Tuned and hardened in our Mediabox systems iMedia linux delivers better performance than a standard distribution. Using a customised ext3 journaling filesystem, circular memory buffers for logging instead of direct filesystem read/writes, tmpfs for most write accessed parts of the file system we ensure reliability and long Compact Flash life. iMedia Linux uses the long tested 2.4.x kernel but we're including all the performance patches from the 2.6.x kernel tree like better task and I/O schedulers, low latency patches, preemptibility patches and newer drivers. Another iMedia Linux feature that increase the hardware performance is that it uses separate binary packages for different CPU types like (VIA C3, VIA C7, i586, i686).

While others small distro usualy use readonly and compressed filesystems using the available RAM to uncompress their needed files, iMedia Linux installs directly to the media (harddrive, compact flash, usb stick) like any full featured distribution, without the need of a optical drive to run, lowering RAM usage, speeding up total system performance (from boot time to starting applications), protecting agains data loss during a power outage or a system error (most small distributions save data on user request or shutdown) and still making it easy for the users to update or install new packages while the system is running without the need to reinstall. The boot time can be lowered to a few seconds using this kind of setup which is importand in certain configurations like network applicances or settop boxes. Designed to be used on small appliances and small formfactor computers (mini-ITX PCs, car PC) , network appliances or settop boxes and Entertainment solutions like MythTV/MMS the Imedia linux distro aims for full featured Mini-ITX systems.