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
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:58PM (25 children)
phil@razspaz:~$ uname -a
Linux razspaz 4.10.17+ #1 Tue May 23 10:24:51 CEST 2017 armv6l GNU/Linux
phil@razspaz:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://auto.mirror.devuan.org/merged jessie main
...
However, that's very underpowered, so I'll be migrating to a RasPi 3 when one comes into the local shops, and will definitely be in the market for a frugal and systemd-free distro.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Touché) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:59PM (4 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:18PM (3 children)
Dump that poettering junk. There was one point where I had a bunch of trouble fighting with avahi which was sucking up 100% CPU. It's a useless piece of shit so I turned it off. Then systemderp gave us trouble creating a service for running a daemon. damn Lindows.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by urza9814 on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:38PM (2 children)
I've been playing with Void Linux lately, and might end up switching my laptop over to that soon. Haven't tried it on a Pi yet, but they do support it (at least the Pi 1/2...doesn't mention the 3):
https://voidlinux.org/download/ [voidlinux.org]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:28PM
Another Void user here :) Artix Linux is nice too and comes default with Runit now, though I've noticed it seems a liiiittle buggy compared to Void.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:57PM
Thanks for that void reminder. Hmmmm... rolling, optional musl libc, bsd licensing of their tools, no systemd;runit looks very interesting, and libressl. I'm liking what I see.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:07PM (4 children)
Your arm is so limp, your floating point isn't even hard.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:01PM
A device with a limp ARM needs a different kind of device to get its floating point hard.
Thank goodness the 1st amendment forces people to listen to you and agree with you.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:29PM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @04:55AM (1 child)
When armhf was still just a port (not official arch) in Debian, the published benchmarks for armhf vs. armel were around 15-30% faster. I was running it on an original Panda board back then, perf was adequate for such a low powered board, but I never benchmarked it.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday July 04 2018, @09:03AM
How fast ARM (say Cortex-M3) is needed to software encode 640x480 video? what fps will that provide?
Or 320 x 240 ?
(no audio)
Minimum RAM?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by coolgopher on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:45PM (13 children)
Speaking of choice, I've mostly switched across to the Rock64 [pine64.org] from the Pi these days. The Raspberry Pi Foundation's insistence on running a not-mainline kernel, together with the Poettering crapd introduction has left me cold. I've found the Rock64 a really good alternative, what with the increased RAM as well as a real ethernet port (i.e. not stuck on the USB 2.0 bus), and a genuine USB 3.0 port.
I did have to disable the checksum offloading on the ethernet to avoid a stall that would happen when operating in gigabit mode. I haven't had time to sit down and try newer kernels in many months, but hopefully it's been fixed by now.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:49PM (3 children)
Should I sub this?
https://www.androidauthority.com/renegade-elite-4k-881940/ [androidauthority.com]
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Libre-Computer-s-single-board-computer-Renegade-Elite-coming-in-August-Rockchip-RK3399-in-tow.310656.0.html [notebookcheck.net]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:42PM
At $100 it feels a bit too pricey for me, though it looks like a decent board overall. The plain Renegade board looks very similar to the Rock64, at pretty much the same price point. I haven't tried either of them, but I was reasonably happy with Rockchip's available documentation when I had to look into the boot process details.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:03AM (1 child)
Why? If you are doing embedded things a Pi is probably good enough. But if you want more, like to actually run a browser and need more than 1GB of ram, etc. you run smack into the problem that everything that isn't a Pi is basically headless. They keep churning out all manner of little single board Arm systems with dumb framebuffer video and perhaps a buggy blob tied to one non-mainline kernel that provides accelerated video decode. Until the video driver logjam is cleared away none of these things are useful. The Pi is too underpowered and lacking in essentials and everything else is headless. What is needed is to smack the Pi people upside the head and get them to build one with 2 or 4GB ram, and PCIe with a real Ethernet port on that.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday July 04 2018, @09:11AM
2 or 4GB ram, and PCIe with a real Ethernet port on that.
That's a desktop machine. Not embedded gadget. Get one of those mini-PCs or used laptop. Better suited for the task.
(though.. Pi really could get-a-real-Ethernet-port-thanks(tm) )
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:47PM
SBCs are a bit of a hobby of mine. I haven't used the Rock64 before but really like the specs on it.
I personally run ODROIDs myself, as they seem to have one of the largest communities (probably the second largest, although the Pine64 community is also alive as you probably know).
