Pi vs BeagleBone-Black

To me its a like comparing BetaMax to VHS.  The Raspberry Pi is cheaper but has less features where as the BeagleBone has more of the features I really want for $10 more (flash memory, more IO, a better and established shield/cape system, more processing power).  If I have a new project I will be looking at BeagleBone. 

Unless TI starts marketing the bat snot out of the unit it will never come close to the volume of the Pi.  Remember that Pi had nearly two years of press before it came out. Most of the press was about the little guy making his dream come try.  The BB Black hardly had any press.  The only way I can see TI getting the word out is as a comeback story that harkens back to old 8 bit PC days.  Otherwise it stay a hobby/engineering tool.

Will I use a Raspberry Pi?  Model A boards yes.  I like the processing power but with a low power consumption for the cost of an Arduino. Model B board now that BB Black is out?  Very unlikely.  I get access to Android and Ubuntu with BB Black. That means I can use PhoneGap/Cordova and Mono to build my apps faster than I can in Python.  Also it has some extra features like true serial connection, power and reset switches, and mounting holes.

I'm not trying to start a flame war.  I like playing with my Pi but this maybe a better option for me.

Ervin Kosch wrote:

I get access to Android and Ubuntu with BB Black. That means I can use PhoneGap/Cordova and Mono to build my apps faster than I can in Python.

Actually I think that having the A8, not having to do a Raspbian style hf rebuild, and therefore being able to use un-altered distros is a very strong point in the BBB's favour. Thanks for mentioning it.

I'm not trying to start a flame war.  I like playing with my Pi but this maybe a better option for me.

Oh, I like mine too. And I agree with a lot of your other points.  The BBB is the closest to the Pi in price that I've seen while being better in some ways, so I think there will be lots of comparisons being made that don't really work when you try to compare the Pi to something like the Sabre-Lite at 6x the price.

Ervin Kosch wrote:

I get access to Android and Ubuntu with BB Black. That means I can use PhoneGap/Cordova and Mono to build my apps faster than I can in Python.

Actually I think that having the A8, not having to do a Raspbian style hf rebuild, and therefore being able to use un-altered distros is a very strong point in the BBB's favour. Thanks for mentioning it.

I'm not trying to start a flame war.  I like playing with my Pi but this maybe a better option for me.

Oh, I like mine too. And I agree with a lot of your other points.  The BBB is the closest to the Pi in price that I've seen while being better in some ways, so I think there will be lots of comparisons being made that don't really work when you try to compare the Pi to something like the Sabre-Lite at 6x the price.

Actually I think that having the A8, not having to do a Raspbian style hf rebuild, and therefore being able to use un-altered distros is a very strong point in the BBB's favour.

Not sure what you mean here. Any SOC will need an altered distro to use the manufacturer specific hardware on that chip no matter what version of ARM is being used.

The question I have is whether the drivers for that hardware will be open source. That would be an advantage over the RPi and TI is usually pretty good about that. From

what I see it looks like the graphics driver would probably still be proprietary because TI does not own the IP, PowerVR does.

I have an original BeagleBoard and I am very glad to see that the BeagleBone Black has 3.3V I/O.  The 1.8V I/O on the BeagleBoard is a RPITA that can require a few

very small voltage level translators that really need a custom PCB to use. Overall the BeagleBone Black looks very interesting and I plan to keep close tabs on it.

Also just to throw a wild card into the mix, the Cubieboard http://cubieboard.org is now actually available (in somewhat limited quantities) and at $49 is close enough to

the RPi and BeagleBone Black to be a competitor. It offers most of the usual features with an Allwinner A10 at 1 GHz, 1 GB RAM, HDMI video, USB, etc.  and at least

one feature, a SATA 2 interface that is not found on the others.

Gary Stewart wrote:

 

Actually I think that having the A8, not having to do a Raspbian style hf rebuild, and therefore being able to use un-altered distros is a very strong point in the BBB's favour.

 

Not sure what you mean here. Any SOC will need an altered distro to use the manufacturer specific hardware on that chip no matter what version of ARM is being used.

