The modular Linux handheld Mecha Comet is up on Kickstarter

Mecha Comet was covered here on GamingOnLinux back in early 2025, and now this exciting bit of hardware has a Kickstarter live to fund it. This would have been a dream device to mess about with when I was younger, really love what they're doing with it.

A handheld that doesn't look too far from the original Nintendo Game Boy, except it's all open source in both hardware and software. It has various official attachments you can swap on the front pictured above like a mini keyboard and trackpad, gamepad and a GPIO board for hooking up all sorts of things. It's not just the outside that's modular though, the inside is too.

With around 27 days left on the Kickstarter, they've managed to hit $602,783 in funding against the original $50,000 goal so it has been quite a big early success.

Check out the trailer:

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The current specifications:

Since I originally covered it, they have moved from a Debian base to Fedora for their own Mechanix distribution. They've also made it even more open, as per the blog post from earlier in January that notes the Mecha Comet will be released as open hardware under the CERN-OHL-S-2.0 license. That blog post also touched on the RAM situation, as they had to deal with the price rises with their original supplier quoting an "800%" increase in the cost of their 4GB and 8GB LPDDR. Thankfully, they were able to work around this with only a minor price increase.

The minimum price right now appears to be $189 / £139 (early bird stuff is sold out) which gets you a Mecha Comet with I.MX 8M Plus + 2GB RAM and 64GB Storage. The extensions you stick to the front are extra between $15-$20, with bundles available to make it a bit cheaper.

See more on the Kickstarter and official website.