there is the BeagleBoard, a cheap (as they come) single board computer with impressive specs, designed for open source software. The Wikipedia article lists a number of alternatives, some of which may be more powerful and/or cheaper.

One interesting alternative to the BeagleBoard is the Hawkboard, which is backed by its own community. It's slightly less powerful than the BeagleBoard, but, at 89 USD, also costs quite a bit less.

And then there's the ever-popular Arduino, which comes in several varieties. You can buy them assembled starting at about 20 USD, or build your own for under 10 USD. They can be extended with "shields", e.g. to get extra I/O capabilities. Pretty cool stuff!

Personally, I am still tinkering around with resistors and transistors and the like, designing and simulating circuits with Qucs (which I feel is a lot more production-ready than that website suggests) and my Nokia N900, but any of the above hardware looks like it might be a nice next step up.

I still want to see some kind of interface between mass storage devices, wireless and content

I believe it's called a NAS (not necessarily that Nas). Wi-Fi NAS exists.

a reoccurring role in technology is "do we need or want it?" and the technologies that fail to fulfill such a role have found themselves left behind. price has a role but Apple has shown it's not a deal breaker to have crazy prices.

therefore, Intel must start convincing companies to make very highspeed Thunderbolt devices. there is only one consumer end device that needs that kind of bandwidth: graphics cards. nobody wants to lug around another device with their laptop so such a device would be one left at home for gaming. for Apple this is a problem because they dont have many games to start with and i really doubt they are just going to let any ol' person start making drivers because as we've seen with many third party graphics cards, drivers are buggy. this doesnt go well with Apple's "it just works" mantra.

on the other side of the fence, Microsoft doesnt care if a device bricks your computer and they are more than happy to take money from people willing to pay to get the Microsoft driver stamp of approval.
as mentioned in the article, Sony is putting Thunderbolt in their new Vaio Z laptop and their initial plan is for it to be used for external graphics cards.

this might be the graphics upgrade savior laptop gamers have been looking for but i'm skeptical.

Unless you are building chips for your hardware by yourself in your underground lab

It is actually very easy today; you don't need to make silicon devices. All you need to buy a cheap FPGA and program your processor into it, and some peripherals. Such a project was discussed on /. a month or so ago. It will be slow, but resistance fighters are not going to play Far Cry on it (they will have plenty of that IRL, modulo the monsters.)

By using such a device a member of the Resistance can be pretty sure that nobody in the government had a chance to mess with the bits (as long as you obtain the configuration bitstream from a reliable party.)

Meego, what Nokia was working on as their Symbian successor platform just before they suddenly "jumped from their burning platform", was a Linux smartphone OS that was almost ready to run Android apps:
Dalvik ported to MeeGo, promising instant Android app compatibility

MS has not announced how exactly they will change Skype, but you can bet it will involve monetization in all forms. Don't expect any of the currently free Skype services to continue. Asterisk already lost Skype support.

This is a great opportunity for Google to roll out a multi-platform competitor.

Excepts from: http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Skype-dumps-Asterisk/

Skype has terminated its partnership with Digium, effectively killing Skype for Asterisk, which integrated Skype's VOIP service with the open source PBX/telephony platform. While some analysts see Microsoft's impending acquisition of Skype as the source of the schism, others argue that Skype has never been an open source supporter, and had already been backing away from the Asterisk product.

AND

While it may be easy to pin down Skype's decision as yet another example of Microsoft trying to shut down the open source community, Tim Panton, a Skype developer, pointed out on his WordPress blog posting that Skype for Asterisk has been dying slowly for awhile now because of issues with scalability and maintenance. Skype had "hobbled" the product with a number of license restrictions, and the company delayed development, according to Panton.

"Skype probably never envisaged renewing, so when it came due, they pulled the plug," Panton wrote.

Blaming Microsoft for the demise of Asterisk is just another example of FUD constantly being spread by those who lack any factual information on the subject to which they attach their ideas.

Microsoft has been getting a lot better about supporting alternative OSes on non-core products (Silverlight is another example).

Microsoft did not support silverlight on other OSes. They allowed the now defunct mono project by Novel to implement moonlight - a compatible platform.

