Craziest/most "exotic" devices able to run Linux?

On a hard drive. No, not a motherboard connected to a hard drive, a hard drive by itself. Sprite is brilliant.
- Sorry to hijack, but does someone have a link to the talk? Article mentions it, but link no longer works.
  
  Haven't watched it but could be this: https://piped.video/watch?v=0Da6OARhgXk
- Lol I didn't see your comment and posted almost the same comment.

Linux can be run on an Nintendo 64. Mainline Kernel support has been added in v5.12
- I tried it a few years ago and it kernel panics due to lack of RAM with the expansion card.
- The nintendo 64 was basically a computer(thats why it was so easy to emulate) but thats still cool.

A business card
- Idk, needs more e-waste :(
  
  Tell that to Samsung!

There is actually a way to run Debian on Lego Mindstorms toy robot kit using ev3dev
Tho I never owned one of these kit, it still pretty cool looking
- Actually the os on it by default is also a bare bones linux installation. Another lego brick thats really cool is the rcx which was released in 1998 and someone ported the jvm to it.

We had a fancy coffee machine at an old job that ran Linux. If I remember correctly it was a top of line cafection or zulay machine. One of the ones with a touch screen. Just booted off an SD card as well iirc so probably would have been pretty easy to hack on.
I still find it weird that managed switches run Linux as I generally would think that at those data rates they'd need something closer to the metal but with the magic of HW offloading that's been a thing in enterprise for a while and OpenWRT even supports some consumer grade ones now.
Some (probably most) ebook readers like the Kindle.
Many newer cars.
TI NSpire calculators.
A slow cooker. https://www.linux.com/news/crock-pot-slow-cooker-wi-fi-smarts-hands/
A cable modem. Specifically the Motorola SB6120 can. Maybe others too.
WiFi enabled SD cards. https://elinux.org/Wifi_SD
A dead badger. http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/installing-linux-on-a-dead-badger-users-notes/
EDIT: Totally forgot about these 2 ham radios. You can run and access Linux on both of these. One is by design as its running on a Pi, the other via mod by R1CBU booting the OS from an SD card.
sBitx v2: https://www.hfsignals.com/index.php/sbitx-v2/
Xiegu x6100: https://r1cbu.ru/index.php/home/radio-software/x6100
- A dead badger.
  🤣
- managed switches run Linux as I generally would think that at those data rates they'd need something closer to the metal
  They might be running userspace networking
  https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/userspace-networking-dpdk
  Also hard drives. No, not like that.
  https://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=1
  
  It doesn't have as much to do with where the network stack is running, but that they're leveraging hardware offloading. Their CPUs generally aren't powerfull enough to switch packets at gigabit speeds let alone on many interfaces at gigabit or multi-gig speeds. Its by leveraging ASICs and maybe even some using FPGAs for hardware offload that they can switch packets at line rate. I understand how they do it, I still just find it kind of weird and cool.
  I didn't list HDDs as someone else had mentioned that already. I was just listing a few devices that weren't mentioned in other comments yet.
- Software defined radios are kinda a stretch. The radio hardware isn’t running Linux. There’s a receiver that converts the signal to digital and then a Linux computer processes the signal. Basically the exact same thing as my computer having a radio receiver plugged in to it but packaged up as a standalone thing. If that counts, my keyboard runs Linux.

- You reminded me of a blog post by Tailscale where they jailbreak their robot vacuum and install a Open-source replacement for the cloud functionality

The leapfrog leappad used to run linux. People were able to hack them in order to run full on operating systems, by rooting their children's learning toy
- You still can. Not only that, you can install emulators and Retroarch, the thing is capable of running consoles up through PS1 games, though the button mapping for most games is a bit awkward.
  Also !sbcgaming if you're into that sort of thing.
- I loved that thing as a kid, I'd completely forgotten about it!'.

Read an article some years back about someone installing Linux on a hard drive.
Not on a computer with a hard drive. On the embedded ARM core inside the hard drive. One of them anyways, I think this particular hard drive had three CPUs inside it actually.

The Sega Dreamcast. Live CD distributions of Linux were really taking off around then, so some enterprising sorts decided to see if they could get Linux running on the Dreamcast. They partially succeeded, though accessing some of the hardware was... dicey. That said, the Dreamcast had a native keyboard adapter and they managed to get support for that going pretty quickly.
Unfortunately the project kind of stagnated, but you can read up on more of it on the sourceforge project page.
- Dreamcast emulation was a huge hobby of mine! I can’t believe it worked so well.

Not crazy or exotic, but the Wii runs linux with a DE. Not very performant, but a neat thing to install and tryout.

A hard disk. Not boot from a hard disk, but the hard disk controller is actually made to run Linux: http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=1

I once saw someone running Doom on a pregnancy tester, so I'd imagine that it could run Linux as well.
- I saw that too, but it was a bit misleading. The pregnancy tester for some reason had a pretty high resolution monochrome OLED display, so the guy used the tester's display to show the Doom graphics. The actual device running Doom was a more powerful microcontroller external to the tester stick.
  
