How to improve our Linux images?

[JohnS]

Oskar - I wonder if people will read such things.

Most if not all are already on the net but people seem not to look.  (The same tends to be true of the Olimex wiki, product pages, github, wordpress, etc.)

Of course, lots of people do not want an IDE (think about Linux authors) or a particular kind of debugger, but others find such as Eclipse & OpenOCD without hardship.

Still, if someone puts a very detailed article on the wiki maybe future questions can be answered with RTFM (er, RTFW - which works now if W is web).

John

John,

fact is, if I have to search the web and then put pieces together, how much time and effort does this take?
I think I am not the only one who cannot afford days and weeks before I become productive in a new environment.
I need to spend my time to create solutions and make a living :-)

Just my 2c

Oskar

You make my point for me.  Good luck

Of course it won't take days let alone weeks unless you're a very slow learner.

The nearer you are to the bleeding edge the more you should expect to DIY.  For detailed, stable, etc tutorials, videos and so on then probably you want to be away from the bleeding edge.

John

[RFranta]

I vote for Mono support and more Linux distributions (Fedora, Linaro, Ubuntu, Archlinux)

[otyugh]

Ideally I'd want :
1) Archlinux image "clean" - also known as net install.
Or at least, a Debian image "clean".

2) For "everyone" a XBMC stuff running smooth could be a way to buy an olinuxino instead of a RPi. I personnaly don't care about it, still, saying :p

Maybe : A puppylinux image ? They do all their work for "old devices" and support arm. Everything is built with a complete desktop and scaled for being fast and easy... ? Could be cool

I'd also want to see a topic where all tweaks are listed :
> how to stop the 1% load while idling
> how to show the nand (and how to install a system on it)
> how to shutdown whitout rebooting while power supply AND battery are pluged
> ...

[BIG-L]

Hi guys & girls,

I am working on a major project using the A20, touch screen, MODIO for some I/O & MOD RTC, Python and Pygame.  I have one "Bench unit" running and five more waiting on cases.  I'm running the full blown linux disty for now and frankly its worked out much better than I thought.

As a newbie to both Linux and Python the learning curve has not been bad.  If you do your research and with the help of some good folks on the forum - I think anyone with any programing experience at all can get things up and running with a minimum of frustrations and dead ends.

As for how to improve the Linux image provided -- like someone else noted - its mostly personal preferences and specific applications or requirements that dictate.

Might want to consider multiple offerings - tailored for opposite ends of the spectrum - ie stripped down (add want you need) or deluxe (with all the bells and whistles one could ever need - what you have now !!!)

Great product offering -

Keep em coming!!!

[cedric]

I have 2 things that caused me to recompile the kernel:
1) No drivers for my logitech unifier receiver (for my K340 keyboard and M570 mouse). I found the solution here:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-908028-start-0.html
I had to enable Device Drivers -> HID Devices -> Generic HID support -> /dev/hidraw raw HID device support

2) There was no support for XFS file system.

Kind regards,
Cedric

[PaceyIV]

I suggest to fix the CPU load problem (see post https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=1757.0)

[PaceyIV]

one of the argument I hear pro Raspberry PI is how easy to use is Raspberry Pi, we do not have one to see, this is why I'm asking here our customers, what they think should be improved in the Linux images to make them more user friendly and easy to use

Improve the Wiki!
It is easier to find a guide in a Wiki instead of some post in a forum, or blog.
You can add some tutorial section:
- how to build kernel
- how to boot from sata
- how to enable hardware acceleration
- how to configure and use ownCloud (http://olimex.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/howto-setup-a20-olinuxino-micro-rootfs-on-sata-and-owncloud/)
- how to configure and use the board as a media center with subsonic, minidlna, ....
- ...

You already have some of this tutorial but a new user has to search this information in the blog, in forum,..
It's not easier to find it.

[giovanni.v]

Improve the Wiki!

++

Good -and easy to find- documentation could be a big step forward... blog about a new wiki documentation page instead of writing it on wordpress.

[ziggyfish]

Improve the Wiki!

++

Good -and easy to find- documentation could be a big step forward... blog about a new wiki documentation page instead of writing it on wordpress.

Even simpler than that, provide a minimal Linux distro with enabled SSH built in and some basic software to control the other parts of the board, and maybe even a gcc compiler. This linux distribution should be installed by default, this way you can simply open up the box, plug power and a Ethernet cable in, and your off and running.

Also provide a power supply when you buy a A20-SOM-EVB, so you don't have go out and buy one (if you don't have one) or at least tell people that you you need one. Its the small things that make a difference.

I should be able to get turn it on the first time and everything just works!!!!

