I love the fact that so many consumer gadgets are increasingly Linux based and for the so inclined you can ssh or telnet into them to fiddle around with their settings 🙂
Tivo is probably the most common of all consumer devices running Linux. We love our Tivo box. We still have a Series 1 and it’s run continuously 24×7 since approx 2002 when we first bought it. It’s only been powered down a couple of times during power outages, and from memory I can only remember once or twice when it hung and had to be restarted. It’s hands down the most stable, most reliable piece of consumer electronics I’ve ever owned, by far.
The Iomgea ix2 NAS boxes run on Linux (as do most NAS boxes) – you can enable ssh from the ‘hidden page’ at /support.html and then ssh into it using id=root and password=soho+[your admin user password]
A lot of DSL and cable modems, and Wifi routers also run Linux. Most Actiontec DSL modems have a telnet port open on the internal network, and you can telnet into them using your web admin interface userid and password.