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Sounds like Fedora remix might be slow on the Raspberry Pi
Posted: Wed 14 Mar 2012, 16:31
by rrolsbe
From what I have read in the online forums, it appears the Fedora remix distribution recommended for the Raspberry Pi is sluggish. Hopefully Puppy Linux will be MUCH better for this hardware platform?
Regards, Ron
Posted: Wed 14 Mar 2012, 16:49
by markyd68a
I am very lucky, the wife got up early and ordered me a slice of Pi when it was available so should be getting one soon.
Would very much like to get involved in Puppy Pi or what ever it will be called.
MarkyD68a
Posted: Wed 14 Mar 2012, 17:03
by darkcity
great stuff, mine will probably arrive backend of summer
puppy is well suited to slower hardware. lots of experience of slim software in the kennels
How the transition to arm goes is another matter.
the plan is to trim debian, although there is an arm version of slackware - not sure if its compiled for ARMv6 architecture that RPi runs on
Posted: Wed 14 Mar 2012, 17:08
by darkcity
http://www.armedslack.org/
Raspberry Pi
There's a lot of buzz around the Raspberry Pi at the moment, and I'm pleased to confirm two things:
Slackware ARM's packages (from 13.37 and -current) will run on the Raspberry Pi as is
Slackware ARM will provide a ready-to-run Kernel for the Raspberry Pi once a Pi is physically available to us (a couple of others in the Slackware core team are ordering one and I might get one too). Currently for those of your who have a Pi in your hands, you'll need to compile your own Kernel. I'll look into whether the Pi can be installed using the regular Slackware installer once the Kernels are prepared.
Posted: Wed 14 Mar 2012, 17:16
by markyd68a
This will be the most "hardcore" Linux thing I have ever done, dont get me wrong been dabling for quite a while and due to dam HD failure Slacko is my day to day OS until I get home and get it sorted (Slacko, 3G MiFi and any piece of junk I can stick my USB drive into ha ha)
Now in X86 world you would boot up via CD/DVD drive using you fav iso and install to hd / usb etc but I believe in Pi land you cant do that and can only boot of the SD slot, is that correct?
If so ... how do you get to build the SD image?
Head hurts and don't even have a Pi in my hands yet!
MarkyD68a
Posted: Wed 14 Mar 2012, 17:38
by pacer106
this has some info for pi puppy fans
sorry if its already posted on the forum elsewhere.
http://www.youtube.com/user/RaspberryPiTutorials
Posted: Wed 14 Mar 2012, 19:03
by markyd68a
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PARM
this looks like a place for PuPi fans to hang out
Posted: Thu 15 Mar 2012, 04:29
by greengeek
markyd68a wrote:
this looks like a place for PuPi fans to hang out
Maybe the first release of the software could be called "PuPi 3.1415926535"
Posted: Thu 15 Mar 2012, 07:43
by Lobster
If so ... how do you get to build the SD image?
You will find info on the RaspberryPy blog (Puppy style blog) on how I did this from the Puppy command line - with three commands
http://raspberrypy.tumblr.com/
. . . and now for something not completely different . . .
Like the PuPi name - very good.
The PARM project includes all migration to ARM (Puppy ARM is the full meaning). Here for example is what Barry is planning . . .
Posted on 13 Mar 2012, 16:42 by BarryK
ARM architectures
A clarification, for those not familiar with ARM architectures. The Raspberry Pi has an ARMv6 CPU (also known as ARM11, just to confuse you), whereas most ARM boards these days have at least a Cortex-A8, which is ARMv7 (+NEON).
ARMv6 and ARMv7 refer to the instruction set. From my fairly brief reading, it seems that ARMv6 has "thumb" instructions but they are not very usable, whereas ARMv7 has "thumb-2" instructions which are usable -- these can considerably reduce the size of executables. Most ARMv7 CPUs also have the NEON multimedia instruction set, which can speed up multimedia operations.
What it comes down to, is if code is compiled for those extra goodies of ARMv7, then it won't work on an ARMv6 CPU. However, code compiled for ARMv6 will work on an ARMv7 CPU.
I want those extra features of ARMv7, if I am going to be using a board with an ARMv7 CPU. So that means I am going to have to build two different puppies, one targeting the Raspberry Pi, another targeting the ARMv7-based board.
Precise Pangolin is a suitable source of binary packages for the ARMv7-based Puppy (except for the omission of NEON). For RasPi, I will have to build from another distro such as Debian, that does have ARMv6 binary packages.
I hope that clarifies things.
My gold plated HDMI cables arrived from Amazon.
I suppose that is geek bling?
Good length. Good quality. I got 4 new cables including postage for less than US $8 including tax and postage
Any sniff of the promised Alpha board?
No
Posted: Thu 15 Mar 2012, 08:54
by greengeek
.
Is the RCA video connector on the Pi board a video-in or a video-out?
Posted: Thu 15 Mar 2012, 09:48
by Lobster
Video out no sound.
For sound you need to use audio out or HDMI (Video and sound)
Posted: Thu 15 Mar 2012, 17:31
by greengeek
Hmmm, I could use that video out to feed my small LCD TV that has a broken tuner. I could use the Pi to watch MP4s and flv files in my car.
Might call it the Pi-CarT
Posted: Thu 15 Mar 2012, 19:19
by linuxbear
greengeek wrote:Hmmm, I could use that video out to feed my small LCD TV that has a broken tuner. I could use the Pi to watch MP4s and flv files in my car.
Might call it the Pi-CarT
...hmmm if you're driving down a nice straight road through a desert, you could steer with your knee and use your hands to enter a text message
Posted: Fri 16 Mar 2012, 10:49
by markyd68a
Just been informed my delivery date is in may
long time to wait for some PuPi fun!
Posted: Fri 16 Mar 2012, 16:26
by eowens2
Here is an interesting review of of real-world performance of major distros on an honest-to-goodness R-Pi:
http://www.designspark.com/content/raspberry-pi-review
Posted: Fri 16 Mar 2012, 17:12
by Lobster
eowens2 that is very useful.
My inclination was to start with Debian and this confirms it.
A shame about Fedora as I thought they had optimised the driver for the broadcom graphics component . . .
10 seconds is a good boot time - well done to Arch.
Starting with stability is a good approach to bootstrap from. Debian will include a C compiler . . . and away we go.
Posted: Fri 16 Mar 2012, 20:12
by Aitch
However, also on the same site
Fedora recommended by non-expert non-linux user
The Fedora Remix seems to be the recommended option on the Raspberry Pi site. If you don't know much about installing Linux distros, then this is the route to take because a special image installer program is provided which runs under Windows
http://www.designspark.com/content/rasp ... pert-linux
We'll get there, ....real soon
Aitch
Posted: Fri 16 Mar 2012, 23:46
by BarryK
Thanks from me too.
Right now I am downloading the Debian image, and I was wondering what others to download. After reading that review, the only other one that I will download will be the Arch Linux image.
Posted: Sat 17 Mar 2012, 00:18
by darkcity
slackware will be releasing a version for ARMv6 too
Posted: Sat 17 Mar 2012, 00:35
by technosaurus
I didn't get in on the 1st round of shipments, so I won't be able to do this myself, but I will put it out there.
We may try rebuilding the kernel with localyesconfig (with all necessary modules already loaded), followed by an allmodconfig to pick up any extra modules. This will improve boot speeds and reduce the size and init complexity a bit.