pretty much everyone interested in something like this seems to be waiting on the $25/$35 Raspberry Pi:
specs/wiki:
http://elinux.org/RaspberryPiBoard#Hardware_Details
Not exactly a dual-core monster but it's got all the other things you noted. release date is supposed to be in a month or 2
As others have pointed out, Android is a variant of Linux. There are even terminal apps where you can get a shell. But you will need to root your phone to do interesting stuff, like install Debian in a chroot.
I really like CyanogenMod. It has no bloat (that the vendors put on phones these days), and it has lots of nice extra features. I like to run it on the Google Nexus phones, since those are well supported. (Hey, wanna buy a Nexus 4 with CM pre-installed?)
Installing Google apps is optional, just don't expect most apps to run without it. The F-Droid repo is a great source of trustable apps.
Running "regular" Linux on a phone is a bad idea -- most apps aren't designed for touch, nor would it do the right thing during phone calls.
Remote admin on a phone is mostly a fantasy -- the keyboard and screen are too small to see a console. You are better off carrying a tablet/chromebook and using your phone as a hotspot. (Built-in to CyanogenMod.)
Eben just visited my hackerspace a short while ago (http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2172) ...and lets just say he told us some things.
> If broadcomm would just release the full spec sheet on the device on the raspbery pi, most of the problems would be cleared up. I am pretty sure this will never happen for preposterous IP reasons.
Lets just say, you won't be disappointed. He had hoped to announce something that night, but wasn't able to. He's hoping the pi will be the first 100% open source ARM system and that a bunch of people are going to jump on ship so they aren't left behind. This includes the Broadcom SoC. Now I don't know how likely this is or whathaveyou, but it's what was claimed that night by Eben himself while standing by our laser cutter.
OLinuXino-LIME2 has 2 UART and eMMC or NAND storage, and good mainline support (apart from 3D acceleration). Might be worth contacting them, as they have a range of industrial boards that might have more UARTs.
Before everyone piles on and tries to convince you to get a Raspberry PI, have a look at the RPI Troubleshooting forum, especially the multiple USB woes.
I've got two gathering dust because of crappy USB drivers. Caveat emptor.
Oh-ho! But they have one! D.Phone (one of China's largest cell phone retailers) has partnered with them. I believe they have deals with all major carriers over there. Be sure to cruise on over to /r/jolla for some discussion! I believe there was a cash investment as well, but I cannot find a link for that, atm.
I have an x230 that I used to run both Linux Mint and Ubuntu Gnome respin on. Using TLP and powertop I got the battery life to be the same or better as on Windows 7. That was a year ago though, so my memory is fuzzy.
EDIT: Make sure to get the ThinkPad extensions aswell.
Linux Device Drivers is available for free at http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/. Note that while it's a good introduction, LDD is based on an older kernel (2.6.10) and some APIs have changed since then.
Well here is the place to look:
The problem with HDMI capture devices is that the sort of streams that people want to record are normally protected (HDCP). That makes such devices a problem for the user. That makes such things fairly obscure and unpopular. For Linux you pretty much have to try to find an appropriate model of this (probably used):
So unless you have an actual need for HDMI capture you should probably just get a Linux compatible analog video capture card that has a composite input. Something like a Hauppauge PVR-250 would work well...
If you look at the official resource page: http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/ you can see only android and lubuntu are available.
Also looking into this board in details I found out in forum, images available are far from being usable: no hardware acceleration, sound issue and so on. The price is attractive but it does not seem usable at the moment.
Guessing you're working on a Windows machine: Have you tried Win32 Disk Imager?
Usually images replace all the partitioning on a device with their own, so it won't matter if a card is still with a wrongly formatted partition.
One possibility I've been considering is ESPRESSObin. They were on Kickstarter, apparently they're shipping now (Amazon link), with a subreddit, r/espressobin. ARM, 2 GbE LAN 1 eth WAN, SATA, up to 1GB DRAM.
That wasn't the question. My main machine is also running a *nix called Mac OS X. If you want to run GNU/Linux specifically, you should say so.
It's entirely possible to run X11 on Android, so you can even use a window manager on it. Here's a terminal emulator if you really want a local command line: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jackpal.androidterm&hl=en
OK, if there is no built in package manager and no repository I wouldn't denote it a general system. I would merely denote it a an embedded system, possible to extend.
