ASUS P5E3 Deluxe Includes Linux

ASUS has a track record of releasing great products with well-thought-out features, but here’s a completely new one. As Phoronix has found out first-hand, the new ASUS P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP motherboard offers a pre-loaded version of Linux, which I assume would run off a separate flash chip somewhere on the board.

Because this is all on-board, it boots in mere seconds. Once in, you can browse the web via WiFi or wired connection, or even talk on Skype. As Michael found out, there are a few ways that it could be improved even further, such as by allowing the mounting of external storage. Even without that, this is one cool feature.

At first when hearing about this Express Gate feature, we figured it was just some small feature being worked on by a couple ASUS engineers. When powering up the motherboard, we assumed you would just hit a key sequence and enter a quickly thrown together Linux environment that featured a basic web browser. Well, much to our surprise this was actually a finely crafted Linux desktop environment.

Source: Phoronix