Casman Blog

Interesting technology news for Linux enthusiasts. Plat’Home, a Linux pioneer in Japan, is running a contest around their OpenMicroServer series. If you’re not familiar with their products, several reviews have come out lately including Jason Perlow’s at ZDNet. (Note this is not the exact model that is being offered in the contest.)

The contest is called “Will Linux Work?” in kind of the same vein as the off-beat “Will it blend?” videos you can find on YouTube, but it has a more serious purpose in mind. From August 1st through September 5th, 2008, anyone can send in ideas for how they’d like to use their tough, small, eco-friendly devices.

From the Plat’Home site:

Plat’Home’s OpenMicroServers are known for being tough. Their compact, fanless, diskless design combined with the stability of Linux creates a product that is great for companies that configure once and then stick the server off in a corner for weeks and months and years, even, without checking its condition. This “benign neglect” is tough on normal servers. Not for Plat’Home’s OpenMicroServers.

For four weeks, from August 1st, 2008, through September 5th, 2008, Plat’Home is conducting an online contest, soliciting ideas for the most interesting and challenging conditions to successfully run Plat’Home’s OpenMicroServers.

Does your small business in Arizona have a server room with no air conditioning? Do you live in Alaska and need servers that might be subjected to cold conditions? Are you an archeologist that needs a computer that can be taken on a dig with you and survive dust and bugs? Tell us about it! We want to know if Linux is the solution! “Will Linux Work?”

After collecting ideas for 5 weeks, Plat’Home will announce a winner. The prize? Five OpenMicroServers, and you get to use them — and keep them — as you see fit. At $599 a pop, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Personally, I’ve been thinking about redo-ing my car mp3 player. I have to look into it a little more, but a small Linux server like this might work really well.