Decent Beagle xM Linux?

Hi,

Note that this is posted in Aldershot. ;-) As I reckon a fair few of you will be multi-system, I would like to ask what is the best usable Linux to run on a Beagle xM?

I have tried the supplied Angstrom; from the uSD that came with it, to an image created with the files Joe sent me with the replacement board, to a new fresh copy downloaded from CircuitCo’s site – it plain and simple does not work.

It boots, it logs in, I can play videos and such, but any attempt at system management type stuff throws up the following:

So I can’t set a timezone, I can’t set up networking, or anything like that. [using vi to hack config files isn’t an option; unless somebody knows how to fix the above error?]
It isn’t a hardware quirk on my board as the previous board did the exact same thing.
The only change I made (to uEnv) was to edit it as necessary for working with s-video. Nothing else.

And that is an absolute. Any suggestion must be capable of using the s-video output (else it’s no use for me).

So, if you have a good Linux distro running on your Beagle xM, please point me at it! It isn’t hard to set up a dual-boot for Linux/RISC OS on the Beagle so… ;-)

Thank you.

PS: I take it that Raspian is the distro of choice for the Pi?

Update: I should add, best if it is an image – I can’t follow Linux commands to install stuff…on a Windows box! ;-)

I’m currently playing with http://narcissus.angstrom-distribution.org/ to see if maybe Angstrom works, it’s just the CircuitCo one that is broken. – it gives a big tar.gz containing loads of files; not a writable image.

[update]
I’m currently here: http://beagleboard.org/project/angstrom
This might be useful too: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/OmapDesktopInstall

Though I never got round to actually trying it this sound interesting:

Four OS fully optimized and configured for the Beagleboard
Always Innovating is pleased to announce Super-Jumbo for the Beagleboard family (also compatible with Touch Book & Smart Book). Super-Jumbo a single image which provides four operating systems fully optimized for the OMAP3 chip, and aggregates hundreds of applications already set up for you across the four major ARM operating, i.e. AIOS (complete full features Angstrom fork), Android Gingerbread v2.3, Ubuntu Maverick 10.10, and ChromiumOS (first time ever released for OMAP3). Our single kernel is compatible across the whole Beagleboard and Touch Book families.
Last, Super-Jumbo includes the feature to switch at run-time between those four operating systems without any performance loss.

Other than that there’s lubuntu IIRC

PS: I take it that Raspian is the distro of choice for the Pi?

Yup. It’s basically Debian Wheezy optimised for hard-float operations. You can run soft-float Wheezy if you want – and I think that there are some packages that won’t run on the hard float version, but for the life of me can’t remember what they are. Arch Linux on the pi is also gaining popularity, but Raspbian remains the officially recommended distro.

I’m currently running Raspbian on a pi server, and it’s boringly reliable, only getting a reboot when I have a clear out of the shed and need to power it off to move it.

Always Innovating is pleased to announce Super-Jumbo for the Beagleboard family

I have heard of that, but IIRC (like Android?) it suffers in my regard from not (or not obviously) being capable of working with the s-video output.

It’s kind of amusing to note that installing RISC OS on the xM was, on the other hand, a matter of:

• Unpack RISC OS image and copy it to uSD card FAT partition
• Fiddle with uEnv to get it to load RISC OS instead of Linux. Difficulty – damn near impossible until you do the obvious and look at SDCreate so you can see all the parameters and stuff already done. Then it’s a cut’n’paste job.
• Copy default harddisc installer onto uSD card.
• Put uSD card into Beagle, boot it.
• Make a really big RAMdisc, unpack the harddisc stuff onto it.
• Attach blank USB flash device (1Gb is plenty). Format it FileCore (!HForm).
• Draggy-droppy everything from RAMdisc to USB. Make a cup of tea while it does this.
• Play with the config to set that as the boot filesystem and device.
• Shutdown-tidily and reboot, into fully-blown RISC OS. Job done.

Complexity? About a 2/5 (or 4/5 if you don’t know RISC OS).
Interaction? Lots required. Could possibly be scripted, but I prefer the hands-on approach.
Time? Depends on your flash media, maybe 15 minutes?

Overall? I could have done it in less time than it is taking to download Angstrom-TI-GNOME-image-eglibc-ipk-v2012.01-core-beagleboard-2012.01.11.img.gz (at 260K/sec).

I’d like to use Linux, as it has come a long way from that Slackware book I bought myself back in the ‘90s that told me on like the third page that once I had the basics installed, I’d need to recompile the kernel specifically for my system. That seemed like a hell of a lot of bother given we were about eight chapters away from getting anything that looked like a UI, so I closed the book and ignored Linux pretty much until Ubuntu showed up. It would be nice to play around and get to know the system.

However… RISC OS FTW! A lot easier to do than this is seeming to be! ;-)

After many days and failed attempts at getting a reliable, fast Linux distro on my Beagle xM I almost gave up hope. The terminal stuff generally works fine but if you want a GUI it’s fiddly or just doesn’t work as expected.

Then I found:

http://adammunich.com/bb-ubuntugui-the-desktop-ubuntu-beagleboard-distribution/

I bought a 16GB microSD to put it on and the only thing I had to do to get it working was edit the uEnv.txt file before first boot as my BenQ monitor didn’t support the default mode for some reason.
I added these lines:

defaultdisplay=dvi
dvimode=“1280×1024-16@60”
vram=12MB

Hope it helps.