Have a question about the Next-Gen BeagleBone? Ask it here!

For anyone else with one of these, see

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/beagleboard/beaglebone-black/G_QjWvBNXvc

you'll probably want to go to http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=Updating_The_Software and get the latest software image (2013.05.3 as of now) before trying to do anything with opkg

you'll probably want to go to http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=Updating_The_Software and get the latest software image (2013.05.3 as of now) before trying to do anything with opkg

Something must have been wrong with the build.  Looks like they pulled it.  I can see it in the change history so you're not a liar

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

Such "goals" are, to my mind, not the goals of a distro worth using.

I don't disagree, but you can't deny that if those really are their goals then they're doing well at meeting them

I would disagree with your other post though. Having just one additional maintainer isn't enough, it needs a team of people who are interested and will actively contribute. If the current maintainer is blocking the process then it's probably time to remove the roadblock.  The project as a whole won't survive on the shoulders of just one or two people, a distro is too big for that.

Yes there needs to be a public bug tracker, a mailing list, up to date documentation, and the full build system needs to be in a public git tree somewhere so that if the existing maintainers disappear or become roadblocks then others can fork the whole thing without a ground-up rebuild.

Brian Welsby wrote:

 

On the BBB just install the Qt tools and you get Error required kernel 3.2.0 so check the BBB forums

From what I can tell that error is from opkg.. Leaving aside the opengl-es part for a moment, you're looking at crap dependencies in the packaging here.  I'll say nothing more than that IMHO any distro that does dependencies in the packages is fundamentally broken as they all consistently make a mess of them.

The opengl-es part is always going to be problematic as you're off into GPU territory. We know the shiny new DRM/KMS driver for the BBB has issues, so it follows that things relying on it will too.  I really wish all of the embedded systems would just give up on the -es front and just use the normal OpenGL. My reason is fairly simple, using the normal one means you have far more help available from others in the community who wouldn't otherwise care about the -es side.

From my side, the whole angstrom build system with cross compilers and such like is a waste of time. I'd much prefer to be getting an app compiled than trying to debug why the toolchain can't find it's compiler. As such I strongly support the debian ideal of building everything natively.

If I want to use Java, Python, Perl, PHP, Ada, Fortran, or whatever I am confident that with Debian I can, with Angstrom I expect many issues.

In a lot of ways I'd argue that I don't want a lot of those on an embedded system at all.  I've come to expect issues with angstrom no matter what I try to do

Unfortunately angstrom remains useful as it'll be the place kernel fixes get developed and tested first.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

That's a substantially shorter statement of the problem.

Can't we just go with "angstrom is $%!te" ?

selsinork wrote:

 

Can't we just go with "angstrom is $%!te" ?

That certainly hits the sweet spot for being concise.   But Jason's a good guy and deserves a bit more to work with.

I agree with your earlier point that just two maintainers probably would not be enough given the workload, but it would at least be a start.  What's most missing currently though is the will to maintain the distro and to work directly towards raising its quality.  In fact, I think it's fair to say that the aim is to avoid any distro maintenance whatsoever, as a matter of policy, so it's no surprise that its present quality is quite poor.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

most missing currently though is the will to maintain the distro

and I do believe that trying to maintain a full distro on your own is likely to destroy any will that existed, quite quickly too.

I'm confused though, all the other bits like bonescript that seem to be done by Jason himself don't appear to have any particular reliance on angstrom. I can't think of a reason you couldn't layer them on top of debian, gentoo, or something else that would relieve the pressure of having to maintain a full distro yourself.

Which leaves it as a conscious choice to persist with angstrom and it's problems. I have difficulty understanding a choice like that.

selsinork wrote:

 

I'm confused though, all the other bits like bonescript that seem to be done by Jason himself don't appear to have any particular reliance on angstrom. I can't think of a reason you couldn't layer them on top of debian, gentoo, or something else that would relieve the pressure of having to maintain a full distro yourself.

 

Which leaves it as a conscious choice to persist with angstrom and its problems. I have difficulty understanding a choice like that.

