Linux Gadgets, GNU/Linux Devices, Open Hardware, and "Linux Phones"

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 31, 2025

• Hardware/Modding

  • European Business Press SA ☛ Kontron and congatec partner on secure embedded Linux platforms

    Kontron and congatec have deepened their cooperation to deliver modular, cyber-secure embedded platforms targeting industrial and IoT applications. The two companies are combining Kontron’s hardened Linux-based operating system, KontronOS, with congatec’s application-ready aReady.COM ecosystem.

    The collaboration is relevant as it addresses growing security and regulatory pressures in embedded design, including IEC 62443 requirements and the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). By integrating preconfigured hardware and software building blocks, the partners aim to reduce development effort, speed up certification, and lower total system costs.

  • CNX Software ☛ Add four Gigabit or 2.5Gbps Ethernet ports to the Raspberry Pi 5 with this expansion board

    Waveshare PCIE TO 4-CH Gigabit/2.5G ETH Board (B) is a 4-port Gigabit or 2.5 Gbps Ethernet board designed for the Raspberry Pi 5. This board connects four RJ45 ports to the Pi’s 16-pin PCIe interface and also includes a mounting option for the Pi5 Connector Adapter (C). The only limiting factor is the Pi’s PCIe Gen2/Gen3 x1 interface, as the 2.5GbE ports share the available bandwidth and cannot operate at full speed simultaneously. The Gigabit Ethernet variant features Realtek RTL8153 USB to Ethernet controllers, while the 2.5GbE variant relies on RTL8156 controllers, and both integrate a VL805 PCIe to USB bridge chip.

  • Hackaday ☛ TULIP: The Ultimate Intelligent Peripheral For The HP-41 Handheld Calculator

    [Andrew Menadue] wrote in to let us know about the TULIP-DevBoard and TULIP-Module being developed on GitHub.

  • It's FOSS ☛ Experiencing This Powerful NXP SBC Made Me Realize of My Limitations

    Using an industry-oriented device can surely test the limits of a DIY enthusiast.

  • Hackaday ☛ Xcc700: Self-Hosted C Compiler For The ESP32/Xtensa

    With two cores at 240 MHz and about 8.5 MB of non-banked RAM if you’re using the right ESP32-S3 version, this MCU seems at least in terms of specifications to be quite the mini PC. Obviously this means that it should be capable of self-hosting its compiler, which is exactly what [Valentyn Danylchuk] did with the xcc700 C compiler project.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Open source project brings 53-year-old interface to USB — GPIB adapter v3 adds integrated Ethernet port with PoE

    An open source USB to GPIB adapter will soon reach version 3, bringing an integrated Ethernet port with PoE support to the design. Project originator Kai Gossner (Xyphro) recently contacted CNX Software about the impending milestone. Regular readers will have moderately fresh GPIB imprints on their brains, as we recently reported on this ancient (53-year-old) cable connectivity standard introduced by HP back in 1972 getting its first stable Linux driver.

  • Ken Shirriff ☛ Conditions in the Intel 8087 floating-point chip's microcode

    In the 1980s, if you wanted your computer to do floating-point calculations faster, you could buy the Intel 8087 floating-point coprocessor chip. Plugging it into your IBM PC would make operations up to 100 times faster, a big boost for spreadsheets and other number-crunching applications. The 8087 uses complicated algorithms to compute trigonometric, logarithmic, and exponential functions. These algorithms are implemented inside the chip in microcode. I'm part of a group that is reverse-engineering this microcode. In this post, I examine the 49 types of conditional tests that the 8087's microcode uses inside its algorithms. Some conditions are simple, such as checking if a number is zero or negative, while others are specialized, such as determining what direction to round a number.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Guido Günther: Phosh 2025 in Retrospect

    As in previous, years we took another look back at what changed in Phosh in 2025 and instead of just updating our notes why not again share it again here:

    The Phosh developers focus from day one was to make devices running Phosh daily drivable without having to resort to any proprietary OSes as a fallback. This year showed improvements in some important areas people rely on like cell broadcasts and emergency calls, further improving usability and starting some ground work we’ll need for some upcoming features.