Re: Newbie Questions

[Alan Corey <alan01346%gmail.com@localhost>]

Well, there's Net, Free and OpenBSD and at least 3 Linux
distributions.  The machines themselves?    I'd go for price first. I
have a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero doing useful work, admittedly after I
spent a bunch on adapters.  The flagship model 3B is only $35 list.
Non-expandable RAM though, everybody gets 1 GB.  Even the wired
ethernet is actually implemented through USB, which is USB 2.  Some
are 64 bit, some aren't, a sign of the times.  I haven't spent a lot
of time studying the higher priced machines.  I think the Beaglebone
is relatively low price from TI.  The size of the userbase could be a
factor, there had been 8 million Pis sold a couple years ago.
Raspbian is slick, almost everything works.  A couple clicks and it's
downloaded and installed.  For free, somewhere over 40k applications.

Installation is mostly done by writing an image file to an SD card and
booting it up.  If you're lucky you'll have working video.  On the Pi
video modes are controlled by /boot/config.txt but you could edit that
with even Windows Notepad by putting the SD card in a reader.  That
partition is FAT16, nothing challenging.  The Pi's EDID stuff doesn't
work well with older monitors so you may have to fiddle to get a
working video mode, but on newer monitors it will come up at the
monitor's native resolution automatically.  You can use dd under unix
or win32diskimager under Windows to install the image file, then you
install the applications you need once it's booted.  The SD card
doesn't need to be big or expensive, you can keep a few around loaded
with different operating systems and switch.  I just had one fail
after a year though, buy good ones.

Serial console?  Are you thinking of openwrt?  You could connect a
console to your toaster (maybe) with that.

On 6/17/17, Henry B (Hank) Hotz, CISSP <hbhotz%oxy.edu@localhost> wrote:
> What distinguishes all the different arm ports? (Is that written up
> anywhere?) I see the Beaglebone is referenced in three of them, but what’s
> the difference?
>
> Also, it sounds like an initial install isn’t feasible without having a
> serial connection to the console. Fair enough, but would it work if I added
> a USB keyboard and an HDMI display? (Maybe I’ll just get a cable from Fry’s
> and try it anyway.)
>
> Apologies to the port maintainer for emailing him before posting to the
> list.
>
> Personal email.  hbhotz%oxy.edu@localhost
>
>
>
>
>


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