hi friends
I open this topic for feed back about what and how to improve in our Linux images.
The topic with the wishlist was useful and we implemented almost all suggestions we got, it takes a bit of time to update all images for all boards we have but this is because extensive testing is necessary and our resources are limited.
Now I would love to hear what would you suggest to improve with the images.
Should we enable DHCP or use fixed IP for the Ethernet, do you see something wrong with the current default configurations etc.
We want to make the image as user friendly as possible and more eyes and more heads think better and see better.
Thanks
Tsvetan
You cannot please everyone e.g. some want DHCP and others do not. Some want a GUI, others none, others want a way out Linux version that no-one else uses. Similarly, some want a lean and small image, others want every package under the sun. You really cannot do it all.
What's very useful and you do quite a bit of already is to have detailed How Tos right from fetching source/packages through compile/build and then install & boot. (Not that people seem able to find things!)
John
many people compare OLinuXino with Raspberry PI and all people say that we have better hardware which cost less if we compare all features (SATA, LiPo charger, native Ethernet) and if these are add to RPi their price will be higher than LIME
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
if there are RPi users I would love to hear how they compare and what they think we should improve
Here is my vote for port/installation guide for Mono so we can start programming for C#
Debian support for on board Flash, uSD makes the system more expensive and reduce the mechanical reliability.
Guide, howto for building a minimum sized debian uSD.
Marc,
A good idea will be to provide both accelerated and non-acceleted video kernel images.
And/or to make sure that all softwares run fine in accelerated mode, such as GStreamer.
(because that one of the reasons I'm still using non-accelerated Rev5 image, the GStreamer on Rev7 doesn't work)
Hi!
I'd like to have no X session for root user. And, best of all, root login locked. Then, it would be great to minimize number of customizations in .bashrc, rc.local etc. They just make system behavior unpredictable, and sometimes it is very difficult to find out the reason. The normal way to change something is to install some package (e. g. nodm in Debian for running X session automatically) or editing configuration files (or using dpkg-reconfigure in Debian case). But adding scripts running automatically can confuse experienced users and make it difficult to disable or change something when needed.
Thank you for your great work!
I am a Raspberry Pi user and I have got a A20-OLinuXino as media server/player.
I agree you have better hardware but RPi has more images (Debian, Fedora, Arch, OpenElec...) and they are more up to date (Debian Jessie is installed on my RPi). An official Arch Linux image (and why not a Firefox OS one ^^) would be great.
Another improvement would be to allow more HDMI resolutions. For instance we can't use 1680x1050 over HDMI and that's a common resolution.
Thanks for your work and sorry for my poor english...
Quote from: martinayotte on July 16, 2014, 04:52:36 PM
A good idea will be to provide both accelerated and non-acceleted video kernel images.
And/or to make sure that all softwares run fine in accelerated mode, such as GStreamer.
(because that one of the reasons I'm still using non-accelerated Rev5 image, the GStreamer on Rev7 doesn't work)
And subtitle support.
Hey forum
i have Rpi (since 2 months) and olimex A20 micro (since 1 week)
i liked about Rpi is better configuration script (rasp-config or something like that) - witch made i very easy and quick to setup the system for user needs (resolution, audio, ssh, boot to cli or desktop...) and i menaged in 1 afternoon to have a working system based on my needs (i use puredata and do some music/audio/synthesis/dsp stuff)
i still dont have a working system on my new a20 (after a week) - only 1 image was working for me (the official r7 debian) and many things necessary for me dont work good (midi does not work at all, alsa works but puredata not, jack does not work - i can only play audio files) so im still fighting with it :(
so for improvement better configuration scripts for debian with configuration for:
boot to cli or desktop
audio to headphones or hdmi
more hdmi resolutions
ssh+network setup
maybe some boot process setup (everybody needs some other services running and some not...)
hope this helps
best
niko
Hi,
here are some of my ideast/thougts:
-I'd love to see out of the box support for the UEXT-modules: driver + command line tool or python lib. It took me quite some time to get my mod-lcd3310 running. I think it would be nice to get the UEXT-modules up and running easily, especially all the sensors. Nobody wants to recompile the kernel/modules before being able to use them
-I think for Android there is an App (never used android on the board) to toggle all GPIOs or show all inputs, test I2C. It would be great to have something similar witg debian
-please include the kernel sources and config in the immages or at least as package so one can compile modules more easily
I'm not an Olimex board owner yet but I fully intend to buy a A20 LIME2 once they are available. I'm really impressed by the community support and involvement coming out of Olimex. That said, here's my feedback.
