French vendor Linutop's original model of its eponymous machine was the size of a Nintendo DS, with no on-board storage at all – it booted from a USB stick. It's now been replaced with the Linutop 2, essentially a rebadged Ion A603 MiniPC from First Computer – but with European support.

French mini-PC vendor Linutop announced a version of its Ubuntu 8.4-based Linux distribution on a USB key targeting Asus Eee PCs. The key (pictured) is based on its small-footprint Linutop 2.2 distro, which is designed for ultra-low-powered systems such as its own Linutop 2 mini-PC.

Every geek needs a large power-hungry supercomputer, right? Wrong.

French company Linutop offers a tiny machine - the Linutop - no bigger than a mid-sized paperback novel. Weighing a mere 250 grams, this machine will make cleaning your desk a breeze. The Linutop is powered by the AMD Geode LX700, and consumes just 5 watts of power - a sure benefit to any taxed power grid. The Linutop has no moving parts and boasts 4 USB 2.0 ports, ethernet, audio in & out, and 250MB of RAM.

"Linutop 2 has an internal flash memory to store the software and the operating system (External USB Key for Linutop 1)..."

Nettops are gaining popularity following the success of the popular Netbooks. Linutop is introducing their new Nettop the Linutop 3.

Linutop announced the third generation of its compact Linux-based PC. Larger and with twice the memory of previous models, the Linutop 3 has a 1GHz Via C7 CPU, gigabit Ethernet, dual SATA ports, and PCIe expansion, the company says.

A shift from multi-core power-gobbling monsters toward whisper-quiet systems with single-digit power consumption is rippling through the desktop market. This trend plays right into the hands of a Paris-based company called Linutop, which offers a miniature Linux-based desktop system.

In 2007 we ran a story on the tiny linux PC The Linutop. Now the diminutive system has hit version 2.4 and with it an official launch in the UK. The pint-sized, open source Linux PC is designed to run silently and is highly energy efficient at just 8 watts.

The latest version, V4.0 RC3, of Damn Small Linux was released today and it is really very small indeed. Described as a 50Mb mini-desktop oriented Linux OS, DSL is actually small enough to fit and boot from a business card CD as a live Linux distribution.