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Re: headless LAMP server buying advice: Beaglebone Black or Cubieboard



On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 11:01 AM, Leonardo Canducci
<leonardo.canducci@gmail.com> wrote:
> I hope I'm not OT... I'm a long time debian user but a total noob on arm.
>
> I'd like to set up a toy headless LAMP server on a chap single board
> computer. I'd like to use debian (armhf I guess) and I'm looking for:
> - decent specs
> - painless installation
> - upgradablility (kernel and so on)

 kernel upgradeability on ARM devices is *never* easy :)  at least on
A10 devices it's not like you're spoiled for documentation and howtos.
 start from http://linux-sunxi.org and
http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/hacking_the_mele_a1000 and see
how you get on.

 beaglebone black i've not looked into because it doesn't have SATA
and because the limitations of the SoC itself when compared to the A10
have had to be "bolstered" by additional ICs.

> I don't care for:
> - GPIO
> - graphics

... so the fact that the beaglebone black has to do HDMI via a
separate IC is of no consequence to you, but what about SATA?

> I made some research and read some wiki and it looks like the new
> Beaglebone Black and the Cubieboard are both good choices (the former
> probably having better support and the latter better specs).

 "probably" isn't quite true.  it depends on how you rate an
"official" SoC vendor's support vs rather large from-ground-up
community-driven support.

 personally, given the fact that the people in the community have had
to do the work themselves on the A10, that means that they're
extremely knowledgeable now, and i'd rate their advice as being as
good as if not better than that of an "official" SoC vendor.  and
probably more accessible, too.

 why don't you test that out by asking on each respective community?
see how easy it is, how responsive they both are.

> Which one wolud you recommend? Are there alternatives to consider?

 couple more on top of brian's list: odroid-u2, odroid-x2 (both are
easy enough to convert to debian using a chroot bootstrap, see
http://lkcl.net/reports/odroid-u2.html) - you can ignore the stuff
about MALI.

 it would help you enormously to put out a hardware spec.  say, a
minimum amount of RAM, minimum number of interfaces etc.

l.


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