  It wasn't even original display. Original display wasn't "pixel based", it just had couple of segments on a LCD which display pregnant/non pregnant texts and some other info. So it was (is) just a doom on a microcontroller+OLED in a pregnancy test case.
  
  Well, I tried to look for the video I saw but couldn't find it. All of the videos I could find have the game in monochrome with a high frame rate, while the video I remember watching looked similar to the GBA version but with a significantly worse resolution and frame rate.
  
  After looking through some other Doom on "insert device here" videos, I couldn't find it but I found one where the gameplay looks similar (even though it's a completely different device and the game is clearly modded). The video is called Doom 2 on optimus maximus.
  
  I'll have to re-watch the video again if I can find it but I'm pretty sure that the video I saw was a different one because the one I remember watching had a pixelated screen screen with a low frame rate.
- That was foone
  
  Foone's great, always happy when her content pops up

A PS4 can be jailbroken to run Linux. You can then install Steam and Halo and have Halo on Linux on PS4

- thermostats not really.. Smart fridges most likely yes.
  
  Some of the smart thermostats almost certainly do. Also this one 100% does. https://hestiapi.com/

Nothing too crazy, bus information table running Linux Mint:

Some of them (run) Windows. You can identify those based on:
:::spoiler error ```
| Unhandled exception | X | |
| | | An unhandled exception occured in TFT_LCD.exe | | | | Exception = System.AccessViolationException | | | | Messagr = Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often | | an indication that other memory is corrupt. | | | | FullText = System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write | | protected memory. This is often an indication that other memeory is | | corrupt. | | at | | ... |

:::
- Windows ones are fun. I especially love it when the McDonald's terminal bug checks, and safe boots into a desktop. Or when the train station terminal app crashes, and an employee restarts the app remotely. Or that time when someone hacked into terminals at a particular train station, and played porn. Some people weren't amused.

I had an old iPod nano that was hacked with a light Linux distro. Could even run doom on it... It ran, but wasn't practical to play it.
- Rockbox, by any chance? I have fond memories of playing doom with that scroll wheel...
  
  Pretty sure it was just called iPod Linux.
  Just looked.. looks like rockbox is the successor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPodLinux

We have a carbon evaporator that runs linux
- It's how they got Han Solo out of the Carbonite.
  
  It's definitely not as exciting as it sounds. It applies a large current through some graphite rods which causes the carbon to evaporate & deposit on a sample sat underneath. It's used to coat electrically insulating samples with a conductive layer of carbon for electron microscopy.

I assembled a HeaterMeter for my Kamado style charcoal grill/smoker... It's built on top of OpenWRT.

Didn't they get at least the kernel running on a Nintendo 64
- Not sure about a Nintendo 64 but I've definitely seen it on the switch and 3ds

8-bit micro, for example ATmega: video.

The PS3 is not crazy, but has an exotic hardware that optionnally runs Linux.

Does a MicroVAX count?
It was the late 90s. We booted it on whatever we could.
- Definitely counts.

Syringe drivers exist that are on-line devices. I half expect the first IoT murder to be by someone hacking a syringe driver filled with something vital (say insulin) that's plugged into the victim's IV.
I don't know if such devices are capable of being jailbroken and installed with Linux, but why not?
- At the level of microcontrollers there is an entire range with the necessary radio HW and enough computing power and memory to have WiFi and a TCP stack but not enough to fit Linux (stuff like the esp8266, which has only 80KB user data memory).
  Those things essentially run just the one application on top of some manufacturer provider libraries (no OS, though if you really want to there's an RT OS) and which can be something that gets commands via the network and activates some hardware via GPIO ports.
  For example, smart LED lamps that can be controlled from a smartphone are made with this kind of HW.
  Mind you, recently somebody managed to get Linux to run of a top range model of the most recent of these things (an ESP32-S3).
  So I wouldn't presume that a syringe driver can be made to run Linux, given that it's functionality is simple enough to be implemented by a simple program that can fit in that kind of microcontroller.
- Good work, 47. Now get to an exit.

It's not entirelly Linux, but there's a port of FUZIX for the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller

Not as impressive but I got a oneplus one that:
Runs lineageOS 20, thanks to UL and someone on xda
Runs kernel 6.3 with postmarketOS, thanks to a whole bunch of people working on the kernel

Didn't someone get a cuecat working? It's been a while since I've seen it.

Back in the day some iPhones could run janky forms of Android/Linux. I don't think it ever got to daily driver status but it was surprisingly feature complete.

I haven't done it myself but I own a Pinephone (Linux phone) and that completely isolates the modem to prevent closed source code on the main OS and apparently that runns Linux, not sure if it counts because it's technically Linux already but someone hosted his blog on that and wrote about it!

Did anyone manage to hack a CD/DVD drive to run Linux on it?

My iMac G3 is running Debian 6!
- iMac G3
  wow, an operating system on a computer, sounds so improbable :P
  
  The computer is older than me :)

Some of them (run) Windows. You can identify those based on: :::spoiler error ```

| Unhandled exception | X | |

Some of them (run) Windows. You can identify those based on:
:::spoiler error ```