Default Linux: Angstrom pros and cons


Exophase

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This is actually more of an open question, since I'm not really well educated on it.. what advantages would Angstrom have over other distributions, including the most popular desktop/laptop ones? I've seen a few people advocate continuing use of Angstrom on Pandora 2.


Of course this is all presupposing that there will be a standard, official Linux that can at least optionally come with the unit if not be dual booted from it, and will receive preference in support.


From what (I think) I understand Angstrom is more geared towards lower power stuff, with a smaller size footprint and lighter programs available. But Pandora 2 should be at least as powerful as a typical netbook today, and I don't see anyone putting Angstrom on netbooks. It can't be much of a user interface issue either, since XFCE is a standard option for a variety of distros. From reading their FAQ, Angstrom seems more geared towards embedded applications, ie where the device is tied to at least a core set of specific software. And Pandora doesn't fit embedded at all, with use cases being as versatile as any other computer.


I also know it's tied to openembedded, and that's a plus for people who want to use it. Franky, I've never been a big fan of it, and the more modern toolchains for Pandora aren't derived from it afaik.
 
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I think a smaller footprint is good even if the hardware is beefier, just leaves more performance to applications.


Angstrom was the only show in town for ARM back when the Pandora was being developed.. Perhaps there will be better solutions by the time Pandora 2 comes to be.
 
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I have no strong feelings about using Angstrom for the P2, but angstrom was one of the first distros which supported armv7 at the time. Debian and others still use older revisions for compatibility with armv4. If you compare the performance of debian/ubuntu and angstrom on Pandora, angstrom is quite a lot faster, even with just a desktop loaded.


If other distros are getting as optimized as Angstrom for low power arm devices, I see no reason not to try something new.


The Ubuntu/Android hybrid approach from canotical looks nice for example.
 
Angstrom is a distribution that aim at fitting on a small NAND. So the packages aim at being small and only contains the _requiered_ bits to run (aka no /usr/share/docs, no man pages by default etc)


It aways favor smaller solution to larger one : busybox, tinylogin etc...


Also it a distribution for ARM devices, and choose the best solution for this architecture. It was the first distro to switch the glibc fork when the GNU zealots refused to include some ARM specific patches in the gnu libc.


Finally it's a source distribution more than a real binary one, thuss you can built it for your exact CPU (and not having to run armv4 binaries when you have a neon). It have been built from ground up with cross compilation in mind (well dpkg-cross exist, but you'll need to build one package by one).


EDIT :

The Ubuntu/Android hybrid approach from canotical looks nice for example.
any real activity since 2009 ?I tried to contact them before notaz android PND to try to get something like that running and I got no response at all...
 
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Also, I'm not sure if there are any other distributions with similar recipe-systems which create both a rootfs and ubifs image based on your selection.


There's even an online builder where everyone can select what he wants to build and then he gets a working image :)
 
ubuntnoooooooo. Angstorm is great, just requires lots of knowledge on it's inner workings... Id love to see archlinuxarm on the pandora, but there are a number of problems associated with that.


The developers know angstorm after working with it for years.. no point moving to anything else.
 
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