ever since i installed debian on my nslu2 i’ve been overjoyed by the results. previously, i had relied on old pentium3 PCs to become my always on linux boxes. but now i’m obsessed with the idea of super low power ARM devices that aren’t loud and noisy, and don’t take up a lot of space.

…and so my nslu2 has become a NAS+ device, it’s providing services and functions outside of its original purpose. and like i’ve said i’m very happy with it. today i was researching what would be the next evolution of the nslu2. i looked to linksys’ site for storage solutions and found some pretty looking NAS devices. seems to be a huge focus on multimedia in these devices now. i also looked at a solution from seagate-maxtor. all these products appear to be linux based, yet geared towards windows users and people that use SMB shares. not shocking news.

but i’m not even sure if you can SSH into them, probably not? they have a canned feature set which most of is cool, but i’m not interested in. and as of yet i don’t see any full-linux-firmware communities built up around these devices yet. so now what..is there no true successor to the nslu2? true i could settle for a SMB-only device without any freedom in features, but i don’t want to. i’ve been spoiled by what i can do with an nslu2.

i finally found an article regarding QNAP devices and installing debian on them. the devices look great but way too pricey for me. and then i came across the sheevaplug! a device i happened to know about already from slashdot and filed away somewhere in my brain. this device (or something like it) would be awesome for a new “NAS+” device. and it’s so cheap and supposedly going to get cheaper. hopefully i’ll get one sometime in 2010 to mess around with.

here is _the_ site for installing debian on some of the above mentioned devices: http://www.cyrius.com/debian