Copyright © 2014 CC-BY-3.0 and by the respective authors.During the past years, ECOS working group strongly supported the construction of a dedicated high-intensity stable-ion-beam facility in Europe, with energies at and above the Coulomb barrier as part of the Long-Range Plan of the Nuclear-Physics community. LINCE will be a multi-user facility dedicated to ECOS science: fundamental physics, astrophysics, nuclear structure and reaction dynamics. Applied research is foreseen in the fields of medical physics, aerospace and material sciences with energetic heavy ions. The facility will produce a wide range of ions, from protons (45 MeV) up to Uranium (8.5 MeV/u) with 1mA maximum beam intensity. A very compact linac has been designed by using a HV platform with a double-frequency ECR ion source, multi-harmonic buncher, an innovative CW RFQ design (1 ?A/Q ? 7) and 26 accelerating cavities made of bulk niobium (? = 0.045,0.077 and 0.15) working at 72.75 and 109.125 MHz.