I am new to embedded linux and would like to know which distribution
has the most support (i.e. peripheral drivers and software packages
like OpenCv) for the Beagleboard XM - Angstrom or Ubuntu?
Thanks,
Ryan
Beagle-XM by default shipped with a SD card with Angstom (a
simplified version which uses ramdisk as rootfs).
I think the full-featured Angstom should provide good support for
drivers and software packages. see:
http://gigamegatech.com/2010/12/09/beagleboard-xm-and-angstrom-getting-the-big-dog-to-run-at-full-speed/
The problem with Angstom is that I cannot customise the kernel
successfully (since I need to build my own drivers). Any one can tell
me how to build a Angstom kernel for Beagle-XM?
I also tried ubuntu-10.10. But official ubuntu kernel seems to limit
my 1GHz OMAP to 600 MHz by default.
And the GUI is slow ( and I have to run "init 1" at start up to
disable the GUI).
-adam
With the 'official' ubuntu kernel, add "mpurate=800" to your boot args
to get a nice speed bump..
Regards,
thank you thank you thank you 
Angstrom’s has an online image builder named Narcissus. While its pretty easy to generate an image, it isn’t obvious how to boot the image on your Beagleboard.
I was getting really annoyed trying to figure that out
That's an interesting question. I've been fiddling with Angstrom/Poky
builds and so far don't see an easy way of doing this. I think I'm
missing something - I'm not that familiar with bitbake. It should be
possible to build just the linux kernel from a custom recipe. bitbake's
help says
bitbake [package...]
but it's not clear to me if the "recipes" are "packages". bitbake -s
can help but it takes awhile to rebuild a cache for 7000+ files. Give
it a shot - it may help figure this out.
The answer to your question is that you can probably do that if you grab
the angstrom build system (re: angstrom's source release). You need to
create a custom kernel recipe, probably based on the current Angstrom
configuration. Then convince bitbake to build that new recipe.
Unfortunately, not sure how to do all that. You might get some help
from the OE and Angstrom docs:
http://www.openembedded.org/index.php/Getting_started
http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/building-angstrom
Alternatively, get an angstrom build (using Narcissus) that includes a
toolchain on the target so you can actually build the kernel on a
running board.
Wonder how long a kernel compile takes on the BeagleBoard? Never tried
it myself.
Hope that helps.
Go to the angstrom website, read the second news article on how to install OE
then do:
MACHINE=beagleboard ./oebb.sh bitbake virtual/kernel