Yep, the Android OS needs to get stable, and the hardware underneath it, or does it?. Google Platform Versions shows 2.2/API8 as the largest group, but that will change, again. Linux Devices has a more complete summary article. I say "does it" as the diversity of hardware did not hurt Microsoft. If anything it hurt Linux users trying to migrate off cheaper Windows hardware (Winmodems are first in mind).

Off Topic: My phones get a 60 day warranty bake in before being rooted (it is my hardware, don't lock it). Having the backup modem for the laptops is just a plus. The CDMA Nexus S may change that thought on rooting, but then I would have to pay the extra $30. That $30 may cost Sprint a sale on a Nexus S and a Evo 3D. For my 1-2GB per month with only limited backup modem usage, $30 is too much.

OTOH, I know two small business owners who thought that the EVO would make a nice WAP, as in drop business DSL and use their phone for the office laptops. I guess the suits at Sprint chose charging extra to have the tethering feature easily available over capping or tiered usage plans.

"Microsoft never has attacked other companies"

Microsoft files rare patent lawsuit against Salesforce.com
Microsoft Slaps Motorola with Patent Lawsuit over Android
Microsoft wins big on PND patent lawsuit
Microsoft Files Patent Lawsuit Vs TiVo Again
Patent Lawsuits Filed by Former Microsoft CTO’s Firm

Further, Microsoft has lobbied extensively in Europe for a software patent regime, funding numerous attempts to modify the current situation where a patent has to be litigated in each country separately. If they were being defensive, they would not do this, the current European patent system favors defense.

And further, Microsoft has pushed very hard, for many years now, to find a way to extract a toll on Linux, via patents.

They are not a patent troll, mainly because they delegated that job to Intellectual Ventures, a pure patent troll firm. They are repeatedly attacked by firms who hold patents, though often it seems Microsoft stole the technology, and the small firms are justified in seeking compensation. But they do abuse their patents, and they do abuse the patent system in an attempt to fight competitors like Linux and Android that they can't beat on technical merit.

Well ARM is a hell of a lot less power using but it is also a hell of a lot less powerful clock for clock, so it evens out doesn't it? I mean sure in a cell phone where its main job is running a highly specialized OS, with tons of little support chips to help it out it does great, but I wouldn't want to do my day to day desktop computing on it.

Why do you think ARM is equivalent with less computation power? Maybe it is so for the present, but doesn't seem so for the near future

There's hardly any good reason to choose anything else over it, either.

Well, yes and no. Certainly in the space between the notebook computer and any but the mightiest supercomputers there's no reason at all not to go with x86. But in the mobile processor space, where ultra-low TDP is the order of the day, ARM has a big leg up on x64

Yeap. But, in the context of the Oracle behemoth database server, does mobile processors have any relevance? It seems that it does - even if an ARM-based server is no longer what one would call "mobile".

One on top of the other, may it be that the Itanium heavyweight approach is indeed a dinosaur of the past?

HTC already settled a suit with Microsoft and is now paying Microsoft royalties for the Android devices they sell.

Which is why my new phone will not be an HTC.

Actually, there's a good deal of profit to be made. HTC already settled a suit with Microsoft and is now paying Microsoft royalties for the Android devices they sell. Some of the companies that file them don't care if Android continues to be wildly successful because they'll still make money. If Oracle is successful in their suit, it's possible that Google or the handset manufacturers will owe some amount of money for every Android device sold. At that point it's in Oracle's interest to make sure Android keeps doing well because they make money off of it.

The reason is that Linux is so flexible: you can customize it easily. This is also the main reason why it's useful in supercomputers (see Top500 sorted by OS family as well as mobile phones (Android, Meego) and other places where you want a small and cheap computer).

You can try this out by compiling your own kernel: you can take everything out that is not crucial to the tasks at hand (i.e. processing transactions, for this stock exchange example). That also means your customized system isn't checking all the time if someone is diddling with the mouse or pressing on a key (what mouse? what keyboard?).

I remember a Windows NT system decades ago, where a whole multinational company depended on it, and you could make the entire company's workings slow down to a crawl by moving the mouse around (I'm not kidding!). Probably this has been fixed in more modern Windows systems though?

