Can someone please calify the differences on OS's for BBB

Can someone please clarify for me some of the reasons one would put Angstom vs ubuntu or android on the BBB.
I have no intention to ever have a monitor or mouse connected to my board. I just want to use it as an headless embedded system to monitor and control things.

Here is my experience which is not much compared to some members in this forum…

  1. Fast booting, lot of people have mentioned that ubuntu has a slow boot up speed compared to Angstrom. The boot and shutdown speed of the default version of Angstrom is quite fast.
  2. Hardware support may be limited. I was unable to use my netgear wifi dongle and a huawei 3G dongle. I think ubuntu should support these. I think android should be better here.

In my opinion if you want to just use a headless system then angstrom will be best choice…

thanks
a

Angstrom

In a lot of cases the difference is only going to be a matter of taste. However, i think you’ll find documentation for some distro’s far superior to others.

As to whether one distro boots faster than another I think that sentiment to be incorrect. If one distro boors faster than another that is because you made it that way. e.g. there is a lot that one can do on any distribution to make it do X, Y, or Z. It is your responsibility to figure out how.

Funny you should ask. I just finished writing a chapter comparing different OS choices for the Beagles for my upcoming book. It really depends on what you want to do. For me Ubuntu is a clear winner with the repository support for desktop and hacking applications. If you just want to run your own apps in an embedded environment Angstrom is probably fine. Btw, Ubuntu checks for updates on boot which causes slow boot, but you can turn that off.

I agree that some distros docs are way better than others. Which is why I got with Arch Linux ARM. the Arch wiki is one of if not the best. Speed wise as fast or better.

I too, find arch to be a superior distro for beaglebone. I like it above the ubuntu or angstrom distros because

  1. using the 3.12 kernel + regular kernel updates from pacman
  2. installing a gui is easy and it works. I have not had success installing a GUI on ubuntu. The lxde desktop seems a wee bit faster on arch vs debian, but this is hardly objective.
  3. starting to enjoy the systemctl stuff that arch uses

I prefer apt-get to pacman.

One thing though. A system upgrade completely hosed my raspberry pi running arch (hosed = segmentation faults on such apps as ls && cp), so I am a bit scared about the stability of arch, so if I was doing something important I might chose debian instead.

I too, find arch to be a superior distro for beaglebone. I like it above
the ubuntu or angstrom distros because
1) using the 3.12 kernel + regular kernel updates from pacman

lol!! That statement is funny, as the arch guys actually use the
kernel patch hosted on my servers that i use for the ubuntu/debian
images. They just have the "updates" better integrated, via pacman:

For ubuntu/debian you can "update" on every update via:

export DIST=raring (options are
lucid/precise/quantal/raring/saucy/trusty/squeeze/wheezy/jessie)
export ARCH=armhf (options are armel/armhf)

beaglebone
export BOARD=omap-psp

wget http://rcn-ee.net/deb/$\{DIST\}\-$\{ARCH\}/LATEST\-$\{BOARD\}
wget $(cat ./LATEST-${BOARD} | grep STABLE | awk '{print $3}')
sudo /bin/bash install-me.sh

But honestly, I'm still from the embedded background, usually you
install one kernel and never update it while deployed in the field,
plus i was to lazy to setup a deb repo. :wink:

2) installing a gui is easy and it works. I have not had success installing
a GUI on ubuntu. The lxde desktop seems a wee bit faster on arch vs debian,
but this is hardly objective.

I've seen that too, although i'm not a desktop guy, so we really need
someone to look at the installed packages and find a better recpie
then this one i just threw together..

3) starting to enjoy the systemctl stuff that arch uses

With my images, i'm looking to switch "jessie" to that by default too..

Regards,

systemctl seems useful but I’ve yet to determine if I want it in “my” Debian. I already like Debian just how it is.

I would not worry about the “stability” you just have to be aware of what Kernel you’re running and what the next update entails. I have yet to hit an issue on my pi’s or bones most have been running arch for at least a year. I have one gumstix that has been on the same arch install for 3 to 3.5 years now. After you run arch for awhile it all becomes second nature and you wont ever look back. It’s life on the edge, but its way sweeter there :stuck_out_tongue: Also once you get use to pacman you will see its way more powerful than apt-get.

Yes there kernel is basically the RCN sid kernel just with aufs and I
think a couple other minor differences in the configs.

Might as well get use to systemctl it is the way of the future in Linux I believe. Way more powerful I think.

I think you mean Systemd because systemctl is the command used to control Systemd. Systemd is a replacement for SysVInit which enables initialization to occur in parallel at boot time. It is this parallelism that enables fast boot time. Koen Kooi demonstrated a boot time of less than 1 second on Angstrom, but the same techniques can be applied to any distro. Ubuntu by default uses Upstart rather than using SysVInit.

Regards,
John

yes my bad mixed the two :stuck_out_tongue:

The OP is not interested in desktop, just a system to run an application to ‘monitor and control things…’

Possibly, however I like Debian just how it sits.