I noticed the Trimslice device listed under the officially supported hardware list and, never having heard of it before, I went to look it up. It seems to be a really cool little device, and I'm thinking about getting one to use as my main home server. My current server is an HP Envy laptop which is a bit overpowered for my uses (znc, mpd, samba, and a torrent client are the extent of my server requirements).

Has anyone here used one? Was there any trouble getting Slackware ARM going on it? How does it compare to a Pi? Would you recommend it?

The Trimslice is the main build machine for Slackware ARM - so there's no issues with installing Slackware upon it. However, there's something strange that I have never been able to get to the bottom of: using an ext4 file system causes a kernel panic and USB errors, and has done so ever since I got it working a few years ago. I might have a look at that again at some point, but wouldn't hold out much hope since I tried everything I could think of to narrow down the issue. Everyone else was just using ext3 at the time, so they didn't notice; and consequently Slackware ARM's install docs recommend using ext3 for this reason.

If you want to use graphics or audio, then you're out of luck because Compulab didn't push the support to the upstream kernel (and probably never will).
If you just want a headless server then it's fine.
I have the Trimslice Pro (internal 32GB SSD) with 1GB RAM and on board Ethernet. I access it remotely and conduct the installation over the serial console.

This machine will be better than a RPi for a server because it has more RAM and is a faster machine.
If you do buy one and find that it gets very hot (it shouldn't be *as* hot as it used to be now that the power management works properly), then this is normal and apparently Compulab tested it extensively whilst it was hot enough to cook an egg -- and assured us all that it was just fine! ;-)

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Somewhat related, I need a low-power, light weight, no-nonsense and reliable machine to be a remote local network monitoring/maintenance tool. Specifically, we need a machine in a remote radio FM transmitter station connected to the studio via IP that will be able to remotely adjust/configure/fix the network configuration inside the shack (so we won't have to drive to the top of a mountain in a hurricane). We'd be using standard CLI tools to diagnose and fiddle the remote network. Nothing fancy or GUIy. We don't want to build anything from parts.

I've been using Linux since version 0.98 and am not averse to a little jiggery pokery here and there to make it work, but my serious hacking days are behind me and this will be used mainly by Windowsy/Appley sorts of folks, so it needs to be (almost) ready to use out of the box, if possible.

Does anyone here have experiences with either of these products, (or other possible candidate?), and can speak from experience as to the reliability, ease of configuration and maintenance (e.g. remote OS update/upgrade) of these appliances for this sort of project?


MM

If you can get a USB transmitter, and put Slackware on to an SD card, I'd recommend using the original SheevaPlug Development kit (not Guru or Dream)
http://www.globalscaletechnologies.c...g-dev-kit.aspx

The OpenRD Client (if these are still for sale) has far more ports, but unfortunately after it's been switched off for a while I some times find that I need to power cycle mine a few times before it will boot.

I've started to have issues with the Trimslice as well - although it's also been known to run for months without a reboot or issue, but recently it's started hanging. Whether this is kernel or hardware related I am not sure. At one point during the summer months when it was continuously building packages, it was too hot to touch. I'm not a hardware guy but in my experience of aircon failing in my server rooms and the resulting intermittent failures from servers, tape loaders and so on, this cannot have helped the device.

The Sheevaplug on the other hand, has been faultless - apart from one of them where the PSU died. This was a common problem with them but I suspect they fixed this in the later releases. Mine was the first batch several years ago.

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I run my AC100 off the internal e-mmc mounted ext4 and I think it's using the same SOC. Although I use it as netbook, so it's rare that it get's left on overnight, I use it frequently all day and did not notice any issues.
Using it as netbook requires having working grafix drivers so I used ubuntu's AC100 tuned 2.6.38.3 sources to build my own kernel, I never felt I needed to use the 3.1 kernel ubuntu has for the AC100 as maybe the only other thing they may have got working is the integrated speakers.