According to my recollection, Ångström was the first OS to run on BeagleBoard and at the time beagleboard.org had minimal involvement with software and was happy to get help from anywhere.  I used Ångström quite a bit as a generic GNU/Linux OS, and it worked fine for my modest OS needs.  My understanding is that Ångström runs well with less memory than larger distros like Debian, which was important with only 128KB 128MB of DRAM on the original BeagleBoard.  Debian runs fine on a 256KB 256MB RasPi so Beagle might as well switch over.  IMO the key question is which OS is best supported on each platform, and that depends on the individual interests of OS maintainers.

Edit: oops

John Beetem wrote:

 

My understanding is that Ångström runs well with less memory than larger distros like Debian,

absolutely agree, angstrom seems to have cut out a lot of the bloat of the bigger distros, but that does come at a price.

which was important with only 128KB of DRAM on the original BeagleBoard. 

KB ?  Can I borrow your time-warp machine John ? 

IMO the key question is which OS is best supported on each platform, and that depends on the individual interests of OS maintainers.

Well yes, but given that for generic linux the real differences are all in the kernel... much easier to build a kernel that you can sit debian on top of than trying to re-invent debian

selsinork wrote:

 

I'm confused though, all the other bits like bonescript that seem to be done by Jason himself don't appear to have any particular reliance on angstrom. I can't think of a reason you couldn't layer them on top of debian, gentoo, or something else that would relieve the pressure of having to maintain a full distro yourself.

 

Which leaves it as a conscious choice to persist with angstrom and it's problems. I have difficulty understanding a choice like that.

A combination of history and no desire to alienate old acquaintances, I suspect.

Plus the fact that the immediate out-of-the-box experience with BBB tethered to a PC through USB is completely fault-free, which Jason may feel is good enough for PR purposes.  It's only later that problems appear, and unfortunately don't appear to stop.  It's entirely possible that Jason doesn't even use BBB outside of the USB tethered mode.

I agree entirely though.  BBB and the rest of the Beagle boards don't need their own distro at all, they just need their own kernel and a few special utilities at this time, and once DT stabilizes, not even that.  Moving over to Debian would be a solid move.  (I don't have any investment in Debian, I just recognize it as the "distro franca" of the Linux world.)

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

 

I agree entirely though.  BBB and the rest of the Beagle boards don't need their own distro at all, they just need their own kernel and a few special utilities at this time, and once DT stabilizes, not even that.  Moving over to Debian would be a solid move.  (I don't have any investment in Debian, I just recognize it as the "distro franca" of the Linux world.)

Well at the end of the day if Ti / Circuitco want to stick with Angstrom then so be it,  the good thing is we are not forced to use it we have choice.  

Judging by the posts in the Beagleboard forums a lot of users are on Debian  and Ubuntu rather than Angstrom.

Perhaps we should we have a system like  R-Pi  NOOBS where we can easily select what distro to install 

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

Plus the fact that the immediate out-of-the-box experience with BBB tethered to a PC through USB is completely fault-free,

I actually think that's a huge plus point for the BBB. It did take a bit of explaining to the folks at work though as the concept is a bit alien when you're used to the RPi.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

Plus the fact that the immediate out-of-the-box experience with BBB tethered to a PC through USB is completely fault-free,

I actually think that's a huge plus point for the BBB. It did take a bit of explaining to the folks at work though as the concept is a bit alien when you're used to the RPi.

selsinork wrote:

 

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

Plus the fact that the immediate out-of-the-box experience with BBB tethered to a PC through USB is completely fault-free,

I actually think that's a huge plus point for the BBB. It did take a bit of explaining to the folks at work though as the concept is a bit alien when you're used to the RPi.

I use BeagleBone White with USB for terminal connection and Ethernet for X Windows.  For me it's natural, because I learned X Windows development back around 1990.  But to a newcomer X Windows seems completely backwards -- the remote device is the client and the screen you're looking at locally is the server.  As with many engineering concepts, it doesn't make sense until you learn how it works internally so that you can pretend to be the remote device and imagine the packets flying back and forth across the link.