My experience with the Cobalt Qube has piqued my interest in small server appliances. An obvious next step would be the Mac G4 Cube. It’s beautiful, features passive cooling, and is known to support Linux. Sadly, these are still bringing over $150 at auction. However, there are several other appliances that are equally interesting to the Linux hacker.

Among these are the Whistle InterJet 2 which is built to run BSD and the PowerElf from GreenComputers. I also like the Celestix Aries Server Appliance line including the Aries 210 the 310, and the 320. The Intrepid M from Levanta looks neat, too, although it’s still too new to be considered affordable. Some new hardware that is affordable are two systems from NorhTec- the MicroClient Jr and the MicroClient.

Aside from the Mac Cube, my first choice would be the Toshiba Magnia SG20.
There seem to be many options for people for older, Linux-friendly hardware in a small form factor server.

I totally spaced three machines that I’ve always wanted, even though they’re too old to be very practical. The Next Cube, BeBox, and the Mac Classic, which I’m ashamed to say I threw dozens of in the recycling heap at the University Of Illinois. Ouch!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 25th, 2007 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Play, qube. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.