Per-CPU operating system licensing costs of 0 probably also play a rôle in case of the 294912-CPU Blue Gene/P supercomputer :-)

This announcement was on Linuxfordevices.com a few days ago:

CompuLab announced a 5.1 x 3.7 x 0.6-inch computer built around the dual-core, 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, designed as an open platform for ARM software development, among other uses. Claimed to run on only three Watts, the "Trim-Slice" features 1GB RAM, dual SDHC slots, a SATA SSD, dual-head HDMI/DVI, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, plus gigabit Ethernet, USB, and serial connectivity.

Link:

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/CompuLab-TrimSlice/

If you're HTC and had to come to some form of arrangement with Microsoft over the patens Microsoft alleged HTC was infringing upon, it might not actually be any cheaper to put Android on your handsets. Now that HTC is taken care of, they've started going after other big Android manufacturers.

Various outlets are selling for $150 a 7" Augen Gentouch78. Is it any good, considering that low, low price?

How about this one And here's a community site devoted to such ideas.

It always comes back to a cheap open source iPad. ... This mythical cheap open source device is never going to happen. Either the hardware will be crap or the UI. Deal with it and let's get on with our lives.

To the iPad specifically but first....a cheap open source device is never going to happen... Already has. Two years ago when you could pick up a netbook running Linux with 512MB of RAM for $300. So Cheap open source devices have already happened.

In 2006, I purchased a Nokia N800, Full Linux hand-held and saw the future there. Granted it was not super cheap in 2006, but certainly is today. I still run a server with only 128MB of RAM, of course it does not do a whole lot, but can still run MySQL and PHP. Just don't ask it to serve thousands of clients, I don't.

The point is you put 512MB of RAM on an embedded device with Root access so that you can configure and install what you want and it most certainly will do most of what a person would do with a 'phone' size device...in fact it would do more. A whole lot more, simply because I can put on whatever database I need (does not have to be a full blown SQL today, does it) PHP and if I want to get fancy, Python, Ruby, etc... Exactly what limitations would I have...I don't see any.

So your premise that you can not get a cheap open source device, is wrong....was wrong years ago and is even more wrong today.

It always comes back to a cheap open source iPad. ...

Now I promised I would come back to the iPad specifically. I would suggest that if you put at least 512MB of RAM, (preferably1GB of RAM) and allow for 'swappable' Micro SDs like the Nokia N800 does. We can put those in a USB adapter and use them on other computers as I do with my camera now and have for years. And I am only using 4GB SDs, they make 16GB, 32GB...probably more by now, I have not looked. Some of the new tablets have full blown USB ports. For good measure a Gigabyte Ethernet port would be nice. All of them seem to have WiFi, Bluetooth and a couple offer cellular.

I could give a crap about cellular as I have been using only WiFi + VoIP since I purchased the Nokia N800 and love it. I save enough money to purchase a new computer every year and is only one reason I think Skype VoIP was the single biggest technological improvement since 2000. This one product has done more for my life than any other and there have been allot of technological improvements over the last 10 years.

The Nokia N900 had Cellular, WiFi and Bluetooth day one when it came out, now many of the tablets are offering cellular as well. So its already been done and in a form factor smaller than an iPad for those who want that. Personally I see a need for both a pocket smart embedded Linux device / PIM / phone as well as a tablet size smart Linux embedded device. So can it be done, absolutely...again its already been done. But back to the iPad like Linux tablets...

Here are some that are either out already or coming soon:

Order now for $500 and its Root-able!
The Joo Joo (shipping despite the legal complaints w/ Crunchpad) Processor: Intel Atom N270, 1GB RAM; 4GB SSD Flash; WiFi(802.11b/g), Bluetooth, Camera (Video), USB, Speakers, Mic, only a 12.1” 1366 x 768, 1080p screen. Good: 1GB Ram, USB, WiFi, 1080p, Video; Bad: smaller screen, Adobe Flash. Wish list: 2GB RAM memory, larger screen, Ethernet port; The joo joo is rootable, the Intel Atom foundation should mean that users can wipe the Linux-based stack provided by Fusion Garage, and replace it with another Linux OS, Windows, or another x86-ready operating system. Root Access? Absolutely, a

It always comes back to a cheap open source iPad. ... This mythical cheap open source device is never going to happen. Either the hardware will be crap or the UI. Deal with it and let's get on with our lives.