From my testing, the two most important things I've identified are driver support and community. Bashing your head against a wall on some poorly documented piece of hardware is not worth saving 30 dollars. And when it comes to SBCs, speed typically isn't an issue. None of them are fast, but the jobs asked of them match the hardware.
To be honest, my webserver has moved back to x86 on my circa 2010 laptop. I migrated to Docker, and while they support ARM and ARM64 most containers are build only for AMD64. Between that and the ability to upgrade the processor and memory from ebay purchases really made the laptop the better choice.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:57PM (2 children)
odroid xu4
real usb3, 8 cores, can be a traffic generator for gig-ethernet (2 full ports at very close to wire speed).
pi's suck and continue to suck. the good thing about the pi is the community; without that, the pi would be just another half-ass sbc.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:02PM (1 child)
root@razspaz:/var/log# uptime
19:00:57 up 181 days, 6:43, 7 users, load average: 0.94, 0.53, 0.42
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:39PM
You'll be glad to know there's a new version of software out, released last weekend. So much for your uptime :)
Every time a Christian defends Trump an angel loses it's lunch.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:05PM (4 children)
Rock64 1 GByte [pine64.org] for 25 USD seem interesting!
Though the proprietary "MALI-450 MP2 GPU" might be a problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:41PM (3 children)
I'm getting a 403 Forbidden. Is it down, or does it not like my Frankenbrowser?
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:03AM (2 children)
Maybe your browser https-fu is too weak. But I did a archiving of the page at archive.org:
Archived version.. [archive.org]
Hope it helps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:14AM (1 child)
Excellent, works, thanks.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:32AM
What do you think about the gadget?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:14PM
Full disclosure: I've always found Raspbian to be sufficient to my needs on all manner of RPi.
Within Raspbian, there once was an option to go either without or with systemd, the transition was pretty invisible from my use perspective, except: the systemd version booted faster, like half the time. Seemed like a good trade to me.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by DECbot on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:47PM
For those looking for the second updated OS not mentioned in TFS, it is Raspbian.
TLDR summery: there are OS updates available to the Raspberry Pi! Choose either "noob friendly," systemd encumbered Raspbian or native 64 bit, systemd free, Alpine--now featuring minimal installs. Add only the GNU/Linux you need! Minimum install starts at 130MB.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:22PM (8 children)
On a Ras Pi project, I decided to use Raspbian Light (no GUI). Install my JAR with a script that starts it as a daemon at boot. Then perform a carefully crafted list of other tasks to get Raspbian to run on read-only media. That way you can pop the SD into the Pi, boot it, the application runs in background, and nothing on the SD will ever be written. This gives me the impression (or misconception?) that the configuration would be a lot more stable. No worrying about an abrupt power off of the Pi with things not being written. The Java app on the PI provides a web based control panel accessible from a desktop computer, and controls the GPIO using Pi4J.
I first heard of Alpine Linux while I was tinkering with Kubernetes last year. Just for personal amusement and learning. Alpine is VERY light. About as bare bones as it gets. I can run Java on it, but I have to add the glibc for the JVM to work.
Thank goodness the 1st amendment forces people to listen to you and agree with you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:26PM (5 children)
alpine looked cool but their code of conduct is pretty disgusting.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:21AM (4 children)
Yea, it really is getting out of hand. If you pick on some Mac using fairy you would get banned for two offenses. The usual and...
You can't even make jokes about technology in a tech project. "Technological preference" is now a protected class. First I'd heard of that one. $current_year moves faster and faster. Madness.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:31AM (2 children)
FFS! Everyone has the right to a vi vs emacs flame war!
I mean, it's really a bit of a useful rite of passage, defending your editor of choice against the horde. If you can't make sane arguments and keep a clear enough head to ignore responding the emotional ones, you'll get to repeat the lesson until you learn that there will always be others with differing opinions which you cannot budge.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:13AM (1 child)
But that might lead to bad feelz in some modern snowflake that has been raised to believe their beliefs can never, ever, under no circumstance, be questioned. Better everyone wear a muzzle than one snowflake have sadz. Doesn't matter what, just never question them. If they are thirty and still believe in the Easter Bunny you better not so much as snicker or it will be off to the camps with you unless you have several more Intersectionality points than they do, then you might escape with a stern warning.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:35AM
Well I ain't puttin' up with that bullshit, and if it means I'll need to sprinkle more expletives in my correspondence to keep such wankers away from me, then so be it. Now sod off ya git! :P
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 05 2018, @02:10PM
Would tabs vs spaces count as a "Technological preference"?
