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Pi-Lovers? There Are Two New OSes for You to Bite

posted by mrpg on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the nobody-think-of-the-NUC dept.

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] While it has been possible to get Alpine on the Pi for some time – Raspberry Pi 2 owners have been able to get it working since version 3.2.0 – this is the first version to add support for the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ and also offer an arm64 (aarch64) image to ease deployment.

The Pi 3 Model B+ packs a surprising amount of power into a small package, rocking a 64 bit 1.4GHz processor and gigabit ethernet (over USB 2.0). The 1GB RAM (unchanged from the previous Model B) should give the slimline Alpine incarnation of Linux more than enough headroom, depending what else you decide to run.

[...] Alpine's frugal nature makes it appealing as an alternative to some of the more resource intensive distributions available for the Pi, with optimisations such as OpenRC replacing systemd as the init system. A minimal disk installation will only consume around 130MB and the maintainers claim a container only needs 8MB.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by bitstream on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:12AM (8 children)

    by bitstream (6144) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:12AM (#702258) Journal

    I have found that the Pi-1, Pi-2 etc might have the right performance/price ratio for control systems. Especially when you need real Unix networking with Ethernet/arp/IP/TCP whatnot. But the Pi3 breaks that. It's not powerful enough to compete with a used laptop. But is also at the same time just too expensive for the application.

    I would rather have something like RetroBSD [retrobsd.org]. Then you still have some rudimentary Unix framework requiring no more than RAM of 128 kB and Flash of 512 kB. The CPU needs to be of MIPS M4K. That enables cutting down on complexity hardware wise and cost.

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  • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:35AM (5 children)

    by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:35AM (#702291)

    I have found that the Pi-1, Pi-2 etc might have the right performance/price ratio for control systems. [...] But the Pi3 breaks that. It's not powerful enough to compete with a used laptop. But is also at the same time just too expensive for the application.

    What are you on about? The price is the same for the Pi 1, 2, and 3 B versions of the Pi.

    • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:42AM (4 children)

      by bitstream (6144) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:42AM (#702294) Journal

      No.. ?

      • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:31AM (3 children)

        by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:31AM (#702317)

        Okay, the Pi 1 has actually fallen in cost. That not withstanding, it was released at the same price point as the newer B versions.

        Current pricing:
        Pi 1B @ AUD$35 [element14.com]
        Pi 2B @ AUD$49 [element14.com]
        Pi 3B+ @ AUD$49 [element14.com]

        • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:08AM (2 children)

          by bitstream (6144) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:08AM (#702412) Journal

          Problem is many local shops have skipped anything but Pi-3B so freight is an issue.

          • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:21AM (1 child)

            by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:21AM (#702439)

            ... that's an argument in favour of the 3B, not against it. Just quietly :)

            • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:54AM

              by bitstream (6144) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:54AM (#702456) Journal

              It's an argument that Raspberry Pi might begin to loose its prime spot.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:04PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:04PM (#702506)

    How does the pi3 break the price-performance ratio unfavorably? It is the same price as pi-1 or 2, and about 8 times more powerful as compared to pi-1...

    • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:07PM

      by bitstream (6144) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:07PM (#702507) Journal

      No need for faster. But definitely cheaper. Heavy processing can be don in a server elsewhere.