The development tools provided must be installed and run on a PC with a GNU/Linux Operating system (e.g. Debian, Ubuntu or Redhat distributions). The GCC toolchain provided creates executables that can be run on the IM2440D20. This toolchain is also required to build the kernel and Embedded Linux. Full details of building Linux are provided on the IM2440D20 resources page.

In order to run the development tools the host PC requires:

In addition to the development tools, the module usually requires serial communications to access its bootloader and booted system. Most modern PC have serial ports, however increasingly only USB ports are provided, most typical USB->Serial converters appear to work with the IM2440D20.