What about a Technological Orientation instead of Preference? I was born this way (to use tabs). It is an immoral and unnatural act to use spaces for indentation.
Difference between Behavior and Orientation:
Behavior:
Orientation:
Thank goodness the 1st amendment forces people to listen to you and agree with you.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:51PM
Yeah, assuming your OS is running totally in RAM and doesn't write to the SD, that should protect you from a SD card corruption due to unexpected shutdown.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by EETech1 on Thursday July 05 2018, @02:13AM
I've had zero issues with sd card corruption using these:
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/RP-SMKC08DA1/PCR237-ND/4168602?WT.z_cid=sp_8001_buynow [digikey.com]
They're not cheap ~$45 for 8 GB, but they have additional error correction, and power failure recovery.
If you want SLC flash and class 10 speed, they also have these:
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/RP-SMSC08DA1/P17014-ND/5119421?WT.z_cid=sp_8001_buynow [digikey.com]
They're only ~$145 for the 8 GB!
It sucks that you have to buy a $45 memory card to make a $35 computer work reliably, but it saves the hassle of the read only filesystem.
I have about a dozen Pi's in industrial applications, and they just pull the plug no matter what you tell them, so these are a lifesaver. I can push updates to them, and change calibrations without having to fuss with rebooting to make changes. I also like to be able to log everything so if there is a problem, I have some data to go on.
Cheers!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:02PM (2 children)
How is linux "two new OSes"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:23PM (1 child)
Linux is a kernel, not OS
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:37AM
So, How is GNU/Linux "two new OSes"?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:02PM
FreeBSD on Raspberry Pi [freebsd.org], go get it. Completely allergic to Poettering systemd etc.
Have awful features like just-works(tm).
Download [freebsd.org] install image for RPI-B, RPI2 etc.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bitstream on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:12AM (8 children)
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.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:35AM (5 children)
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)
No.. ?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:31AM (3 children)
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)
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)
... 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
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)
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
No need for faster. But definitely cheaper. Heavy processing can be don in a server elsewhere.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by KritonK on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:18AM (2 children)
(The usual question is "will it run Linux", but in this case the answer is obviously yes.)
My question is, which distribution is best for multimedia. Raspbian is sort of OK, but not great: there's omxplayer for it, which works great as a player, if you don't mind a command line based utility, but it all goes downhill from there. Unless you build them yourself, using unofficial patches, standard players such as vlc and mpv do not use hardware acceleration, and are abysmally slow. Custom built versions display video either as fixed overlays or full screen; you can't have hardware accelerated video in a window. (This may be a limitation of the hardware, but I'm not sure.) Even with this limitation, mpv, e.g., is somewhat slower than omxplayer, so it doesn't take full advantage of the hardware. Finally, front ends, such as smplayer, are hopelessly old, and you need to build newer versions of those, as well.
I'm thinking of switching to some other distribution, but I don't know which. I looked into Fedora, with which I'm familiar, but they don't support audio on the RPi, yet, so it isn't a good distribution for a machine that I want to use mainly as a media player.
So, is there a Linux distribution for the RPi, which has full hardware support for the RPI, has recent versions of the various software packages, instead of Debian stable's antique versions, supports hardware acceleration out of the box in its builds of the various media players, and has a build of omxplayer available for it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:57AM (1 child)
The real question is.. Will it run FreeBSD [freebsd.org] or any other BSD..?
Avoids poettering'd and provides a integrated kernel + userland, conservative code changes etc.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:07PM
Of course it does [raspbsd.org]. However, the situation appears to be even worse regarding multimedia, or even a graphical environment. (Or, these guys simply don't know how to promote their own product. What does "The Graphical Images currently only have a VideoCore kernel modules added to them. In the future a GUI and other tools will be preloaded" mean? Is GUI support something that has not been implemented yet, or is adding a GUI simply a matter of installing the relevant packages after the installation of the base system?)
Even with FreeBSD, my question remains: does it fulfill my requirements for a multimedia machine?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:41AM
Two new OS'es?
Linux has been on the PI for years. My own web server is a PI2 running FreeBSD. And with the PI3, even Windows became available on the PI?
So, which operating systems are new on the PI? QNX and OS/2?