To the iPad specifically but first....a cheap open source device is never going to happen... Already has. Two years ago when you could pick up a netbook running Linux with 512MB of RAM for $300. So Cheap open source devices have already happened.

In 2006, I purchased a Nokia N800, Full Linux hand-held and saw the future there. Granted it was not super cheap in 2006, but certainly is today. I still run a server with only 128MB of RAM, of course it does not do a whole lot, but can still run MySQL and PHP. Just don't ask it to serve thousands of clients, I don't.

The point is you put 512MB of RAM on an embedded device with Root access so that you can configure and install what you want and it most certainly will do most of what a person would do with a 'phone' size device...in fact it would do more. A whole lot more, simply because I can put on whatever database I need (does not have to be a full blown SQL today, does it) PHP and if I want to get fancy, Python, Ruby, etc... Exactly what limitations would I have...I don't see any.

So your premise that you can not get a cheap open source device, is wrong....was wrong years ago and is even more wrong today.

It always comes back to a cheap open source iPad. ...

Now I promised I would come back to the iPad specifically. I would suggest that if you put at least 512MB of RAM, (preferably1GB of RAM) and allow for 'swappable' Micro SDs like the Nokia N800 does. We can put those in a USB adapter and use them on other computers as I do with my camera now and have for years. And I am only using 4GB SDs, they make 16GB, 32GB...probably more by now, I have not looked. Some of the new tablets have full blown USB ports. For good measure a Gigabyte Ethernet port would be nice. All of them seem to have WiFi, Bluetooth and a couple offer cellular.

I could give a crap about cellular as I have been using only WiFi + VoIP since I purchased the Nokia N800 and love it. I save enough money to purchase a new computer every year and is only one reason I think Skype VoIP was the single biggest technological improvement since 2000. This one product has done more for my life than any other and there have been allot of technological improvements over the last 10 years.

The Nokia N900 had Cellular, WiFi and Bluetooth day one when it came out, now many of the tablets are offering cellular as well. So its already been done and in a form factor smaller than an iPad for those who want that. Personally I see a need for both a pocket smart embedded Linux device / PIM / phone as well as a tablet size smart Linux embedded device. So can it be done, absolutely...again its already been done. But back to the iPad like Linux tablets...

Here are some that are either out already or coming soon:

Order now for $500 and its Root-able!
The Joo Joo (shipping despite the legal complaints w/ Crunchpad) Processor: Intel Atom N270, 1GB RAM; 4GB SSD Flash; WiFi(802.11b/g), Bluetooth, Camera (Video), USB, Speakers, Mic, only a 12.1” 1366 x 768, 1080p screen. Good: 1GB Ram, USB, WiFi, 1080p, Video; Bad: smaller screen, Adobe Flash. Wish list: 2GB RAM memory, larger screen, Ethernet port; The joo joo is rootable, the Intel Atom foundation should mean that users can wipe the Linux-based stack provided by Fusion Garage, and replace it with another Linux OS, Windows, or another x86-ready operating system. Root Access? Absolutely, a

Would winning against Cisco actually help?

"Why run windows on these kiosks? An embedded OS would be more suitable and cheaper..."

`Because, while the embedded OS would be less expensive, the development costs would be far higher. Windows devs are a dime-a-dozen, not so much with true embedded developers-especially ones that have experience and know what they are doing'

This is a rehash of Linux-developers-cost-more FUD. The truth is an embedded Kiosk solution would be trivially easy to implement.

Building Embedded Linux Systems

Building Embedded Linux Systems shows you how to design and build your own embedded systems using Linux® as the kernel and freely available open source tools as the framework. Written by an active member of the open source community, the book is structured to gradually introduce readers to the intricacies of embedded Linux, with detailed information and examples in each chapter that culminate in describing how Linux is actually put on an embedded device.

