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Petite MP3 Player Boots PCs Into Linux

Posted by timothy on from the now-that's-a-good-idea dept.

An anonymous reader submits "A French company has created a teensy MP3 player that also boots PCs into Linux. The 1.7-inch diameter, half-ounce Medaillon (way smaller than an iPod) has been around for a while, but 128MB and 256MB models of the Z2 version are now supplied with Shinux, an embedded Linux distribution that includes lots of cool open source applications." The list of included apps, from AbiWord to Xchat, is pretty impressive for a device intended primarily as a music player.

7 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Strange... by mirko · · Score: 3, Informative

    Looks like the MP3 player from Virgin that got discussed here.

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    Trolling using another account since 2005.
  2. This is player is made by Korean EraTech by i4u · · Score: 5, Informative

    See this Coin-Sized MP3 Player

    It also has been OEMed by Virgin Electronics and is available at Target. The only funky thing with this french OEM is that it has a Linux on it.

  3. My iPod by Mononoke · · Score: 4, Informative

    boots Macs into OS-X.

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  4. Re:Recursive MP3 player by OblongPlatypus · · Score: 5, Informative
    And the answer is: Yes, it does. From the list of apps:

    ...
    # tightVNC remote access
    # XMMS multimedia player
    # xterm X console

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    -- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
  5. Re:charging by blowdart · · Score: 3, Informative

    Am i the only one who feels that charging a mp3 player by just a computer is a bad way of doing it?

    Why? My Zen recharges by USB, as does my phone when it's docked in it's cradle. That saves me 2 power adapters when I'm travelling. Heck, even my digital camera powers up via a cradle which can draw power from USB alone, and my portable hard drive draws power from a USB2 port (unless you're on a Dell Inspirion which complains that the device is sucking too much power from the port. Cheap ass dells!)

  6. We (YDL) did it win an iPOD a while ago by zapp · · Score: 3, Informative

    We at Terra Soft Solutions (Yellow Dog Linux) did this with an ipod a while ago. We had intent to sell ipods partitioned with a 5gb Linux space, and the rest open for music - but Apple informed us that the drive wasn't inteded for frequent read/writes, just burst reads... and that we would probably burn the drive pretty quickly.

    Ah well, it woulda been cool :)

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  7. Re:Way smaller? by Civil_Disobedient · · Score: 4, Informative

    Look, I hate the iPod-People as much as the next guy, but let's be honest, here.

    The unit you linked to is only smaller because they've put the entire display on a separate "remote" unit. That sucks. From an engineering point of view, you want to minimize all ways in which to break the thing -- having a dedicated wired-remote doubles these chances. And look at the weakest link in the chain -- the cable from the remote to the unit -- if anything happens to that cable (stretched, yanked, sliced or diced) or the plug on the end, there goes your fancy display.

    Never mind that it's encased in aluminum. The cord isn't.

    If they had put the display in the unit, it would be near-perfect. If they added a 1/8" optical-TOSLINK connection to either the unit itself, or the base, that would be perfect. Who wants a line-audio copy of a CD? Digital, man!