Galileo Gen 2 compiling the basic Blink sketch:
Binary sketch size: 83,455 bytes (of a 10,000,000 byte maximum) - 0% used
a) That’s one gigantic binary (for reference, on an UNO it compiles to 1,084 bytes.)
b) 10,000,000 bytes maximum … yowza! Then again, I can understand why based on the size of the Blink binary.
Probably a whole lot of things. I just did that test compile to see what it does. Had to put it aside to get some other things done.
And just like that I already hit the first “issue” with them. Apparently it was there with the Gen 1 and still there with Gen 2. The board froze up when I tried to do a firmware update. After that I could no longer communicate with the COM port. Windows tells me it’s there, but nothing I tried was getting passed it. Digging through Intel’s community I finally found a PDF published by Intel saying basically “it happens, reboot your computer”. Really? Intel? Anyway, I ended up changing the Com port instead and got it running again and was able to do the firmware update and I now have it running of of what they call the “full blown linux” off of an SD card. Next step is figuring out how to connect to the terminal port … urgh.
On the plus side though, someone was trying to get an LPD8806 strip to work with node.js … I didn’t read the full thing so I don’t know if they actually managed to or not, but that would be my first test too.
@Ashley_M_Kirchner_No Given the nature of your LED experiments/projects, what advantages do you think the Galileo brings to the world of FastLED? Just curious, is the cost vs. performance worthwhile?
Don’t know yet. Personally I was going to run something like FFT or FHT and pass values back. However, since it doesn’t include any AVR support, compiling anything that requires AVR calls will fail. And I also didn’t spend a lot of time on it when I first plugged it in. So yeah, I don’t know yet. There are several pitfalls with it right now that will likely keep a lot of people from getting one, and price isn’t necessarily one of them (My Gen 2 costs $55.) Support is growing, but a lot of libraries (damn near all of them) are going to need to be rewritten. For example, using SD over SPI is not supported, you have to use the on-board SD card. However, that’s also where the OS sits (unless you want to run completely from memory at which point your programming gets lots every every reboot.) So yeah … issues. 
I will say this though, the more Makers and hackers pick it up, the more support will be added. Take a look at the current status of tested shields for example: https://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-22995
That’s a pretty in depth look at things, right now I’m just concerned with Xbee, looks like it passed testing. I briefly read about the SPI, is it different than Arduino?
It’s implemented differently.