Embedded-Linux-Distributions-Quick-Reference-Guide

Well if it is THAT much of a PITA, why not simply buy one like this that ALREADY runs Linux? That was the first link, but it wasn't like there were a shortage of places selling. One of the nice things about ARM is it isn't completely locked up like x86/64 is for Windows, although I have noticed more and more coming with winCE so that freedom may not last long. But now you can buy one of several flavors of Linux, or Android, or WinCE, it is pretty wide open ATM.

So it doesn't really change the fact that for $100 the device in TFA is overpriced and underpowered. The ARM netbooks give you a minimum of double the RAM, 2Gb of storage, 2 USB ports, Wifi, and Ethernet. So for the same or pretty close you have a device infinitely more hackable and useful as a mobile device. Building this device without even Wifi and only a single card port pretty much makes it useless in my book, since you can't actually have storage and connectivity at the same time. What good is that?

O RLY? Not to mention a few other arm based netbooks with android found via a quick google search.

Here's one for $80.

That can't be bought anywhere

And here's one for $90.

That runs WinCE 6.0 - and the one that comes with it isn't legal. Not to mention the specs that where low in 2003 already - 2 GB Hard Drive?

And another for $130.

Which happens to be the exact same one as the $90 one.

Here's one for $80. And here's one for $90. And another for $130. And of course there is the Archos 7 tablet which runs Android, and has an MSRP of $199.

Huh, thanks for the correction, I guess I had old misinformation...

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Intel-D510MO-and-D410PT/

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the Nano make a better choice for a low power server chip, with its hardware based encryption support?

As another poster said it isn't some sort of watts limbo, where the only goal is how low can you go, but more importantly how useful those watts are in actual application. The Nano will run existing x86 software, so backwards compatibility is no problem, and with security being in the forefront of everyone's minds these days it seems to me one would get better performance per watt while still being able to efficiently use encryption with the Nano. Seems like a better fit in the low power server role to me.

Considering Dell has a server based on Nano it seems like I'm not the only one to think that, though sadly Dell only sells the Nano based to "select customers" so if you want a Nano server yourself you would probably have to go with the mini server which would probably be just about the right size for a small business or home server setup.

Yes and there's a linux kernel patch that should cleverly circumvent that patent
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/FAT-patch/
http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/6/26/313
It hasn't apparently been tested in court so far though.

On U.S. soil, one wouldn't probably want to acid-test the above patch in court, somewhere was mentioned that it may cost up to $5M to defend yourself in court for a single patent infringiment, even if you would not turn out to be infringing a patent at all.

That's a great idea, how about an OS whose API is Boost and QT?

Assuming that by "QT" you meant Qt and not QuickTime, I have an idea for a name for an operating system like this. How about Kubuntu? Or perhaps MeeGo?

How about here... ARM Netbook The first hit on google for "ARM Netbook" ;-)

~~~~~~~~
Google was my friend, even if they have started to be a bit evil lately

here is the link http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/ARM-and-AMD-spinoff-Globalfoundries-partner/

The iPhone runs a heavily modified version of Darwin/OS X.

The N900, Palm Pre, and Android phones are the most well-known, but there are many others.

People are looking in the wrong place. Move outside Intel and AMD.

$99 for a computer in a keyboard from Norhtec. (In fact, the prototype is still linked in my sig, but I have no connection to the company.) Video is available at Linux For Devices, but the Gecko Surfboard doesn't appear to be listed on tNorhtec's site yet.

...as it doesn't specify a single kernel. [source] It's more of a unified platform for development on Samsung phones.

It also probably uses EFL, as Samsung was recently shown to sponsor the development of Enlightenment and its supporting libraries [source]

With Nokia moving to a unified development environment across most of their devices, it's really not a surprising move for the #2 mobile phone manufacturer in the world.

The company website claims...

  64-bit VLIW processors with 64-bit instruction bundle
  3-deep pipeline with up to 3 instructions per cycle

I don't know how this could be considered ARM or MIPS-derived...

A better description might have been in this article...

The Tile64 is based on a proprietary VLIW (very long instruction word) architecture, on which a MIPS-like RISC architecture is implemented in microcode. A hypervisor enables each core to run its own instance of Linux, or alternatively the whole chip can run Tilera's 64-way SMP (symmetrical multiprocessing) Linux implementation.