Asus has announced enhanced versions of its Eee Box "nettop" computer. Targeting home-theater applications, the B204 and B206 include HDMI outputs, as well as discrete graphics circuitry from ATI, and could prove popular for Linux media center distributions like Boxee, MythTV, SageTV, Linux MCE, and others.

Asus released the original compact Eee Box last year, for Windows only, and the manufacturer does not mention Linux support for either the new or old models. However, being typical x86 boxes, both the original and the new home-theater nettops should run Linux without a problem.

In fact, the B204/B206 may be a perfect fit for the similarly named Boxee distro, currently being test-marketed. Billed as the first "social" media center distribution, Boxee software enables PCs and other devices to serve as unified gateways to a range of social and media networking services. Users can play and share media from computers and other devices across a home network, stream content from various free and commercial Internet sources, or download videos, music, and photos from the Internet, says Boxee. Based on the XMBC Media Center open-source project, Boxee is currently in alpha stage on Ubuntu Linux and Mac OS X platforms. It has been recently ported to the Apple TV 2.3, and a Windows version is said to be in the works, says a Boxee blog.

Inside the Eee Box