Re: headless LAMP server buying advice: Beaglebone Black or Cubieboard
On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 2:12 PM, Leonardo Canducci
<leonardo.canducci@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?
sorry... you've confused me here. if debian only worked on one
board, we would all be in trouble!
oh i get it: you want a single board that happens to have upstream
linux kernel support, such that debian is then in a position to
support _that_, and you can just do "apt-get install
linux-image-N.N.N-xyz"?
if you want that, you're limited to about.... 5 devices in total. 2
known ones, for sure. i'm not going to mention what one of them is
[someone else can do it] because they have a person working for them
who caused some serious problems.
basically it's far too early days and, due to the very diversity
issues being discussed in another thread, the workload for getting
linux kernels upstream and then back downstream into debian is really
very high.
you _could_ cut yourself off from the available hardware by making a
decision to only use "supported" hardware, but you'd be one of the
very very few people in the world who does so.
i.e. right now, pretty much everyone does custom kernel builds, and
that really is the end of the matter.
> What about OMAP kernels in the armhf port? Are there other
> specific repositories with kernel updates?
don't know. OMAP processors are too expensive, and TI won't properly
answer my enquiries for access to their SoCs in mass-volume. that and
the fact that they've slapped BXPA Weapons-Grade "Munitions"
classifications on the fucking things makes it kiiinda challenging to
get them into mass volume products.
so i've been forced to rule them out until TI see sense, and you'll
have to ask someone else.
>>
> SATA is interesting in a NAS perspective. Also worth considering that
> BBB has half the RAM and NAND.
yyep. at the same price, 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?
IRC on freenode:
#linux-sunxi : 73 people
#arm-netbook: 121.
#beaglebone: 15.
#beagleboard: 13
on the other hand, this looks quite active:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!categories/beagleboard/beaglebone-black
but then again so does this:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!categories/cubieboard/debian
you choose.
>>
>> 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
then you probably do mean a 1ghz CPU. don't knock the marvell
products, btw! marvell's architecture benefits from intel having
designed it, basically what they did was put an ARM instruction set
round a superscalar harvard architecture of their *own* making, no
wonder they wouldn't give ARM back the hard macros as they agreed to,
because they didn't _actually_ make any modifications to the crap that
ARM gave them - they did a total reimplementation, and as such were
the first people in the world to have superscalar (out-of-order)
execution of ARM instructions.
hilarious, and very embarrassing for both ARM and Intel. ARM because
they got trounced for very good reasons [ARM have never actually
designed a decent ARM chip in their lives, they always bought in the
improvements], and Intel because they had a really rather good
*non-x86* chip on their hands that was out-performing every single x86
offering that they had, in the power-price-performance metrics.
hur hur :)
anyway, sorry. yes. 1.2ghz kirkwoods are pretty damn good,
basically. but again if you're ruling out the $85 odroid-u2 i think
sheevaplug / guruplug / dreamplug is out of the kind of price bracket
you're considering.
... have you considered an MK802 (or any of its variants) and running
USB ethernet peripherals off of a powered USB hub? don't know if you
can do that - it *should* be possible... hmmm....
l.
Reply to: