Hello.  I have been reading entries in this community for several weeks without adding

Electronics
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Hello. I have been reading entries in this community for several weeks without adding any of my own until now. I have tinkered with an Arduino but have some issues that might be solved by the Beaglebone Black. However, based on community comments, the latter seems to some problems as well.

  1. For those of you that have made a transition from Arduino to Beaglebone, has it been a net improvement in power and ease of use?
  2. There are so many different OS choices for the Beaglebone Black that the overall situation is intimidating for someone like myself - I am not a Linux guy, yet. Is the Angstrom that is supplied out of the box inferior to Android, Ubuntu, etc.? Or are there specialized needs that are driving community members to niche OS’s?
  3. Bonescript and Cloud 9 vs. the Arduino sketch language and IDE: I hesitate to open yet another account in The Cloud; Arduino doesn’t make me do that. On the other hand, I am disappointed by the primitive software in Arduino, Javascript is so much better. Is Cloud 9 IDE the only option for Bonescript development?
  4. The Arduino seems to be tethered to a PC for its uploads, yet its serial communications potential seems constrained. If one wants a logged, 2-way dialogue with an Arduino over a serial port, it seems necessary to load another language like Processing or node.js on the PC to make this work. In contrast, a Beaglebone is a server - does this mean it can provide a continuous telemetry stream to a client and accept instructions from same?
  5. Is It necessary to use Python in the background to support Bonescript development?
  6. There seem to be a lot of entries in this community about updating files, drivers, HDMI or other device incompatibilities. In the Google Apps Script community, the discussion is proportionately more about coding tips and tricks and less about glitches. Is the Beaglebone Black experience that buggy or is it just too new?
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i think it will take some time to get the bugs out, @Ubuntu and @Debian are good OS’s

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Mark, thanks for your comment. I have no Linux experience. Do you think Ubuntu and Debian offer microcontroller advantages over Angstrom?

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That’s a lot of questions into one G+ post. If you CC’d me and sent an e-mail to the mailing list (http://beagleboard.org/discuss - beagleboard at googlegroups.cam), then I’d be happy to answer them.

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(2) My 2 cents is: there aren’t that many, Angstrom is my first choice due to the fast bootup with systemd and the out-of-the-box compatibility with the BB(B). Ubuntu has better package support and I guess also better community support ( no offense, Koen you are doing a fantastic job maintaining, great work!) I’ve not tried Debian or android yet, but for good low-level support go for the two former!

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@Elias_Bakken So you feel a new user to Linux and the BBB should stick with Angstrom and its upgrades?

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Be agnostic. If you can solve your problem in Angstrom, do that and help improve the support for it along the way because we are in a very good situation having a maintainer with an agenda. Still, if you see that a package is missing from Angstrom and do not have the time to add it, do the old switcheroo over to Ubuntu. The kernels are exchangable between the two distros, and that is where the most innovation is going on anyways. It’s not that much of a difference with low level stuff anyways…

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I’ve fixed an issue with the x11vnc build, and built the ‘dummy’ XOrg driver for the BB. is this something I should upload back?

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@Michael_Riksman , try e-mailing @Koen_Kooi about this.

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Update: My BBB just arrived in less than 48 hours from Adafruit. Used UPS Surface shipping - route was from New York City to my suburb west of Philadelphia, PA.