<ericxdu>
I was looking at all the toys being sold for the Christmas season today, and realized they have a bit in common with throw-away computers
<lkcl>
ericxdu: yay!
<ericxdu>
I mean I guess they're able to remain useful to someone for several years, or even a lifetime, but most of them look so specialized that I imagine them being thrown away after a year
<ericxdu>
Then again, I guess by their nature toys don't become obsolete. You can buy new dolls that will work with your dollhouse for instance
<ericxdu>
Not that I have a dollhouse. :-P
<ericxdu>
As someone pointed out to me here, the A20 card will have 2x the memory of Beaglebone Black. That's gotta be a huge performance boost even with only 1 GHz
<ericxdu>
Compable to my netbook from 2009
<arkimedes>
is the only difference in the computer cards the operating system other than the Libre Tea one?
<ericxdu>
arkimedes: I had not heard of the Libre Tea being any different from the other cards. Do any of them use MALI?
* ericxdu
foolishly asks the asker
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<ericxdu>
I'm just surprised I never thought of that. I know the one going for RYF certification won't use mali, and I assumed the others wouldn't either
<arkimedes>
lkcl ^
<arkimedes>
also is there any wifi inlcuded in the cards or the laptop housing?
<ericxdu>
arkimedes: that re: wifi I can pretty confidently say no. Although the laptop housing is designed so you can plug a wifi dongle *inside* the case for convenience
<arkimedes>
how many usb ports does the libre tea have?
<ericxdu>
arkimedes: the card itself just has one usb-otg. This means you'll need some extra cables/hubs to be able to both power the card and plug in usb devices
<arkimedes>
so you cant power it and connect a usb hub?
<ericxdu>
arkimedes: you can, but you need a somewhat specialized cable. Its available on the crowdsupply page so I ordered one with my card
<ericxdu>
arkimedes: its a cable that provides power to the card, but also a single USB port which you can plug a hub into.
<lkcl>
arkimedes: anyone is free to to absolutely anything they want with the Cards. they are entirely at liberty to put absolutely any proprietary OS or any proprietary software on them.
<lkcl>
they just will not get any assistance from me in doing so.
<lkcl>
arkimedes: the EOMA68-A20 has three USB ports. two on the EOMA68 connector and a standard Micro USB-OTG on the front-facing end.
<lkcl>
arkimedes: the cable is called an "OTG Host Power" cable. it's a special 3-way cable. finding the right one which *ACTUALLY* provides power to the OTG port *AND* provides power to the USB Host connector is an absolute bitch.
<lkcl>
arkimedes: most of the cables that you can find online either:
<lkcl>
* provide power but do not provide USB Host connectivity
<lkcl>
* provide USB Host connectivity but do not provide power
<lkcl>
* **CLAIM** to provide power and USB Host but actually fail completely and utterly to be as advertised
<lkcl>
i had to double-check over 5 separate and distinct reviews to confirm that the cable that was found actually does the job, then bought three just to make sure i would get one that worked
<ericxdu>
lckl, thanks, I was oversimplifying it a bit
<ericxdu>
I'm disappointed I haven't been able to compile EmulationStation for armv7 yet
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<ericxdu>
Someday
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<ericxdu>
I'll see if it builds on the A20.
<ericxdu>
Just tried mazeofgalious on the bbb and it ran just a little sluggish. Playable.
<ericxdu>
I had an idea to distribute just a few libre games via 0install to arm machines like the A20, but managing dependencies has proven difficult especially considering most games are just a pacman -S away
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<lkcl>
ericxdu: yyeahh using a rolling release OS as the base for a game distribution system? mmm... neehh :)
<lkcl>
ericxdu: you'd need to mirror the entire arch repo and "freeze" it, to guarantee that what you provided did not massively inconvenience people
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<ericxdu>
lkcl: I find it hard even to keep pace with Debian, which is why a distribution-agnostic installer like 0install sounds appealing. It doesn't require root and doesn't disrupt system packages, so as long as your programs have few dependencies, its wieldable
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<ericxdu>
lkcl: or, I release distribution-agnostic static binaries like SuperTuxKart and Xonotic do.
<ericxdu>
Or, distribution-specific packages
<ericxdu>
I don't see any other choices
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<ericxdu>
I lack the expertise to do *any* of that with a lot of dependencies. I'm a game programmer, not a packager. ;-)
<jfred[m]>
Debian releases have support for about 5 years - you could pretty safely stick with the same release for quite a while
<jfred[m]>
well, LTS anyway
<ericxdu>
jfred[m]: you mean I might do something like Valve is doing? Afaik SteamOS is a fork of Debian and used as the base for a game system
<jfred[m]>
I guess it depends on what this is for
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<jfred[m]>
if you're making a game system and are looking for a distro to base on, I'd say pick a release of Debian and make sure your software keeps working on that for a while (not forking it though, that's a lot of unnecessary effort IMO)
<jfred[m]>
No need to worry about upgrading until support's close to ending, just keep up with security updates
<jfred[m]>
Not sure how libre-friendly it is, but the CentOS support lifecycle is almost 10 years
<ericxdu>
jfred[m]: I see. I'm probably going to prefer distro-agnostic TBH
<jfred[m]>
ah - if you're just worried about releasing a game for ARM Linux users to play, distro-agnostic is probably the way to go (though you'll want to test it on a few distros to be sure it works as expected)
<ericxdu>
jfred[m]: certainly. As many distros as I can get my hands on
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<lkcl>
ericxdu: yeah static packages work well.
<lkcl>
jfred[m]: i've known of companies that mirror the debian mirror so as to keep a stable set of known packages around
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<ericxdu>
lkcl, good to know
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