A new toy arrived

My little new toy arrived! It’s a Thin Client Tux@Home Q-Box 270 (Intel Atom) with 1GB RAM and 500GB hard disk. One of the nice things about the device is the low power consumption, only 10-15Watt. This is important because I want to use the device as a small home server. To avoid paying the “windows tax / proprietary software tax” I bought the computer at ixsoft.de, a online shop which sells hardware with GNU/Linux pre-installed. It came with Fedora GNU/Linux and now runs the Debian GNU/Linux (Squeeze) operating system which I consider more suitable for the tasks I want to use the device.

Now the more interesting part: What software / services should run on this little helper? In a first step I want to enable ssh access from outside, install an IRC bouncer and a subversion (SVN) server. The next think I would like to install is some kind of address book and calendar which can be used from any device (desktop computer, laptop, smart phone). But therefor I have to look into some solutions first. Kolab looks quite interesting. But I have to see how well it works with my software/hardware setup (Claws-Mail (Thunderbird) and Android). OwnCloud is another project I want to look at. Maybe this could be a nice solution for some file hosting.

If you have a tip for a good address book and calender solution or any other fancy idea what could be done with the Thin Client than drop me a mail or add a comment.