Making the most of your tiny computer also means running some great software on it.
Here’s a collection of really useful software for:
- firewalls
- gateways / routers
- wireless networking
- VoIP servers
- music players and media servers
- network storage
- general purpose operating systems
Plus some links for downloading:
- drivers and firmware
- tools for writing CF cards or accessing the console
You might also want to check out our collection of How To’s and Tutorials in case there’s instructions there for installing your chosen software onto your tiny computer.
Firewalls
m0n0.ch/wall
monowall aims to create a complete, embedded firewall software package that, when used together with an embedded PC, provides all the important features of commercial firewall boxes – including ease of use – at a fraction of the price.
monowall is based on a bare-bones version of FreeBSD 6, along with a web server, PHP and a few other utilities.
The monowall website provides ready-to-use monowall images for the ALIX and WRAP boards, the net4801 and net5501, and other hardware.
monowall is worth considering seriously if you’re looking for a firewall or wireless access point. It is an excellent package.
For your convenience, you can find prebuilt images of monowall on our Operating System images page.
We also offer monowall pre-installed on a range of our servers.
www.pfsense.org
The pfSense®
system is a free, open source customised distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router.
It is derived from m0n0wall and has a huge list of features, all of which are accessible via the web interface, as well as a package system allowing safe, efficient and easy expansion.
The pfSense® software is an excellent operating system, with a great interface and some cool tutorials available on the pfSense® website. It’s definitely worth a look.
We also highly recommend the ultimate pfSense® reference book pfSense: The Definitive Guide to the Open Source Firewall and Router Distribution to help you make the most of this fantastic piece of software.
For your convenience, you can find our Rident™ customised images of the pfSense® system on our Operating System images page.
We also offer Rident™ pre-installed on a range of our servers.
www.zeroshell.net
Zeroshell is a small Linux distribution designed for servers and embedded devices, which aims to provide the main network services required for a LAN. Zeroshell has a web GUI for configuration and administration.
Its features include a RADIUS server, a Captive Portal, QoS (Quality of Service) management and traffic shaping, VPN, routing, bridging, packet filtering and inspecting, DNS, DHCP, NTP and more. It is particularly interesting because it supports VPN bonding for improved throughput and redundancy with multiple ADSL connections.
www.ipcop.org
IPCop is a complete Linux firewall distribution, geared towards home and SOHO users.
It has a very user-friendly interface, and its sole purpose is to protect the networks it is installed on.
A full list of IPCop’s objectives and features is available in their documentation.
EMBCop was a distribution of IPCop specifically designed for embedded boards but it is no longer being actively developed.
www.ipfire.org
IPFire is a hardened Linux appliance distribution designed for use as a firewall.
IPFire focuses on security, stability and ease of use.
It offers corporate-level network protection for anyone who needs it, from home users all the way up to large corporations, school networks and authorities.
A variety of add-ons can be installed with a single click, to add more features to the base system.
Gateway / router
www.clearfoundation.com/Software
ClearOS is a family of powerful server/gateway operating systems designed for enterprises, small businesses, and homes.
Based on Linux, ClearOS (previously called ClarkConnect) offers firewalling, VPN, web proxy, e-mail, groupware, database and web serving, and file and print services, along with a comprehensive web-based interface for easy configuration.
www.mikrotik.com
MikroTik RouterOS is a router operating system and software which turns a regular PC into a dedicated router with all the necessary features – routing, firewall, bandwidth management, wireless access point, backhaul link, hotspot gateway, VPN server and more. It’s also the operating system of Mikrotik’s range of RouterBOARDs.
leaf.sourceforge.net
LEAF is a secure, feature-rich, customisable embedded Linux network appliance for use in a variety of network topologies.
Although it can be used in other ways, it is primarily used as a Internet gateway, router, firewall, and wireless access point.
www.zenloadbalancer.com/community/downloads/
Zen Load Balancer isn’t a gateway or firewall – it’s a load balancer manager for providing high availability for TCP and UDP services and data line communications.
It has an easy-to-use web interface, along with advanced administration for network interfaces and routes, unlimited farms configuration, advanced checking for TCP farms, advanced check and monitoring for backend servers, clustering for active-passive load balancing services, monitoring graphs, configuration backups, vlan support, real time config sync replication for cluster nodes, HTTP specific load balancing, client persistence, SSL wrapper, and more.
Wireless networking
openwrt.org
OpenWrt is a highly extensible GNU/Linux distribution for embedded devices.
OpenWrt is built from the ground up to be a full-featured, easily modifiable operating system for your router.
Most people use it for wireless networking, creating mesh networks, wireless routing, wireless access points, captive portals and wireless hotspots.
www.star-os.com
GeckoV4™ is a WiFi router Operating system / Firmware for Wireless ISPs, designed for PCs and Embedded (arm, mips, x86) devices.
Powerful enough to run mission critical Enterprise systems, but also easy to use, featuring a powerful ssh-based, mouse point and click user Interface.
