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Full Debian ARM for Under $200

Posted by timothy on from the neato-keen dept.

An anonymous reader writes "With minor elbow grease, you can now set yourself up with a complete Debian ARM Linux box for under $200. This is thanks to Peter Korsgaard, who figured out a cool byteswapped kernel hack for the little $99 Linksys NSLU2. Add a $99 USB harddrive, and the tiny, cute, quiet 'Slug' can run any of about 16,000 Debian ARM packages, 24x7, for pennies per month worth of electricity, since ARM is still orders of magnitude more power-efficient than anything x86. Serve files, music, web pages, printers, backups, kernel images, webcams/motion detection, firewalls/routers, wireless access point... or whatever. Oh, did I mention you can overclock the Slug?"

5 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Already hacked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Linksys NSLU2 has already been hacked so you can run your own applications on it. :-)

  2. Fans of this should check out openwrt.org by kaldek · · Score: 5, Informative

    OpenWRT is a similar thing for the Linksys WRT54G and GS wireless routers. Same goes for the Asus WL500 series. Linux forever! heh

  3. Decent file server... by MindNumbingOblivion · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...that doesn't cost an ARM and a leg.

    Thank you, thank you.

    --
    #define CLUE 0
  4. If you're gonna go there... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hacking it will require strongarm tactics.

    Buying largue quantities means you're exercising your right to bear ARMs.

    People running to get them are conducting an ARMs race.

    A beowulf cluster of these will be called an ARMy

    Stallman's creating an OS specifically for this called GNU/HARM

    They're marketing it and calling it a Linux-Installed Micro Box System (LIMBS) with a monitor called a Linux-Embedded Graphics Station (LEGS)

  5. If you don't want to mod... by pyrrhonist · · Score: 5, Informative
    To install Debian on the NSLU2, you'll need to do a serial port modification. If you aren't comfortable with modifying your NSLU2, than I suggest running Unslung.

    Unslung can be installed without using a serial port modification, because it simply uses the built-in Linksys web administration to upgrade the firmware to the Unslung distribution.

    Once Unslung is installed, it only takes a matter of minutes to have your NSLU2 running Samba, OpenSSH, Apache, Slimserver, and even Asterisk!

    --
    Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.