Post sent using tut from an olde EfikaMX smart top machine.
I think I might be among the few still using one of these — and I actually use it for a lot of things: it hosts a squid proxy (together with privoxy and tor to access the network), acts as a file server (it has a 5 Tb USB drive attached to it, it had a second 1,5 Tb one — but that one died), hosts my Gemini capsule, a web remote for Samsung TV that I cobbled together in Python…
@gray
Sadly, their machines, neither ARM, nor PowerPC ones, didn't get as much community love as Raspberry Pis did.
TBH, it took me years to finally start using my EfikaMX after getting it — so there simply was no way for me to return it 😂
It didn't play well with my TV and I didn't have other HDMI displays at the time. Later I've figured out a way to work that around an I used it as a makeshift media center with TV, it had a web-based remote for Totem in Python.
@gray
Sadly, it was the time when most of the development ceased. I got an Xbox, so it wasn't very useful.
Later I've found a way of using it completely headless as a VPN box and proxy — and this is where it truly got its second life, I still use it in this role, but as you can see, it does so much more now.
It's still running old 2.6 kernel with backported network subsystem, I've never found a way to append device tree and make 3.0 boot on it.
@gray
But I have updated most other software in Debian it had — it even has a more or less recent GCC on it, I wasn't cross-compiling it and built it natively — took me ages 😂
I even had to use swapfile on external USB drive, it slows down to a crawl when you do this — but it was worth it, with gccgo I can build some nice software on it natively.
Oh, speaking of Go, almost forgot — it hosts Bloat too!