Re: headless LAMP server buying advice: Beaglebone Black or Cubieboard
2013/5/6 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net>:
> 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"?
Yes! That would be super easy.
>
> 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.
I tried to understand as much as I could (not much indeed) but I got the idea.
>
> 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 was just wandering if there was an easy path...
>
> i.e. right now, pretty much everyone does custom kernel builds, and
> that really is the end of the matter.
Got it. Like in the old days.
[snip]
>>>> 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.
That was informative! Anyway I was ruling them out because of price,
low RAM and I was just guessing about obsolescence knowing the last
product (dreamplug) is at least two years old.
>
> ... 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....
Specs are real good but it's too much hassle to get a much needed ethernet.
>
> l.
Thanks a lot!
--
Leonardo Canducci
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