Smallest Linux Computer

[Dungeon-Dave]

You know that clunky PC on your desk? Or under it? How about reducing it to something smaller, kinda shoebox-sized? Oh, they've done that - the shuttle PC.

 

So how about even smaller? Take a look at SheevaPlug, Linux within a PC power adapter:



Actually, that's old news..

 

Perhaps you'd like a Guruplug instead:

.

 

Oh, wait. Too large? Ladies, Gents and offspring of much smaller dimensions, I present the Picotux:



Yes, you see it right there. Network card in one end, video card in the other, socket for external power supply. Hidden between the rest is...

 

Oh, read it for yourself!

 

Disclaimer: I have no commercial connection to the above companies, nor have bought their products so cannot offer a review of their functionality. I'm just highly excited and geekily aroused at the thought of processing power being in something so small that a few of these and NAS somewhere on the LAN means I could do away with PCs entirely.

[anyweb]

wow they are small, can you do anything useful with them ?

[Dungeon-Dave]

Seems the picotux can run Apache and telnet server.

 

I'm more thinking streaming video over a LAN out to the video port, which could be applied to multiscreen displays or presentation applications (think dashboards or monitoring screens in server farms, etc).

 

As for the larger ones - consider embedded hardware that can run headless, such as gateway entry points on a LAN with router/firewall/NAT/PAT/traffic shaping/monitoring capability. I was thinking of something that could manage network-accessible content (usenet downloads, iPlayer, torrented content, podcasts) downloaded straight to a NAS sitting elsewhere on the network for later use.