 

Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian etc. don't directly support the Arm core on the Pi at all anymore. They do support the A8. So there's a big difference between recompiling all 10000+ packages in Debian/Fedora specifically for the Pi (what Raspbian & Seneca are doing) compared to needing to recompile just one - the kernel.

And you get to the point where you will be able to run Ubuntu on it. AFAIK you still can't run it on the Pi.

The question I have is whether the drivers for that hardware will be open source. That would be an advantage over the RPi and TI is usually pretty good about that. From

what I see it looks like the graphics driver would probably still be proprietary because TI does not own the IP, PowerVR does.

The problem around video drivers is common to all of these Arm platforms, it doesn't seem to matter what GPU you have. Having a distro that's supported upstream may even help here as a driver (even if it is binary only) could support more than one board.

Also just to throw a wild card into the mix, the Cubieboard http://cubieboard.org is now actually available (in somewhat limited quantities) and at $49 is close enough to

 

I'd love to get my hands on one, but every time I see a post saying they're back in stock, they've gone by the time I click on the link.  Time will tell if the new beaglebone is available in quantity or not.

So there's a big difference between recompiling all 10000+ packages in Debian/Fedora specifically for the Pi (what Raspbian & Seneca are doing) compared to needing to recompile just one - the kernel.

OK, unless you plan to make your own distro I don't understand why you would be recompiling 10000 packages. A majority of those packages have already been compiled for the existing distros and

there is nothing inherently ARM CPU version dependent in any applications that are not already compiled as long as you have all the proper tools: GCC, C libraries, and binary utilities which Raspian

does provide (not sure about Fedora but I assume they do to).

The problem around video drivers is common to all of these Arm platforms, it doesn't seem to matter what GPU you have. Having a distro that's supported upstream may even help here as a driver (even if it is binary only) could support more than one board

Yes I know, that is why I pointed it out. I have on several occasions in these forums read complaints against the Raspberry Pi about its GPU being proprietary but as you correctly point out this common

with ARM SOCs. If the GPU IP is the property of the ARM SOC manufacturer they could release it if they wanted to. However more often than not they just use somebody else's pre-packaged GPU IP.

This is (unfortunately) understandable considering the complexity of GPU design and drivers for it coupled with the desire to get a product on the market in a reasonable time frame. There have been

rumours about the two most common GPU providers PowerVR and ARM officially opening up their drivers but as far as I can tell this has not happened yet.

  I'd love to get my hands on one, but every time I see a post saying they're back in stock, they've gone by the time I click on the link.  Time will tell if the new beaglebone is available in quantity or not.

Last time I checked, about two to three weeks ago, they were available from at least one of the links on the Cubieboard web site. I checked Digi Key for the BeagleBone Black, they have none in stock and

are quoting 7 weeks before they recieve any. If past history withe the BeagleBoard and BeagleBoard-xM serves it will take the folks at BeagleBoard longer than that.

Gary Stewart wrote:

 

 

OK, unless you plan to make your own distro I don't understand why you would be recompiling 10000 packages. A majority of those packages have already been compiled for the existing distros and

there is nothing inherently ARM CPU version dependent in any applications that are not already compiled as long as you have all the proper tools: GCC, C libraries, and binary utilities which Raspian

does provide (not sure about Fedora but I assume they do to).

You're missing the point, Raspbian is a two man, unofficial, effort to port debian to an arch that the real Debian maintainers are unwilling to support. Raspbian may vanish tomorrow. At which point you will either need to start compiling them yourself, or move to a piece of hardware that someone else is willing to support. You could of course stick with the last Raspbian release if if you like, but that leaves you with other problems.

You're right in that nothing is inherently dependant on the CPU, the issue is simply that Debian doesn't want to support the older version CPU on the Pi, nothing more.

You're missing the point, Raspbian is a two man, unofficial, effort to port debian to an arch that the real Debian maintainers are unwilling to support. Raspbian may vanish tomorrow. At which point you will either need to start compiling them yourself, or move to a piece of

  hardware that someone else is willing to support. You could of course stick with the last Raspbian release if if you like, but that leaves you with other problems.

