Why Not Just *run* Debian?

[StealthBagel]

That is all in a perfect world but unfortunately apt-get and dselect did not always work as advertised..... I admit I was not as linux savvy as I could have been at the time but simple program installs would often result in dependency hell so severe it required a reinstall of the OS because it deleted some critical thing like libc6 or what-not and now nothing would install or uninstall.... if this happens on a handheld it would drive me up the fuckin' wall.

Some Debian trolling par excellence off mr Bagel in this thread.

In his defence, you can wind up in 'dep hell' under Debian if you're running unstable or experimental sometimes but dependency probs are none existent if you're running a stable release. Problem with that is Deb stable normally has quite old packages but this is where Ubuntu steps in.
At the time there was no ubuntu and if you wanted to run state of the art cutting edge packages like mozilla or gaim you had to run Experimental or compile everything from scratch, and if I wanted to do that I'd run gentoo.

 

[_VWV_]

It's getting more and more interesting. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM
I guess it's good to have a choice of different distros.

 

[StealthBagel]

I'm still unclear on how having less-than-terrific experiences with Debian's package managers is trolling... now if this was a "Post reasons Debian is wonderful" thread I could see your point...

 

[Magnulus]

I'm still unclear on how having less-than-terrific experiences with Debian's package managers is trolling... now if this was a "Post reasons Debian is wonderful" thread I could see your point...

I have to agree with Bagel in this case. His post was entirely on the level. I know he is sometimes... less than courteous, but you can't let that affect your view of absolutely everything he says. No wonder he's so angry all the time if this is how he's treated when he contributes properly to a thread! ^_^

 

[Zarneth]

I really hope whatever is used will be free of Debian's infamous "Dependency Hell".

Debian is incredibly famous for quite the opposite. More than any other big linux distro.
I've been using Debian and more recently it's derivative Ubuntu for years now, and I can vouch for it's amazing package system which survives heavy use.

 

[_VWV_]

Hm, I've got a question which is somewhat related to the operating system. What kernel will be used? Will I be able to change it easily without loosing al the TIs specific kernel modules? I'm asking that because I want the / and /home and /swap to be encrypted with aes-xts which is supported since 2.6.24 kernel. I think, strong encryption is important for a portable device like the Pandora.

 

[efegea]

I really hope whatever is used will be free of Debian's infamous "Dependency Hell".

Debian is incredibly famous for quite the opposite. More than any other big linux distro.
I've been using Debian and more recently it's derivative Ubuntu for years now, and I can vouch for it's amazing package system which survives heavy use.

Gentoo package system is much more better and amazing that debian's one

But gentoo is out of the question if we are talking about the pandora's os :lol:

 

[Squidge]

Hm, I've got a question which is somewhat related to the operating system. What kernel will be used? Will I be able to change it easily without loosing al the TIs specific kernel modules? I'm asking that because I want the / and /home and /swap to be encrypted with aes-xts which is supported since 2.6.24 kernel. I think, strong encryption is important for a portable device like the Pandora.

It'll be a 2.6 kernel.

However, you do know that most of the user data will be stored on a SD card, and you'll basically just be losing performance since you'll be encrypting the os?

Also, swap on a device like this is kinda pointless.

 

[_VWV_]

Hm, I've got a question which is somewhat related to the operating system. What kernel will be used? Will I be able to change it easily without loosing al the TIs specific kernel modules? I'm asking that because I want the / and /home and /swap to be encrypted with aes-xts which is supported since 2.6.24 kernel. I think, strong encryption is important for a portable device like the Pandora.

It'll be a 2.6 kernel.

However, you do know that most of the user data will be stored on a SD card, and you'll basically just be losing performance since you'll be encrypting the os?

Also, swap on a device like this is kinda pointless.

Yeah, I do realise that, but it's kinda more secure to encrypt everything, isn't it? And since we discuss debian here, I thought of booting the whole linux distro from an sd card, leaving the internal flash intact.. just in case. Talking about swap I'd like to say that I have zero experience in mobile device like the Pandora and their memory usage. But I do know that people activate swap on a similar device like nokia n800. And if I will have to activate it for some reason, I would like it to be encrypted.
And also.. will you please excuse my noobness.. if it's 2.6 kernel.. does that mean it's a 2.6.24 kernel or higher (I'm sorry to ask that if it's under NDA)? Or does it mean I'll easily upgrade from 2.6.something kernel to 2.6.24?

 

[Zarneth]

Gentoo package system is much more better and amazing that debian's one

But gentoo is out of the question if we are talking about the pandora's os :lol:
Gentoo takes hours if nto days to install anything. Debian takes no time at all. As it is I've been using Ubuntu (debian based) for over 2 years now and I can't think of any way the package system could be better. :huh:

As for encryption. I really can't see many people caring about it. Maybe something to stop the casual user poking around but nothing more. What are you planning to store that's going to be so sensitive?

 

[efegea]

Gentoo takes hours if nto days to install anything. Debian takes no time at all. As it is I've been using Ubuntu (debian based) for over 2 years now and I can't think of any way the package system could be better. :huh:

I have used debian since 2001 to 2003 and gentoo since 2003 to today, and I think the package manager of gentoo is much better, in many ways. The compilation time has nothing to do with the package system, althought the source compilation is one of the key things that make so great the package system: debian will never have the great USE flags

QUOTE
As for encryption. I really can't see many people caring about it. Maybe something to stop the casual user poking around but nothing more. What are you planning to store that's going to be so sensitive?



pr0n, of course :lol:

 

[slint]

Swap in Pandora isn't soo pointless. Reaction time of SD cards should be very much better than the reaction time of hard drives.

