Jason: This sounds good. It looks like I can to retool my BeagleClass again.
Have you considered including Mathematica on the image? I see it's going to be included on the Pi[2]. --Mark [1] http://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/ [2] http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/5282 On Saturday, January 4, 2014 10:36:20 AM UTC-5, Jason Kridner wrote: > > http://beagleboard.org/blog/2014-01-04-happy-new-year/ > > Here we are, 2014. Expect a big year for Beagle! Unfortunately, I have > to start out with an apology. LinuxGizmos.com recently hopped on the > news that over 100,000 BeagleBone Blacks have now been sold. When they > contacted me to confirm, I blundered a bit by repeating and confirming > what I thought was a fairly broadly shared rumor---that we are looking > to soon shift the Linux distribution that ships in the flash of the > boards from Angstrom to Debian. The blunder wasn't the confirming of > the news, but rather not doing a good job at communicating to the > community about this move better ahead of time. It didn't help that I > was taking off for vacation where my Internet access is spotty at > best. So, I owe you all a big apology, but I hope you are still > excited about the news. > > So what's coming? > > The big news is a shift to Debian in the on-board flash. You'll still > be able to flash Angstrom if you want to use that and myself and > others in the community will still be rather happy to help you with > Angstrom-related questions, but the feeling is that we'll get a much > broader support base if we have new users encounter Debian first on > the upcoming boards. > > The exact date of the switch-over hasn't been determined. Gerald had > most recently given me and everyone involved a deadline of giving him > an image by the end of January, but we are currently bottlenecked by > the updated version of Cloud9 IDE. I have been playing with a beta of > version 3 and I find it to be a huge improvement that will enable us > to provide support for C compilation within the IDE using plug-ins. > The new version also runs on node 0.10, making it much easier to work > with recent Debian builds. Before any switch in production happens, > there will be a fairly complete beta image shared broadly for testing. > > How similar will the experience be? > > If you aren't a heavy Linux user and just do a few things from the > command-line and use the Cloud9 IDE, the experience will be pretty > similar, but I hope you'll find it somewhat improved. If you are a > more seasoned developer, I probably don't need to answer the question, > because you are already likely to be somewhat experienced with Debian. > All of the key features you expect should be there. > > We have a handful of performance goals to try to keep the experience > on-par with Angstrom. One is a boot time target of under 10 seconds. > Using the typical boot strategy for Debian Wheezy without any > significant optimization, Robert Nelson observed that boot time was > more like 30 seconds. By switching over to systemd, as is used by > typical Angstrom builds, boot time dropped to around 16 seconds. We'll > be spending a bit of time trying to improve this between now and the > beta image. > > Space on the flash will likely be very similar, due to trying to > provide similar functionality. The builds are currently quite a bit > smaller, but Robert is still adding in items to bring in feature > parity. > > BoneScript will still be included in the out-of-box experience to help > quickly prove out the various hardware interfaces and help people > learn about wiring up hardware. I've fixed most of the issues with > getting BoneScript onto other distros besides Angstrom and am planning > to soon release version 0.2.4 that already has improved support for > switching pin modes and reading pin states. > > The USB flash drive and USB networking features will still be > included, as well as the driver install guide, self-hosted web-based > tutorial and the previously mentioned Cloud9 IDE. > > Over time, there will be more promotion of the Userspace Arduino > project that provides an easy-to-learn C API for rapid prototyping of > hardware projects. Of course, the boards will continue to ship with a > C/C++ compiler and build tools, libraries, and a number of > interpreters, such as Python. I'd love to include the Adafruit BBIO > Python library, so I'll be contacting them to see if they'll approve > that. I've also been chatting quite a few times with the Erlang folks, > so that is something that has a good likelihood of being included. > > The kernel is likely to be the same one included currently in > Angstrom, the customized 3.8.x kernel. However, if the release slips > enough, there is a reasonable chance we'll be switching over to one of > either the 3.12 or 3.13-rc kernels. A good amount of attention will be > paid to having a good set of drivers and firmware for USB wifi > adapters included as this was a pain point for some people in the > past. > > How to contribute? > > The script for building the image is currently hosted at > https://github.com/beagleboard/image-builder . Hop on the mailing list > with questions about running the script and send Github pull requests > if you have suggested improvements. Contributing to the kernel > continues to be the same athttps://github.com/beagleboard/kernel . I > am overdue, however, at writing up how to contribute Cape DTS firmware > sources that configure Cape hardware automatically using devicetree. > The new repository for that is at > https://github.com/beagleboard/cape-firmware and it just needs a good > README that describes the details of contributing. > > Thanks for all of your support and I'm so very thrilled with all the > amazing things happening in the Beagleverse for 2014! > > --Jason > > P.S. Did I miss anything Gerald? Sorry for the total lack of > communication, but Internet access is extremely limited here. I'm > pretty sure I won't be allowed to take vacation again for some time, > and certainly no where that doesn't have reliable service! > -- 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 [email protected]. 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