Puppy Linux was guest-of-honor at an "Affordable Community Computing Workshop" this week in the Philippines, where participants assembled and took home ultra low-cost, PC-like computing devices. The workshop was sponsored by Via and several organizations working to close the "digital divide" in the Philippines.

At the workshop, Dr. Raffy Mananghaya, a professor at the University of the Philippines, led non-technical particants in assembling PC-like computing devices that eschew hard drives, instead booting Linux from CD-ROM, and running it in a ramdisk, storing user preferences across reboots on a small removable flash storage card.

The market for ultra-low cost computing devices appears to be flourishing. Systems similar to those built at the workshop are available for about $100 from Bangkok-based Nohrtec, as well as E-Way Co, which took part in the workshop.

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