Choosing a linux image for IoT on the Beaglebone Black

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1

Hi,

There are so many different flavors linux out there for the BBB I am having a difficulty choosing one for my application.

The application is remote monitoring of sensors in the IoT realm.

I am at odds with some of the newer releases that have done away with device tree overlays as I seam not get how to manage custom GPIO pin assignments outside of the old 3.8.x device trees.

If you were to start fresh what distro would you choose and why for this type of application?

2

Hi,

There are so many different flavors linux out there for the BBB I am having
a difficulty choosing one for my application.

The application is remote monitoring of sensors in the IoT realm.

I am at odds with some of the newer releases that have done away with device
tree overlays as I seam not get how to manage custom GPIO pin assignments
outside of the old 3.8.x device trees.

They are back in 4.1.x :wink:

If you were to start fresh what distro would you choose and why for this
type of application?

http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack_Debian#Debian_Image_Testing_Snapshots

Regards,

3

Once you’re familiar with the various kernels, and how they interact with the peripherals. Any would work. But if you want ease of transition, and a kernel that has been around for a while. Any of the 3.8.x variants would work fine. Also there is lots of “documentation” concerning 3.8.x going back to 2013.

I would definitely choose Debian, but not only because I’ve been using Debian personally since the '90’s. But also because it is worked on actively by the community here ( Largely Robert Nelson ), and Debian has a pretty solid ARMV7 core rootfs.

Anyway, the why’s and for’s of Debian speak for themselves. Stability, reliability, and mostly if not completely standardized. So, if you happen to find some documentation about some feature of Debian - But is discussed from the perspective of i386 ( x86 / x-86-64 ) chances are pretty good those instructions will work on ARM as well. Unless there are some very unlikely hardware abstraction layer specifics.

Anyway, all the standard Linux tools work a treat on Debian, and many non standard tool will / can compile natively on the beaglebone black.

Personally, I tend to lean towards wheezy. Since I know the sysv init system much better than the newer systemd init system as “shipped” with Jessie. But the Jessie images do have newer tools Which sometimes can be important. One of the cooler aspects of this though is that you can install sysv, and remove systemd if this is a concern. I just have not personally gotten around to dealing with that yet.

Then, if you do not mind testing some, the later 4,x kernels would probably work fine for the most part. But do keep in mind that the 4.x kernels are a work in progress so may not be quite 100% so far. Meaning that some parts of the boards hardware may not be implemented in software yet. I’ve yet to run into this myself, and find that the 4.x kernels work great for me so far.