First released on August 11, 2008,[1] the Asus EeeBox PC series is marketed as a small, light, inexpensive and energy-efficient counterpart to the Asus Eee PC netbook / subnotebook laptop series.

[4] The EeeBox PC motherboard features a form of embedded Linux, referred to in the user manual as Express Gate, a result of the ASUS SplashTop software.

In the EeeBox PC implementation, the user is presented with a customised Linux desktop a few seconds after powering up the EeeBox PC, with the option of launching a web browser, an online chat application, a file manager, a photo browser or a Skype application, without having to load the main operating system.

If the user does not select any of these options, the main operating system (typically Windows XP Home) loads automatically.

The EeeBox PC hard drive has a hidden recovery partition containing an image of the factory OS installation.