Introducing the SheevaPlug

I have been thinking for a while about setting up an all-in-one Linux box in my local network. The goal was to have a NAS, web bittorrent client, FTP client in a cheap, low power consuming box.

I finally got a SheevaPlug at New IT, the European reseller for around 120€ shipping included. This thing is amazing. It runs a lightweight Ubuntu 9.04, on a 1.2GHz ARM, with 512MB RAM and 512MB ROM. For a mean consumption of around 5W. I just plugged a 500GB external HD to get some storage space.

The only drawback I have found so far is that Ubuntu 9.10 and later are not compatible with the plug. They are built for ARM v6, whereas the SheevaPlug runs an ARM v5. So only security updates are provided, but the other packages are frozen in their Jaunty version.


To get up-to-date packages, there is 2 solutions :

• Compiling by hand
• Switching to Debian, which still supports ARM v5