I'd the Debian image to be as close to the vanilla debian installer experience as much as possible. It should by default stick to loading only free software functional components with any binary blob driven components as an option. This means by default a slimmed downm, headless install probably ethernet only.
Then add options to install a desktop (e.g tasksel-xfce).
Accelerated desktop (mali binary blobs)
Wifi (more blobs)
etc.
Much easier to start with trusted build and add compromising blobs than trying to unpick them afterwards.
may be a full duplex working spi for the a20 based board , i was not able to get it working
A serial driver able to handle Tx enable for RS-485 half duplex without external logic.
It is standard in Windows Embedded Compact (WinCE).
Marc,
Quote from: mongrol on July 17, 2014, 06:08:54 AM
This means by default a slimmed downm, headless install probably ethernet only.
Then add options to install a desktop (e.g tasksel-xfce).
Accelerated desktop (mali binary blobs)
Wifi (more blobs)
etc.
Much easier to start with trusted build and add compromising blobs than trying to unpick them afterwards.
This!
Maybe there could be a wizard at the first boot.
What about an own repository for olimex specific tools?
Desktop rotation for the touchscreen on Debian.
All methods I have tried for desktop rotation freeze the device as soon as I touch the touchscreen.
We had to switch to a BeagleBoneBlack to complete our project on time.
Please enable kernel upgrades for security patches, through apt-get.
On a "classical" debian installation, these upgrades are provided by debian, through their standard repositories.
On Olinuxino debian image it does not (at least on A20), certainly because of the patches applied to the kernel.
It makes it difficult to enforce security at the kernel level. A solution might be to provide a repository from Olimex, where kernel upgrades would be deployed?
Hi there ! :-)
No particular needs, but I think I would be nice to have a procedure/tutorial allowing the user to generate an image, like it is the case for the Linaro project.
So that, the user could clone or fork the image, add his customizations, embedd it applications, etc...
Could be good to have several flavours as well : Debian minimal, Debian desktop, Debian server, Ubuntu core/minimal, Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu Server, Arch Linux, Fedora, Tiny Core, etc...
HTH
Quote from: spelle on July 21, 2014, 02:44:36 PM
No particular needs, but I think I would be nice to have a procedure/tutorial allowing the user to generate an image, like it is the case for the Linaro project.
Try this --> http://olimex.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/building-the-ultimate-debian-sd-card-for-linux-with-kernel-3-4-for-a20-olinuxino-micro/
Yep. I already went through it. I was thinking on giving the possibility to the user to build, customize, adjust to its needs the "rootfs" itself.
Ok. Just saw this, dated from today : http://olimex.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/how-to-create-bare-minimum-debian-wheezy-rootfs-from-scratch/
Cool, I will try this soon ! :-)
Cornered by some suggestions so...
- no pre-installed non-free bits please. for those that insist why not have a dummy package that installs all the non-free bits you want like you usb wifi products (why are you selling ones that required non-free blobs when there is N wifi usb dongle that you could sell instead?)
- I don't want non-free graphics when there is working accelerated FLOSS drivers/firmware, please put energies into that.
- I belive sd cards have some unformatted space at the begging which is specially reversed, I read an article explaining it but now I have forgotten. I forgot about this property until after I went and flashed you image onto my sd card and now the write speeds are poorer (this was a meant to be a better uSD card! http://www.mobymemory.co.uk/microsdhc-4gb-32gb/5304-lexar-16gb-90mb-s-600x-micro-sdhc-class-10-memory-card-usb-30-reader-650590182213.html ) :( . I don't know if one can repartition it to get it back to how it was before and besides I can't remember many MB's it was :( . Maybe provide lzip's of the 2 partitions and a script to make it boot able? instead of a image?
- I would love to have 2 screen at the same time or to switch between them without rebooting using standard tools like desktop environments display settings gui
- vp8/9 video accelerated (some sort of software/work exists but I can't find the link)
- theora video acceleration?
IMHO, it is not just about the image.
It is also about to develop custom software for the boards
But, for someone coming from a non-Linux world it is pretty difficult to piece all the bits together.
