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Angstrom

Former Member

Interesting discussion over on the beagleboard google group https://groups.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/beagleboard/kz3M-It3U5Y

 

Reading between the lines, you get the impression that angstrom was a one man show and that the CircuitCo employee who was that one man has now left for another company.

Exactly what that means for any boards currently using angstrom is as yet unclear.

 

However, if true that angstrom was effectively one person it may explain a lot of the issues people here have seen with it.  Unfortunately the risk is that if angstrom ends up effectively unmaintained, any boards using it as the default pre-installed distro could well get stuck in a dead-end.

 

The beagleboard folks have so far steadfastly stuck with angstrom in spite of the obvious problems, I think it'll be interesting to see what happens next.

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  • Probably about as close as an official response you're likely to get from Jason in this thread:

    https://groups.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/beagleboard/GK8Chte-4Xs

     

    I don't think there's any huge surprise that his requirements seem to come down to bonescript, capemgr and dtbo's for known capes on top of <insert OS here>.

    What I find interesting is that they're prepared to discuss a move, have sensible requirements before doing so, and have obviously been doing some work around getting a version of Debian to that point already. I'd not seen anything suggesting it would even be open for discussion previously.

  • in reply to Former Member

    selsinork wrote:

     

    Probably about as close as an official response you're likely to get from Jason in this thread:

    https://groups.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/beagleboard/GK8Chte-4Xs

     

    Excellent news, many thanks for bringing that to our attention!

     

    I don't have any special likes nor dislikes about Debian, and view it simply as "a well-supported distro that works".  That's the primary requirement for all distro choices in my book, and Angstrom failed on both counts.  I've been installing Debian on nearly all my BBBs, mostly for symmetry to simplify maintenance, but I'd be happy with any distro that meets the primary requirement.  (I don't use Debian on my x86 desktops nor servers, so I'm not extending past preferences to my choices for ARM.  It's strictly horses for courses.)

     

    I think BeagleBoard.org and TI are going to benefit greatly from this likely change, not only broadening their appeal in the Linux community but also reducing problem reports and support costs, since much of the time reported problems were created entirely by Angstrom.  It gave their very fine hardware a tarnished reputation for software.

     

    So, I'm very hopeful.  I have my fingers crossed that the next board in the BeagleBone series will feature a different distro pre-installed on eMMC.

     

    Morgaine.

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  • in reply to Former Member

    selsinork wrote:

     

    Probably about as close as an official response you're likely to get from Jason in this thread:

    https://groups.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/beagleboard/GK8Chte-4Xs

     

    Excellent news, many thanks for bringing that to our attention!

     

    I don't have any special likes nor dislikes about Debian, and view it simply as "a well-supported distro that works".  That's the primary requirement for all distro choices in my book, and Angstrom failed on both counts.  I've been installing Debian on nearly all my BBBs, mostly for symmetry to simplify maintenance, but I'd be happy with any distro that meets the primary requirement.  (I don't use Debian on my x86 desktops nor servers, so I'm not extending past preferences to my choices for ARM.  It's strictly horses for courses.)

     

    I think BeagleBoard.org and TI are going to benefit greatly from this likely change, not only broadening their appeal in the Linux community but also reducing problem reports and support costs, since much of the time reported problems were created entirely by Angstrom.  It gave their very fine hardware a tarnished reputation for software.

     

    So, I'm very hopeful.  I have my fingers crossed that the next board in the BeagleBone series will feature a different distro pre-installed on eMMC.

     

    Morgaine.

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