Splashtop instant-on Linux hacked

Run more from your firmware

INSTANT-ON OPERATING SYSTEMS are quickly becoming fashionable on a variety of motherboards.

ASUS has been one of the main advocates of the technology, and has recently employed the use of its Splashtop Linux-based OS on the majority of its motherboards and notebook products. ASUS brands the software 'Express Gate'.

Splashtop comes bunded with Firefox, Skype, IM, and media-playback applications, and is embedded within the computer's BIOS - though the majority of the underlying applications are installed to local storage.

This means it bypasses the computer's usual OS, and is higly optimised for a quick boot.

But though Splashtop provides a variety of useful applications, users (and hackers) have wanted more - and it seems they're getting what they want.

Members of the Phoronix forums have successfully manipulated the underlying Linux-based operating system to support a much larger range of applications.

The hackers have been able to run Splashtop from a USB stick on non-ASUS motherboards, boot Splashtop within a virtual machine, run custom applications, and launch a Linux terminal within the OS.

Devicevm, the company behind Splashtop, had previously mentioned opening up the application environment and possibly releasing an SDK, to allow user-installable applications.

The company has also added a variety of new features to the OS including DVD-playback, photo management and virtualisation support.

This, however, hasn't been sufficient to keep the hackers at bay.