That is your choice but let it be stated that Ubuntu is quite commonly used for headless server systems and there has long been an installation mechanism for such server based systems.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server/install-ubuntu-server
And Robert Nelson has done some great work at keeping kernels and other parts updated for ARM devices( 4.x kernel too ):
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu#Method_1:_Download_a_Complete_Pre-Configured_Image
FWIW, that elinux link I pointed to does boot and boots rather fast too. Also has apache pre-installed.
Downloaded the tar.xz, extracted it, ran “sudo ./setup_sdcard.sh --mmc /dev/mmcblk0 --dtb beaglebone” to build and image the uSD card.
I agree. I actually used the raw SD image further down the page for checking it out, and it worked perfectly well (albeit it is truly minimal - not even the man pages are installed).
However, apparently Canonical decided to not support systemd yet in 14.04 (it seems to the consternation of their own users). This is in contrast to Debian, which is hybrid already in Wheezy. While there’s nothing wrong with SysV, I’m not a Linux sysadmin, don’t have the ambition to learn both, and am getting used to systemd from Wheezy. There isn’t a 14.10 (let alone 15.04) image build yet.
The main reason I’m trying to get my hands on Ubuntu for BBB is that I have a Ninjablock - which at its heart is a BBB running Ubuntu 13.04 - that I’m trying to update to the latest version so I can have a more reproducible platform for testing out changes. But it seems to me that I may be better off porting it over to Debian, maybe Jessie.
-hilmar
Hilmar, I’ve no idea what Ninjablock is,I’ve just now looked, and there seems to be many different things that could be related. However, since Ubuntu is based on Debian there is a decent chance that porting it over could be possible. The biggest hurdle might be which compiler(version) was used on Ubuntu. Since Ubuntu’s package’s are typically ahead of Debians(stable) packages in versions.
Anyway, the biggest reason to make the change would be for consistency. So if you would prefer a more consistent experience, Debian might be the right choice for you.
But really, what needs to be ported ? Drivers ? Or is it just some executable from source that could be easily recompiled on Debian ? Now might be the time to catalog what needs doing before you invest too much time into Ubuntu - If you do not care to.