Re: headless LAMP server buying advice: Beaglebone Black or Cubieboard
2013/5/6 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net>:
> 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.
That's bad news... so there is not one single board supported by
debian? What about OMAP kernels in the armhf port? Are there other
specific repositories with kernel updates?
>
> 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?
SATA is interesting in a NAS perspective. Also worth considering that
BBB has half the RAM and NAND.
>
>> 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.
Well, I meant mostly community support... I was focused on the
specific card - instead of the SOC itself - and I guessed that
Beaglebone had a much larger userbase. I know A10 has been around for
a long time and many gadgets are base around that SOC. So Cubieboard
is better even in that regard?
>
> why don't you test that out by asking on each respective community?
> see how easy it is, how responsive they both are.
I'll do
>
>> 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.
These are mid-range products (at least twice the price) with
desktop-like performance. Probably overkill for my purpose.
>
> it would help you enormously to put out a hardware spec. say, a
> minimum amount of RAM, minimum number of interfaces etc.
I don't know exactly but I guess I need:
- ethernet
- 512MB ram or more
- up-to-date CPU
since I'd like to run dokuwiki and experiment with selfoss, NAS (nfs),
owncloud and possibly freedombox stuff (once it gets ready to play
with)
Thanks!
--
Leonardo Canducci
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