Bringing back an old thread here, but I was poking around a Vista console software update iso and noticed that it's actually based on Ubuntu. I was able to boot the image in VirtualBox and get it installed. Unfortunately the emulated hardware isn't a perfect match, so some things (notably the X server) don't work without some tweaking of config files and whatnot, but it's fascinating seeing the OS behind the machine. They even left Firefox installed.
CTRL-ALT-F4, sudo su, passwd
I now own root. That's all it takes on the console. It looks like sshd is running by default, too. I wonder why.
Lots of fun to be had with this.
The software that originally shipped on the Strand Pallete pre-horizon merge ran on top of knoppix. You actually booted to the desktop and launched the console frontend. You also had the ability to launch x-connect and operate that way. It ran in a frontend/backend configuration. They left firefox there for remote access to dimmers and nodes.