| The NetCruzer runs its own proprietary OS on a PIC-based CPU, so you sure as
heck aren't going to be loading Ubuntu on it. And, it comes with NetBIOS
support, which to me means that it's MS-polluted out of the box; although if you
have to support a Windoze farm at home I suppose that would be a good thing for
you.
There seem to be many Pi-comparable boards now, even at Pi-comparable
prices ($49 is the asking price for e.g. the Cubieboard), all capable of running full
Ubuntu if you really must, or at least a small Debian or Gentoo distro that can
even self-host your server development. The non-RaspberryPi ones I've been
looking at all have wired Ethernet ports, most have [e]SATA built-in, and all
claim to have real USB host ports (I understand the Pi's behavior as a USB host
is still, to put it gently, problematic).
Does anyone out there have
personal experience with any of these things? It's really well past time I
replaced my old 133MHz Pentium firewall/router/server with something quieter and
just a bit more up-to-date, but I've been resisting taking the plunge until I
find something that actually fits my needs:
- very low power
consumption,
- built-in or easily-added (and reliable, unlike the Pi)
dual wired Ethernet, and
- I would very much prefer not to waste any
board space or supply current running bluetooth, wifi, or HD video
decoders.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
