Cheap Linux Development Hardware, In Spades

An anonymous reader writes "I was happy when I saw this $160 PPC NAS development system two days ago. I was surprised to notice this this $157 x86 router development hardware yesterday. And I'm floored to see this$199 MIPS thin client development system today." (Read on for more.)

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All 3 are full of open-source goodness, and for a change the manufacturers actually *want* you to do development on them. The MIPS box even comes with schematics and the board layout.

This should be good news for everyone who hates replacing ancient fans, memory, and dying SCSI drives in their resurrected Sun, SGI, Apple, DEC, etc. workstations. Or anyone who's significant other dislikes them installing alternative operating systems on perfectly good consumer electronics.

A quote by well-known open source developer Erik Andersen about the Kuro Box (NAS device linked to above) sums it up pretty well:
'The great thing about a product like the Kuro Box is it gives me complete control so I can adapt the system as my needs change. Unlike single purpose devices that soon end up in the trash, the Kuro Box is built using 100% Open Source software. This gives me the power to customize, upgrade and enhance my Kuro Box to make it do whatever I can imagine.'"

Comments

Re:Did I miss something?

[UnderScan]

What's wrong with me digging that old celeron-400 out of the corner, installing smoothwall on it, and shoving it away in the cupboard to serve out it's days?

I agree with this as I have a celeron doing the very same thing. However I can see the point of having a specialized box as a router in regards to power usage which affects heat output and also the size. My celeron is not that hot and I might be able to underclock and undervolt it to a lower speed. Unless I add airflow to my clost, putting the whole thing in a closet is a no go. The heat would probably kill the power supply since heat and power supply effiency can vicously cycle out of control. My system is a all steel case circa 1998 and I can not justify spending aprox $50 for a smaller easier to keep cool case. If I am gonna spend the $50, I might as well buy up and get something smaller & newer.

I also see the possible need for a low cost computing appliance. Yes a linux appliance. Check out the first link to Buffalo Technology's Kuro Box. It as room for a hard drive and you can turn it into a NAS box or in my case I was thinking for making a application server with LAMP and doing a couple surveys & demos to see if the local businesses might be interested.

What about a media center

[!ucif3r]

I would still like to see a box that has the capabilities for a TIVO like device for under $300. The need for a "TV Tuner" seems to be dying off as many people (In fact most in Canada) have either Digital Cable or Satellite, meaning a separte box in necessary for tuning anyways.

It would need VIVO, an MPEG2 decoder, DVD-Rom(RW?), large IDE harddrive, reasonable processor (1GHz?), a serial port for interacting with RS-232 connectors on cable and sattelite boxes, and a small form factor (ITX).

I checked out hardware available to do this from a local store and was about to get it down to about ~$500CDN ~$400US with one of those VIA boards.