[Freedombox-discuss] Plug platforms and FreedomBox target hardware

[Jonathan Zeppettini]

As there has been some discussion about the Iomega iConnect product I
though it might be beneficial to share my experience with a similar
product; the Seagate DockStar. It has similar specs but less RAM (128
MB vs 256 MB) [1]. I believe it is mentioned on the FB wiki already
and I think it is a great platform to do testing on as the product has
been discontinued and can be had for as little as $30 [2]. Installing
Debian on these devices is rather straight forward (for this audience)
[3]. I have a few that are used for different tasks, e.g., media
streaming, OpenVPN, and headless low power BitTorrent client. My
conclusion at this point is that a FreedomBox that seeks to do more
than 1 task well would be much more suited to next gen plug hardware
with a 2 GHz  processor [4] (and 512 MB+ of RAM) as opposed to the 1.2
GHz variety common on today's devices. Further empirical inquiry may
be beneficial but anecdotally having a current plug serve static HTML
with nginx, download files using transmission, and act as an rsync
target server is not advisable...


[1] http://plugapps.com/index.php5/Portal:Hardware
[2] They originally retailed for about $100 and periodically go on special.
[3] http://wiki.daviddarts.com/Debian_on_the_Seagate_Dockstar
[4] http://www.marvell.com/company/press_kit/MarvellPlugComputer30_PressRelease_1_5_2010.pdf

-- 
Jonathan Zeppettini  //  http://jz.bz  //  +1 514 291 7800  ////