No, I'm not. I think the worst case scenario you just described is not realistic for several reasons. Raspian is the official RPF distribution. There are now over 500,000 Raspberry Pi's out there, most using Raspian. There

is nothing to stop another group of people from taking over or forking Raspian if the current maintainers stopped, and I don't see the RPF not trying to find, or having a lot of trouble finding other people to maintain it if that

happened.

You're right in that nothing is inherently dependant on the CPU, the issue is simply that Debian doesn't want to support the older version CPU on the Pi, nothing more.

I don't think that official support from Debian is a prerequisite for a successful distribution. There are precedents for that thought.

Gary Stewart wrote:

No, I'm not. I think the worst case scenario you just described is not realistic for several reasons. Raspian is the official RPF distribution. There are now over 500,000 Raspberry Pi's out there, most using Raspian. There

is nothing to stop another group of people from taking over or forking Raspian if the current maintainers stopped, and I don't see the RPF not trying to find, or having a lot of trouble finding other people to maintain it if that

happened.

 

We'll agree to disagree then. 

That said, it's interesting to look back at the RPF history. Ubuntu was originally going to be the official RPF distribution, until Ubuntu dropped support. Nobody stepped up to take on a port. Next Fedora was to be the official RPF distribution, but Fedora weren't interested, Seneca stepped in (possibly with some help from the RPF) and produced a port, problems with that port caused it to be fairly quietly dropped by the RPF. Every now and again we hear there may be another version, but again nobody seems to have stepped up to help them with it.

Mike Thompson and Peter Green deserve a lot of credit for what they've done with Raspbian, long may it continue. But so far, Mike and Peter appear to be the only ones to have sucessfully taken on such a project. As far as I'm aware it's still mostly a two man show and if I believe what's out there to be read it may even be that Peter has taken on the lions share.

So with other past failures, partial or otherwise, I don't believe the argument is as easily dismissed as you make out, if it were then surely they'd have found someone to do the same for Ubuntu or Fedora ?

And Liz has said, back on the 1st of March that there's at least a million sold: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3375 so there's a potentially much bigger pool of talent available than you suggest.

selsinork wrote:

 

Mike Thompson and Peter Green deserve a lot of credit for what they've done with Raspbian, long may it continue. But so far, Mike and Peter appear to be the only ones to have sucessfully taken on such a project. As far as I'm aware it's still mostly a two man show and if I believe what's out there to be read it may even be that Peter has taken on the lions share.

Fortunately that problem will disappear as soon as RPF brings out a next gen Raspberry Pi based on a SoC with a more modern ARM, which can then be supported by standard portable Linux distributions.  That will undoubtedly happen, if we make the very reasonable assumption that the RPF project continues and prospers.  The only question is when.

> The only question is when.

We have some clues.

The 1st gen RPi was based on the same cpu as the Roku 2,

and both were announced mid 2011.

The Roku 3 became available recently, using the next generation

Broadcom cpu with dual core Cortex A9, with only a slight increase

in price over the Roku 2.

Sony has already mentioned the 2nd gen RPi.

Liz has downplayed the Sony announcement.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

The only question is when.

I've not been following it closely, but everytime I see some mention of some form of updated Pi the official answer seems to come back as 'not for the forseeable future'. Possibly that's understandable - they still need to make some money from the long awaited camera module, try getting them into schools, and then there's that other as yet unused connector they might want to use.

So while you're right, would you bet on the 'when' being anytime soon ?

coder27 wrote:

 

Sony has already mentioned the 2nd gen RPi.

Pointer ?

Liz has downplayed the Sony announcement.

One of the places I worked had a running in-house joke that the lifetime of a particular product was only about six weeks. There'd then be a 'new' product, with different code names etc. usually the only difference was a minor tweak here and there, or no difference at all apart from some plug in part.

So I can understand some downplaying as a 2nd gen RPi could mean almost anything while quite rightly being seen as a 'new' product by Sony.  We'll find out sooner or later, but neither a minor revision or a fully new design would surprise me.