Well, for my project to have any meaning there should be a flavor of linux which can run on the EFIKA. So I'm thinking of supporting embedded Gentoo linux project while thinking of a way to run the bootstrap kernel+eth drivers from the EFIKA. In the long run, gentoo is not a very suitable distribution for my project, because it's source based. Since my project targets a platform with minimum variation (at the moment I believe all EFIKAs are identical) I believe an binary based distribution (like debian) will be much more handy. These binaries would be specially compiled for the EFIKA and kept in a local server.

by the way, I'm having this idea of a restriction of executables on the client to the binaries sent from the local mainframe. And fetching these executables from the mainframe on the fly. It's a measure to keep the clients more secure, and be able to update the software on the client even they're running, but it would render the clients useless in case of a mainframe problem. Maybe this could be an option left to the users/admins of the setup.