I found some info about brew here.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1446541
In my view android was never created to be a general system, it was intended to be a narrow system where you could install some apps, as I have understood it. Even though it is possible to make it a general system it seems to be a tedious task to do so, so why?
Even to install a C compiler seems to be a hassle. Then it's not a generic system at all. A system without a builtin C compiler is an embedded system dedicated to a narrow field of operation.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.n0n3m4.gcc4droid&hl=en
I'm just reposting it, all credit goes to /u/Ttl in /r/electronics (via)
From http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-sale/
> Because it has an ARMv7 processor, it can run the full range of ARM GNU/Linux distributions, including Snappy Ubuntu Core, as well as Microsoft Windows 10.
I also recommend the fit-PC2, if you are willing to fight with the graphics drivers as there have been quite a many reports about problems with it (GMA500, Poulsbo). I have had it running for 1½ years without a problem, although I'm not using X.
If you want a interesting challenge, you could try one of the small ARM computers like BeagleBoard or Pandaboard. Note that you would need to use MicroSD for hard drive.
Then there is many plug-computers like SheevaPlug and GuruPlug. I don't have any experience with these.
Ugh I hate when projects don't even describe what they are on their own website. https://www.lineageos.org/
LineageOS mentions NOTHING about what it is, what problem it solves or what it's even used for.
Can you give a reason why you're recommending it?
indeed, kindle's been rooted (runs ubuntu...) and people are adding proper keyboards (http://hackaday.com/tag/kindle/) by the look of it, I guess it depends on what OP's up to, whether they're shelling in to some remote host or not.
The article highlights the cheapest one, the same vendor has more expensive ones with GbE and 5GHz wi-fi. GL.iNet GL-AR750S
You still might not choose it as a gateway for your home/office/lab - but - they're not all horribly underpowered.
Yep, here it is. I should get mine before the end of the week, if you want just PM me Friday or next weekend and I'll give you a short review of it.
The site I ordered it from has a WIDE variety of mini-pc, but that's really the best one I found in regards to performance for the price.
I shall. I have been weighing it heavily in my mind this week. I've been trying to decide between this or a copy of Reason 6. My biggest fear is that the push for Windows Phone 7 is going to cause them to cease production before there is a chance for the price to drop. Articles like this one, which I just saw on Engadget this morning, aren't helping alleviate my fear ;__;
Long time since I saw a Knoppix boot screen...
run Debian on it and get a pi-hole going; no GUI needed
upgrade the storage, make a torrent client using rtorrent (no GUI needed)
install Slitaz or CorePlus for the GUI, get Java running and make a web download client using JDownloader
experiment with unusual superslim OSes like HaikuOS (get the nightly, not the official) or KolibriOS; take advantage of the fact that those can't actually do very much and make a distraction-free writing device
photo frame or music player, though it'd be a bit like using a car to drive two streets over
uh... print server? Does anyone need those anymore?
I have no idea how good these are but I'm tempted. I would like to get one of these and put arch on it. http://www.gearbest.com/tablet-pcs/pp_285131.html http://www.gearbest.com/tablet-pcs/pp_328661.html
But it seems they(gearbest) saying that you can't install another OS.
I found it here cheap: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Cheapest-Voyo-A18-3G-Tablet-PC-Intel-Octa-Core-Windows-8-Tablet-PC-HDMI-Bluetooth-WIFI/32227114897.html But I do not recommend you go any lower that an i3 cpu because the Atom cpus were made for Tablets and such and not Laptops.
Here is a suggestion, you can get a refurbished laptop and if you want Android you can get Remix OS.
But you can still buy that system and if you never liked it, sell it on ebay. Then buy a better one.
This guy made a review of the Voyo V3 https://youtu.be/I7FcN3K-Sjw
That's a good point. What about using a Faraday Cage, or excising that module from the device with pliers?
http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_system_hiding_in_every_mobile_phone
Personally, I'm not sure there is a need. IPMI is horribly complex and has had a steady stream of security holes.
A good embedded system tends to be bullet-proof: At best, you may need a reboot. If you are constantly updating your embedded system, you will also need a bullet-proof upgrade protocol. But that is pretty easy to build (even just with Grub or Uboot). Or look into Google's update protocol: CoreOS has a nice blog post about it.
