I’ve read a bit about the new kid on the block, which is a new small Ubuntu Core, packaged with a new package manager that they have named Snappy. There is some newish looking support for all of this too through core updates and easy rollback capability. Apparently Beaglebone.org is one of their “partners” (?) in some way. The early Snappy Ubuntu Core PR talks about the Beaglebone Black being supported, and other articles point out that it will not run on the Raspberry Pi. I’m very new to BBB and Linux, so I would appreciate any early thoughts from the regulars here as to what advantages (and potential problems) would come from moving from debian to this new Ubuntu distro, and what sort of support (GPIO etc.) is likely already in place … or is it something that we’ll likely to have to wait for.
Here’s one of many links out there to a much better overview than I have just offered. http://postscapes.com/ubuntu-internet-of-things-os-snappy-core
Bob
I’ve read a bit about the new kid on the block, which is a new small Ubuntu Core, packaged with a new package manager that they have named Snappy. There is some newish looking support for all of this too through core updates and easy rollback capability. Apparently Beaglebone.org is one of their “partners” (?) in some way.
BeagleBoard.org and Ubuntu mostly agree it is a cool thing to promote. Ubuntu has great brand recognition as a Linux solution provider and BeagleBone Black is readily available and established as a popular open hardware platform, perhaps the most popular open hardware Linux platform out there. There is a bit of technical support each way as well, but no plans to replace the Black out-of-box experience or anything like that at this time. It isn’t exclusive or anything like that either. It is mostly that we each recognize the value of the solutions provided by the other and seek to help each other out.
The early Snappy Ubuntu Core PR talks about the Beaglebone Black being supported, and other articles point out that it will not run on the Raspberry Pi. I’m very new to BBB and Linux, so I would appreciate any early thoughts from the regulars here as to what advantages (and potential problems) would come from moving from debian to this new Ubuntu distro, and what sort of support (GPIO etc.) is likely already in place … or is it something that we’ll likely to have to wait for.
As best I know, Ubuntu is still based on Debian and therefore pulls in a lot of its features. What I don’t suspect (but could be wrong) they’ve pulled in is the out-of-box experience we’ve created on Black with the USB-based documentation and networking, and the network/web-based IDE.
The GPIO etc. interfaces largely come from the kernel and not part of the distro, so those should be pretty reusable. The device tree overlay stuff (either the specific device tree entries or the availability of overlays and an overlay manager to configure the device tree) is pretty specific to the kernel being put out by Robert (leveraging the work done by many BeagleBoard.org developers and Koen’s kernel integrations in the past) and does have some impact on the various interfaces exposed. It’ll still be some time before that lands upstream. Many people are using the same Python, JavaScript and C++ abstraction libraries on Ubuntu as the Debian images already, but I’m not fully aware of the compatibility issues that might exist.
What it does seem to offer is something like Docker where you can bring in all the right dependencies for an app environment quickly and reliably the same—so you know your application that doesn’t touch the hardware will run properly. They also provide a secure container for those applications, protecting the system from ill-behaved apps.
I know that there is also a ROS package for Snappy. That likely has some hardware interface stuff in it, at least for standard buses like I2C. http://www.piware.de/2015/01/snappy-package-for-robot-operating-system-tutorial/