For example to install a development IDE ( Which one, btw ??) - just command line, nano and fire up gcc, that is not productive developing.
So, I would love to see some howtos :
Setup an development IDE on the board
Setup a cross compiler on a Linux or Windows system with remote debugging on/for the A20
bottom line, or in other words: Make the entry to work/develop with A20 easy. Happy customers are your best advertisers
Thanks for considering
Oskar
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
I would like the images to be smaller by design. This is twofold:
1. The images are 4 GB but the Kingston 4 GB cards that I use are always a little bit smaller than the images from Olimex. This results in not only a partition table that is outside the boundaries of the card and also a filesystem that expects the card to be larger than it is. So images of 3.9 GB or something that would fit on any 4 GB card, would be a lot easier.
2. The images now have a lot of free space. I myself would prefer to keep the image small, so writing to SD card does take very little time. After booting I can resize the last partition to the size of the card and then resize the filesystem accordingly.
Option 2 is maybe a bit more advanced for some users, but option 1 would be nice.
You can resize on Linux.
I'd just buy a larger SD card - very cheap!
John
@Linux-Images: Please disable the screensaver.
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1751 root 20 0 41752 21m 7528 S 48.4 6.0 2:23.91 Xorg
2333 olimex 30 10 4440 2076 1156 S 16.1 0.6 0:40.01 galaxy
You can disable current screensaver using the following commands :
/usr/bin/xset dpms 0 0 0
/usr/bin/xset s off
-Cannot update to debian jessie. Kernel is too old (new udev package is not compatible).
-Linux kernel with r3p2-rel1 mali kernel module.
-Mali userspace libs with r3p2 support.
-Fixed /etc/hosts file. The username is wrong (compare with /etc/host.conf).
sed -i 's/a20_OLinuXino/a20-OLinuXino/g' /etc/hosts
-glmark2-es2 does not use mali useland libs. Delete or move mesa libGLES and libEGL files.
sudo mkdir /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/bak
sudo mv /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libGLES* /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/bak
sudo mv /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libEGL* /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/bak
Quote from: JohnS on July 22, 2014, 09:42:15 AM
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
Quote from: olimex on July 16, 2014, 11:22:48 AM
Should we enable DHCP or use fixed IP for the Ethernet, do you see something wrong with the current default configurations etc.
Since I do not have a monitor with HDMI I would have appreciated if DHCP is used by default. It took some time until it came to my mind to mount the second partition on the SD card to a directory of my workstation and edit $MOUNTPOINT/etc/network/interfaces
I was a bit irritated by a user "olimex" consuming quite a lot of ressources after boot.
Sebastian
Quote from: oskaratk on July 29, 2014, 08:45:34 PM
Quote from: JohnS on July 22, 2014, 09:42:15 AM
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
I vote for Mono support and more Linux distributions (Fedora, Linaro, Ubuntu, Archlinux)
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
> ...
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!!!
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
I suggest to fix the CPU load problem (see post https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=1757.0)
Quote from: olimex on July 16, 2014, 01:00:48 PM
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.
Quote from: PaceyIV on August 26, 2014, 01:59:50 PM
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.
Quote from: giovanni.v on August 26, 2014, 08:42:35 PM
Quote from: PaceyIV on August 26, 2014, 01:59:50 PM
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).
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
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!
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.
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.
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
Quote from: auraltension on October 19, 2014, 01:39:49 PM
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
Please allow automatic ethernet on bootup. I find it disturbing to have to go in and make a bunch of terminal changes just to get the thing working. I have not had success with this yet.
Follow the Yocto Project
The Yocto Project is an open source collaboration project that provides templates, tools and methods to help you create custom Linux-based systems for embedded products regardless of the hardware architecture.
see www.yoctoproject.org
and be "Hob" compliant for easy edit existing image recipes and create your own image recipes
see www.yoctoproject.org/documentation/hob-manual-16
Marc,
@jimd, try the following:
# ------------------------------------------------
#
# --- sample /etc/network/interfaces configuration
#
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
# - for WIFI with antenna
auto wlan6
allow-hotplug wlan6
iface wlan6 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid "your-ssid"
wpa-psk "your-key"
# - for WIFI that looks naked
auto wlan7
allow-hotplug wlan7
iface wlan7 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid "your-ssid"
wpa-psk "your-key"
#
# ------------------------------------------------