With Linux, you don't need the horrible complexity of IPMI, period. At best, a serial console and reset control is all you need. You can build an SBC with console connections and reset lines to your other SBCs, or buy a generic addressable power switch and/or serial mux. You may not even need a console if you are diligent when rolling out OS updates.
If you really need a linux based soc, look into the OLinuxIno platform from Olimex:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardware
Otherwise ESP32 as suggested by others is the best choice.
OLinuXino?
I vote for these boards because they're open hardware and a member of OSHWA. If I was buying today I'd probably buy the https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXIno-LIME2/open-source-hardware (or the one with 4G nand if needed)
Following the setup instructions here should get wireless going:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=18575
otherwise, if you are able to get gnome working, networkmanager should serve you well.
From the official website: > What are the power requirements? > > The device is powered by an external AC adapter, and consumes a little under 1W at full load.
Many of the GL.iNET devices are OpenWRT capable, some like this one are gigabit and have better networking.
I can't speak to walmart, but my old standby Amazon has a contender that's on Prime...
You should double/triple check this is compatible, but from my googling seems like that it would be.
Ah, never mind. The time code is https://youtu.be/XPFemeuCTYg?t=2m18s. They spend four minute talking about Linux on Samsung, but never explain "how", and then at two minutes and eighteen seconds they slip in someone clicking on "Linux for Galaxy" in the background. So basically it looks like "Linux on Galaxy" is a program like Linux Deploy for Android, the main advantage is that the dock allows you to use your phone like a normal desktop.
The Kindle is a great device, and plays well with Linux, but the PDF support isn't very good due to the way they have text scaling implemented. It displays the pages 1:1 which is too small for most of the books I tried to read on it (The C Programming Language, for example).
There's a ton of adapters to convert m.2 <-> mini-pcie. For example.
But you will not be able to use a mSATA ssd.
You'll need storage that has a PCIe interface. Mini PCI Express only has 1x lane, whereas all storage will have more than that- I'm pretty sure they'll scale down automatically but not sure!! So you could put a Samsung 960 EVO in there or if you want the cache of all caches put a $50 Intel 16GB Optane drive in (there's a 32GB variant too).
The Armada 3700 SoC has a 2.5Gbit ethernet unit on it, implying it ought be an adequate data pusher. (The EspressoBin doesn't have the needed PHY and is limited to it's 1Gbit ports, but it's an indicator of what the SoC is intended for).
I know, see my replay above as I did buy from craigix. I even got an email from ED saying they were working it out not I figure you can't get blood from a turnip and I had about 1000 hours of forum reading and learning how such devices are made I don't feel totally cheated. Honestly if I still wanted that badly I would have complained more or paid for another. I wanted the Pandora to replace my GP2X, in the end I just bought a MOGA and a Linux Laptop which filled my needs.
Thanks for the pointer.
Here in the UK I think it's going to be cheaper to buy a silent cooler pre-bundled with a card and I'm coming up with this Palit GTX 750Ti which looks like the best bet at the moment but I'll continue looking around.
Depends on the CPU--if you don't mind a celeron, you can get this one. That plus 4GB of RAM and a 120GB SSD should cost around $250, if you don't mind DIY. (Pre-assembled tho--I'm surprised the Meerkat is as low as $450...)
"now for reddit" is a fancy Android app, got a little lost browsing it :P
I don't have an sailfish device either. Ports to Android devices where promised, but so far I didn't see any.. No xwayland is a bummer, but X is about to die and applications are moving to wayland right now.
As for X applications on mobiles:
For Android there's a X server that works pretty well. You can run a full blown desktop through it, but to make actual use of it you'd need a tablet at least https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=x.org.server
Graphical applications on the desktop use frameworks like gtk and qt. As long as the frameworks get ported (which is the case for gtk and qt) the apps run on wayland just fine. Therefore the whole Gnome desktop (nautilus, eog, web, evince, gedit etc) is running natively on wayland just fine thanks to gtk. For KDE the same goes with qt (as far as I've heard)
As long as you have a Linux kernel and drivers you can also fire up an instance of your favourite graphics renderer and use that for your applications. This is what I did here with X on Android: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACsprB0r1pA And yes: Desktop apps on a phone are hardly useable as a daily driver, but for tablets I'm sure it would work out.