On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Anguel <anguel.stan...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Monday, December 23, 2013 10:21:55 PM UTC+1, Terry Storm wrote: >> >> >> A little birdy told me that Angstrom has been abandoned for the BBB ?? >> > > Terry, I will comment on this topic risking to get some angry feedback from > other people posting here. My theory is the following: Koen Kooi was the one > who did all Angstrom development and answered all related questions in > groups, forums and IRC in the past (just look around). According to his > public Google profile he is not working for CircuitCo anymore but for > Linaro. Since then, nobody really cares about Angstrom. Angstrom server is > down for a long time, no updates, etc. A long time ago, I had also posted > some issues + bug fixes to meta-beagleboard but there was no reaction. Most > people on #beagle IRC have no idea about Angstrom or Openembedded, so no > community support there too. Additionally, Angstrom is a "strange" Linux > distro and only a few people know about its details. Afaik it was Koen Kooi > who chose it for the BBB for some reason. Another big problem that BBB > development faces is the need to switch to device tree. Additionally, I > personally don't understand why so much has been invested in some stupid > fancy on-board development tools etc. instead of getting the basic things > done properly. Maybe this was required by some marketing manager to be able > to fool new developers that the BBB is very user friendly and to buy the > board... > > Regarding the BBB kernel, afaik all the work is done by RobertCNelson who is > also working on Ubuntu/Debian development. > > So what could be our options for the future of the BBB: > 1. We can hope that Ubuntu/Debian for BBB get better and better and finally > replace Angstrom as the official distro. > 2. Another possibility is that TI relases a new version of their EZSDK with > support for a new kernel, device tree, latest Qt and 3D. But according to > the work done so far, people don't expect much from TI. > 3. My hope is that the very active developers at Buildroot soon have good > support for the BBB, so we can get access to new software packages and a > very good embedded build system and we could finally forget Angstrom. > > No matter what people tell you, BBB is very very very far from the Raspberry > Pi's software quality and its huge community. CircuitCo and TI advertise the > BBB wherever they can but their promises are far from reality. Why does > CircuitCo still advertise their LCDs as working with latest Angstrom after > all the discussions I had with them here in the groups? > > Many people here tell you that everybody should learn Linux at bare metal > level and should be able to write his own kernel drivers to get simple > things done. I don't agree, I think that manufacturers like TI and CircuitCo > should offer you some working drivers and a stable basis to get started > with. We are buying their chips! Currently they don't support us. I have > even read postings from expert developers who don't get why the BBB kernel > is organized in the way it is, so things are very complex. If you are a new > developer you are just not able to learn everything, even if you don't do > anything else in your job. IMHO this means: Only wealthy big companies can > afford to hire dozens of developers to develop one product they are going to > sell in masses. And if this is the only possibility, this is a very very bad > thing for Embedded Linux. The BBB and R Pi are wonderful boards for single > developers or small companies who have good ideas but don't have the money > and time to do everything from scratch. Or like me, they develop products > which are needed by e.g. universities but are not expected to ship in large > quantities. Unfortunately, the obstacles we currently see with the BBB and > most other embedded boards simply prevent such good product ideas to become > real products. Small developers and hobbyists are just wasting their time > believing the marketing promises of big manufacturers. > > The BBB has better HW than the R Pi but in the meantime I ask myself - what > is it good for if the board does not have working software and if nobody can > help you. So I am seriously considering to switch to the RPi.
I really miss beagleboard.org days of old when users actually took some time to work on the issue they were having and shared a patch/fix with the community. Regards, -- Robert Nelson http://www.rcn-ee.com/ -- For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beagleboard+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