This software is great for those who like to Do it yourself (DIY).
VoIP systems
askozia.com/askoziapbx
AskoziaPBX is a complete firmware solution for running an embedded telephone system, incorporating Asterisk.
It’s very easy to use “out of the box”, easy to configure and runs on a wide range of hardware.
Askozia does auto-provisioning, voicemail, conferencing, call parking and more, and speaks ISDN, Analogue and VoIP.
linux.voyage.hk/voyage-one
Voyage ONE is an enhanced edition of Voyage Linux.
It aims at providing VoIP functionality via Asterisk for embedded x86 platform.
Development on Voyage ONE has been discontinued, but the latest version 0.8.5 (from May 2012) is still available via their website.
Media center
www.imedialinux.com
iMedia Linux is a hybrid between a small embedded linux distribution and a full featured linux distribution, designed for mini-ITX / x86 systems.
iMedia Linux is not as restricted as an embedded linux distribution, yet it’s much lighter in disk space and CPU/memory usage than a full featured linux distribution.
iMedia Linux embedded systems can be used in ATMs, Kiosks, vending machines, industrial computers, Point of Sale, multimedia system, Internet appliances and dozens of other applications.
And they offer a “lite” version, iMedia Alix Linux, specifically for use on the ALIX boards.
linux.voyage.hk/voyage-mpd
Voyage MPD (or “Music Player Daemon”) is a special edition of Voyage Linux that turned embedded hardware (e.g. ATOM, ALIX) into a digital music player and audio server.
We use this software to create our own on-hold music player, and it has worked flawlessly for years.
linutop.com
Linutop OS is primarily designed for use as an internet kiosk, digital signage system or thin client.
It’s based on Ubuntu and can be easily customised with additional software. It’s also fully compatible with online applications and all office standard formats and can be used for office work, word processing, media player, Internet, monitoring and more.
Network storage
www.freenas.org
FreeNAS is a free, open source, Network-Attached Storage (NAS) operating system based on FreeBSD.
FreeNAS uses a custom version of FreeBSD and a web-based interface to provide a fully-featured NAS environment.
FreeNAS offers software-based storage and backup solutions for a variety of applications, from home to enterprise, and supports sharing across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems.
Operating systems
linux.voyage.hk
Voyage Linux is a Debian Sarge-based distro (voyage) built from scratch.
It is best run on a x86-based embedded platform such as Soekris 45xx/48xx and ALIX boards.
Voyage Linux is best suited for running a full-feature firewall, wireless access point, Asterisk/VoIP gateway, music player or network storage device.
For your convenience, you can find prebuilt images of Voyage Linux on our Operating System images page.
We also offer Voyage pre-installed on a range of our servers.
www.openbsd.org
The OpenBSD project produces a free, multi-platform 4.4BSD-based UNIX-like operating system.
Their emphasis is on portability, standardisation, accuracy, proactive security and integrated cryptography.
And with only two remote holes in the default install in a very long time, they stand by their claims.
You can download our prebuilt OS images on our Operating System images page, and install them onto your computer yourself.
Choose from Voyage Linux, m0n0wall and pfSense® images.
For your convenience, we also offer Voyage, m0n0wall and Rident™ pre-installed on a range of our servers and Compact Flash cards.
Drivers
Windows 7 drivers
Get the most out of your fit-PC2 with the latest Windows 7 drivers.
Windows XP drivers
Get the most out of your fit-PC2 with the latest Windows XP drivers.
Linux driver
From the madwifi project.
FreeBSD driver
The Wistron CM9 is supported under FreeBSD 5.2 and onwards with the ath driver.
OpenBSD driver
The Wistron CM9 is supported under OpenBSD 3.7 and onwards with the ath driver (ported from FreeBSD).
Windows driver
Windows drivers are generally available from the manufacturer of your computer and may already be available on your computer.
Linux driver
Please also read the documentation for using the picoLCD in Linux.
For more information, please visit Mini-Box.com.
For most recent firmware for our hardware, please visit the manufacturer’s website as listed below.
- ALIX 1 / ALIX 2 and ALIX 3 (PC Engines)
- net5501 / net6501 (Soekris)
- fit-PC2 / fit-PC2i (CompuLab)
Tools
physdiskwrite
physdiskwrite is a small Windows command line tool that allows you to write disk images onto any storage device, including hard drives, solid state drives, mSATA drives, Compact Flash cards or SD cards.
Tera Term (Pro) – Windows
Tera Term (Pro) is a free software terminal emulator (communication program) for MS-Windows.
It supports VT100 emulation, telnet connection, serial port connection, and so on.
With an easy to use interface and an SSH client version available, this is a handy addition to your software collection.
PDFCreator
PDFCreator is a free, open-source tool for creating PDFs quickly and easily from any Windows program that is able to print.
Note: Although we do our best to provide useful, high-quality resources for you, we haven’t explored everything listed here in depth, so please use your common sense when deciding which resources you want to make use of.