Because reaction time is the biggest problem of swap, it should be very usable.

The only problem should be the decreased Lifetime of the SD card. But with the prices of today no problem.

 

[_VWV_]

Swap in Pandora isn't soo pointless. Reaction time of SD cards should be very much better than the reaction time of hard drives.

Because reaction time is the biggest problem of swap, it should be very usable.

The only problem should be the decreased Lifetime of the SD card. But with the prices of today no problem.

Since there will be 2 sd slots, I'm planning to buy 2 SD cards: 8-or-16Gigs (as cheap as possible) for / and /home + 256-or-512 (as fast as possible, whatever the price per mbite will be) for swap.

 

[ldesnogu]

And also.. will you please excuse my noobness.. if it's 2.6 kernel.. does that mean it's a 2.6.24 kernel or higher (I'm sorry to ask that if it's under NDA)? Or does it mean I'll easily upgrade from 2.6.something kernel to 2.6.24?

If they kept TI kernel, it's around 2.6.22; I took a quick look and it seems to be one of the 2.6.22 RC.
The bad news is the OMAP3430 support is still not part of the official Linux tree.

craigix if you happen to read this, I sent you an e-mail proposing to help you for Linux kernel and other ARM specific issues. Aren't you interested? Or perhaps my e-mail ended in your spam box :blink:

 

[Chip]

Swap in Pandora isn't soo pointless. Reaction time of SD cards should be very much better than the reaction time of hard drives.

Because reaction time is the biggest problem of swap, it should be very usable.

The only problem should be the decreased Lifetime of the SD card. But with the prices of today no problem.

Since there will be 2 sd slots, I'm planning to buy 2 SD cards: 8-or-16Gigs (as cheap as possible) for / and /home + 256-or-512 (as fast as possible, whatever the price per mbite will be) for swap.



Reaction time may not be an issue, but write speed is. Desktop HDs write at 50-70 MB/s. The fastest SDHC cards write at 6 MB/S. SDHC read speeds are considerably faster, but still far below HD speeds. There goes any performance boost the swap might give you.

 

[Squidge]

Yeah, I do realise that, but it's kinda more secure to encrypt everything, isn't it? And since we discuss debian

If the information on the Pandora could involve you getting on a knock on your door from the CIA or NSA, then sure, otherwise it makes more sense to have a file on an sd card that just contains your sensitive stuff. Most people will simply format your card anyway (or have a quick sniff with a file viewer, not recognise it, and just delete the file to make room for other stuff).

craigix if you happen to read this, I sent you an e-mail proposing to help you for Linux kernel and other ARM specific issues. Aren't you interested? Or perhaps my e-mail ended in your spam box :blink:

Have you tried joining the mailing list?
http://linux.omap.com/mailman/listinfo/lin...map-open-source

 

[_VWV_]

Reaction time may not be an issue, but write speed is. Desktop HDs write at 50-70 MB/s. The fastest SDHC cards write at 6 MB/S. SDHC read speeds are considerably faster, but still far below HD speeds. There goes any performance boost the swap might give you.

Right, but what if I want to run a program that needs more than 128 megs of RAM? I mean there might be some situations when you just need another 100 megs of ram, no matter how fast they are. And also, as you might have mentioned, I would like to encrypt everything. I think it's a sing I'm ready to cope with a decrease in performance (to some extent).
As for me I'm going to use the Pandora for mobile web browser, pmp, and portable office station. Games are not of top importance for me (but a nice addition to other more important capabilities), so if I loose some horsepower, well, It won't be a catastrophe for me. Maybe because the Pandora seems to be a very powerful device .

 

[ldesnogu]

Right, but what if I want to run a program that needs more than 128 megs of RAM? I mean there might be some situations when you just need another 100 megs of ram, no matter how fast they are. And also, as you might have mentioned, I would like to encrypt everything. I think it's a sing I'm ready to cope with a decrease in performance (to some extent).
As for me I'm going to use the Pandora for mobile web browser, pmp, and portable office station. Games are not of top importance for me (but a nice addition to other more important capabilities), so if I loose some horsepower, well, It won't be a catastrophe for me. Maybe because the Pandora seems to be a very powerful device .

I guess you have never experienced a machine that starts swapping
When that happens I just kill the offending process.

 

[_VWV_]

Right, but what if I want to run a program that needs more than 128 megs of RAM? I mean there might be some situations when you just need another 100 megs of ram, no matter how fast they are. And also, as you might have mentioned, I would like to encrypt everything. I think it's a sing I'm ready to cope with a decrease in performance (to some extent).
As for me I'm going to use the Pandora for mobile web browser, pmp, and portable office station. Games are not of top importance for me (but a nice addition to other more important capabilities), so if I loose some horsepower, well, It won't be a catastrophe for me. Maybe because the Pandora seems to be a very powerful device .

I guess you have never experienced a machine that starts swapping
When that happens I just kill the offending process.

I have. And I killed that process. but, as far as I get, Linux tries to load unused memory pages to swap... so that if I run, say, Abi word and web browser at the same time, and really use only the web browser.. then the Abi word process will mostly go to swap - freeing some real RAM for the browser. Yeah, the switch between them will me very slow, but swap makes it possible to run several RAM consuming programs at the same time. If this is true - I want that swap. But I might be wrong, I'm a Linux noob.

 

[ldesnogu]

Have you tried joining the mailing list?
http://linux.omap.com/mailman/listinfo/lin...map-open-source


I follow it of course
But my point was that what TI distributes is older than that and based on 2.6.22. I don't know what is being used on the current Pandora dev systems.