[Pharo-users] Booting into Pharo!

Hello, While I am still waiting for my copy of the PBE, I would like to initiate work on a project (along with friends). The idea is to build a minimalist Linux based system which would boot up straight into a full-screen Pharo environment. The system itself would be single user, consisting of not more than a Linux kernel, a few system utilities (busybox?), X (KDrive?) and Pharo (vm + image + ...). Would like to know if it's some how possible to control external programs from within Pharo, essentially shell scripts for network setup, etc. Thanks, ~Mayuresh