And the other thing that will make olimex look more professional is get rid of the requirement to send the payment via a personal paypal account. It just looks dodgy. Its not difficult to integrate PayPal into the site (PayPal Express Checkout would even do, however Paypal Website Payments Pro would be better). Its going to cost you less (fee structure is based on volume in PayPal Express and Paypal Website Payments Pro), and more people will buy it. If you need someone to do it, just send me a PM, and I would be happy to do it for you (I have been doing PHP for 10 years).

[codec]

hi there,

I am a Raspberry user that got frustrated by dying SD-Cards on Raspberry all the time.
I've set up a Raspberry driven heating control system at a very remote site. I am using 1-wire bus to get temperatures and I2C to drive a DAC that controlls the heater.

I would like to replace the whole installation with A20-Olinuxino, as it is more stable and does not "eat" it's SD-Card all the time.

But I cannot get the 1-Wire bus master to work. It seems as if the kernel is missing the modules to access the 1-wire bus. I've done the changes to the script.bin file, but I think I am not good enough, to configure the kernel and recompile it, thus it would be a great improvement, if 1-wire support was working out of the box.

Thanks

Codec

[danielr]

It's fair to say that everyone wants something different.

The boxes have different purposes for different people, If you compare yourself to Raspberry pi, then you have to realise that there are three camps of people using it.

Those that use it to learn to program, - (in my opinion this is silly, better and easier to just use a normal old PC) and want tens of IDE's installed. -actually most developers only really want support for their chosen language, which makes things difficult.

Those that use it to control hardware via GPIO

and those that use it as a system, (either a small web server, or a media server, or media player etc.)


which (for me) leads to the following questions.

What are your goals?

If you want to be the "raspberry pi replacement" and harp on about how your board is going to revolutionise education (still waiting for that to happen!)  then install everything that you can on the image have a huge and bloated image.

If you don't plan to "teach" people to program, then skip installing programming tools and IDEs (in spite of what's been said above)


Have a basic image. an up to date version of Linux.
with an SSH server installed,
with a window system installed ready to be opened with the command startx.

Have a good basic start guide.
one that says connect TV, connect network connect keyboard etc.

wait for apssword prompt and login using xyz user credentials.
change the password with this command
start the desktop by ...

Instructions for adding packages would be cool, even if there are already 100 other websites out there that tell you apt-get install apache installs the apache web server, there is no reason that you can't improve user experience by having everything in one place.

Tell people how to install IDEs and compilers etc.

have the image customised with installation sources ready to get customised packages released by Olimex.

and last, as someone else above said, if you're going to offer a load of pin outs, at least make sure that they are usable in common ways!

Most "home" users are going to have some sort of ISP supplied router with DHCP server built in, so why not enable DHCP, those who are manually addressing their networks would tend to be more advanced users who could turn off DHCP and set static addresses on their own.


tldr;
the best linux is the least fussed with linux, something that will work for everyone, and allow people to add to, rather than figure out what they want to take away.

compile with support for all protocols that you believe people could use for GPIO (single wire bus etc)

Just add a basic system and a desktop

add DHCP support (and enable the network out of the box) -again more people probably will use it rather than not use it.



After you have your "basic" linux image.
Then offer a handful of "customised" imagines 

XMBC image,
Web delopment image (LAMP)
one of the smaller sec concious images
an open WRT image...

so on and so fourth...


I believe that most RPI images are actually supported by the userbase, -just because it is large.
so the best way to get better images is make the product better in some way, more people using the product obviously increases the amount of people willing to essentially customise the images for free!

[Cosik]

Hi all,

I also agree that images should include latest r3p2 drivers for Mali GPU what is more in kernel should be enabled VSYNC.

Images should have set as default black screen as screen saver.

Also wiki should be updated, there are missing basic information, for example how to build kernel for different boards, where to find patches for boards.

[auraltension]

The one A20 LIME image I downloaded was 4G extracted.  It was slightly bigger than the size of my 4GB sd card.  It didn't need to be 4g, so cutting down the size and adding in a script to expand the filesystem on first boot would be useful.

[rouvas]

In my opinion nothing needs to be fundamentally changed.
The supplied images are perfect, except perhaps for better support for supplied hardware, not that I had any problem using a couple of A20's as media servers.

I believe that (human) resources will be better spent in producing better documentation and HOW-TO's covering utilization of A20 in various installations, e.g. as a media server, as a file server, as a controller, coupled with sensors, reading GPIO pins, etc

[JohnS]

The one A20 LIME image I downloaded was 4G extracted.  It was slightly bigger than the size of my 4GB sd card.  It didn't need to be 4g, so cutting down the size and adding in a script to expand the filesystem on first boot would be useful.

Maybe you could create the script and post it for others to use?

(I don't myself have the board.)

John