I have seen SO MANY threads complaining about this and IDK how it ever got posted the way it is… The stock Beagel Bone Black has a 3.6gb eMMC. ALL of the builds that SHOULD fit on it leave ZERO space for anything. You can’t expand the file system theres no space. you can’t even save a text file. zero space. its like a read only system but worse and its so frustrating. If you software images don’t fit on your device AND THEY DON"T Then don’t post them as eMMC images!? Its bad enough that the download server drop connection like 19 times in 20 and I have to restart but MAN! This is rock bottom kinds of bad. The very least you could do is lable them so some poor shmuck like me doesn’t waste there money and time trying to go SD Free when I could have used a Pi that works jsut fine and is faster and cheaper.
And a very warm welcome to you too! 
Clearly, we’re not reading the same forum and I had to turn my BBGW on to check,
but that is filled 60%. Granted, it’s not the latest and greatest, but I personally have
yet to be in your situation (or any of the thousands you claim to represent).
I also don’t download a new image every day (it isn’t required, once you have a stable)
and I am sorry that you seem to live in a place with Internet so unreliable,
but that can hardly be blamed on beagleboard.org now, can it? Well, clearly, but hardly deserved.
True, Pi’s have their uses; rather nifty devices, but SD free, they’re not.
Ok, not entirely true: My Pi5 has an NVMe disk and I’m very happy with it.
Yeah, sadly the xfce/lxqt images take everything… The IoT image is a better starting point… As far as why the xfce image is still available as a flasher, when it was removed users would still complain about the lack of it… So it’s there, 100% eMMC utilization…
Which download/file is failing for you? Recently to save on costs, i moved rcn-ee.net from linode to hetzner… While yesterday i did a few reboots due to docker, fingers crossed that didn’t affect you… Most of the images should be now mirrored on beagle’s cloudfair cache…
Regards,
We use a yocto image, start with core-image-minimal. Leave out the dev packages and only add what you need.
That leaves plenty of room and significantly faster boot times. Keep in mind the target market is for buyers on day zero with an embedded device, that means easy entry path, easy entry path means plenty of stuff to facilitate that.
Typically we use a SD card image that is loaded up with code/packages, so huge that it will never begin to fit in emmc. When the project is moved forward you just isolate what is needed to run the binary and add exactly what is needed then move on to a later testing stage after loading it up in emmc.
That is the power of yocto,
Of course, I’ve struggled with the same issues regarding the size of images on eMMC. Using the XFCE on eMMC didn’t work, it is only useful on SD. But the IOT image brings always a lot of work for unneccesary issues: (no keyboard-configuration, no mc…)Sure, these things can be added later, but for establishing i.e. a network connection these would be useful (for most users?). To get all this, the user needs a stable connection to the www and after, to update the sources.list and these steps blindly to type is a mess. Remember, these steps are often to perform on fucking small displays in the wild and this makes it often bad. (apart from this, I never would change to another platform 
)
I would say the same about the Nvidia Jetson Nano module with 16GB emmc. It sounds like a lot of space, but after I installed all the sdk components - it’s gone 
So the 32GB SD card was the only option. So, I guess, sometimes you have to shoot yourself in the leg to gain an experience
I like the saying from this song I overheard, "I shoot the lights out to curse the dark...".
It is really preference to me but some other people will see it differently.
There used to be a console image instead of barebones. And now, I see the IoT and XFCE4 additions which are nice if you want to learn common goods and protocols.
It is really difficult to me, just me here, saying that console is not small enough of used space.
1. Who knows what I can learn from the beagleboard.org people unless
a. I jot down the builds I come across and the location of so-said builds
Anyway, I keep looking to the people at this organization-business to support findings I deem worthy.
If finding, say sudo ~/../../ find | grep MY_FAVORITE_FIND, is inconsistent with what I have been learning, I can build my own image and use Buildroot. BusyBox is small and tidy.
I like the bloat is all I am saying really. I like it because if gives me clues and knowledge on what is built for what cause and when.
For instance, when building the kernel willy-nilly, there is so much expansion to soak in.
U-boot is similar because things change of course. I can type forever…I might as well quit now while behind.
Seth
P.S. If anyone asks, sometimes less bloat on the image partition(s) are an okay thing while when retrieving a number of packages for an OS that work in tandem absolutely well is sometimes hard to find. Hence, rcn-ee and his builds are meticulously exacted and down to the point.
I remember when RTOS was a capable thing on the am335x. Did I get to dance with that one? No!
Would I have danced with the RTOS? YES! But things have transpired and newer boards with coprocessors are now blistering the pages and beagleboard.org. Blistering is a positive notion in this case because I think that newer BeagleY-AI may just have development for the coprocessor or choice. R5f and maybe the M4? Well, maybe not the DSP but wait…
Does the BeagleY-AI have an M4 on it?
https://docs.beagle.cc/boards/beagley/ai/05-demos.html
Outside of that idea…there! Expansion and creation at our fingertips. No eMMC…I had to triple check.
And to @Sarah_Davis , I read what you typed. I do not think this competition is Pick this or that because it works....
I think sticking with this organization-business is just an okay thing. I mean…either you help along the way or you nay say to the point every person is out to even hate on the little things.
- Why does the Pi have this and the BBB have that?
- More provoking, Why does the BBB have so many peripherals from the get go?
- And I should keep my mouth shut again and again but…
- Have you seen some of the help articles?
a. It is like me times infinity.
b. People jump in to jump out.
c. People in general cannot wait to see expression over resilience.
Anyway…that is all I guess. And right about the eMMC images. Too much bloat. Erase before updating your console image and remove items you think/know will not crash the system per a reboot only to update/upgrade once again! It really seems/seemed silly. I just figured there was a reason. You know…like some whatever that movie was where there was a heartless lion that had to face opposition. “Behind the scenes, man… It is the Man holding me back…man.”
I know. Too much...
@Ernst_D ,
Yeppers…I see a long futuristic approach to applying data to chips in a timely fashion. Namely, 64-bit monsters of the computational world.
So, to everyone else, okay. Back to my dwelling where I can sip and sit.
Seth
P.S. Signing off for now. Until next time. Bye guys/gals. Am I still approachable?