[PLUG] Cheapest possible linux hardware?

[Larry Brigman]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 8:39 PM, Eric House <eehouse at eehouse.org> wrote:
> A friend and I had a crazy idea for a linux-based appliance that only
> works if it can be an order of magnitude cheaper than the Soekris and
> PCEngines boxes I'm used to tinkering with.  And so I went googling to
> figure out just how low in the system-on-chip world I could go and
> still run something close to vanilla linux.  And found nothing.
>
> It must be that I don't know what search terms to use.  Does anybody
> here?  That is, how do I figure out what the cheapest SOC is for which
> I can build my own kernel and userspace stack?  Or does one even do
> that in the embedded world?  Does one instead run something the SOC
> vendor provides?  I think of myself as knowing "embedded linux"
> because I work on a linux-based smartphone OS, but smartphone hardware
> is a lot more capable than what I'm trying to research here.  Any
> pointers to get me started?
>

It really depends on what you want to do with it.
There are devices that you can experiment with that will run linux
without too much problem
Look at the two different project out there.
openwrt (dd-wrt)
nslu2-linux

Both of these work on hardware that you can get for less than $100.
The Fry's Wireless N router (and the d-link equivalent) is listed on
the dd-wrt database.

Now if you want to build your own embedded system; the development
boards are normally
an order of magnitude more.  The development boards are a pre-cursor
to the real hardware
that will be built.

Also a couple websites for hardware.
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/
http://free-electrons.com/community/hardware/boards/