Occidentalis or Wheezy?

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Syn7
 
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Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by Syn7 »

Hi

So I have been using microcontrollers for awhile now and that's going great. Now I want to learn how to use the Pi. I bought the preinstalled SD card with wheezy for the Pi and I like it so far. I have been doing the tutorials and I find that some of the later ones are only for Occidentalis. Should I use Occidentalis instead? Or did I miss something about how I can use wheezy in these tutorials that require Occidentalis.

Like lesson 9. I have all the stuff I need. I'm just new to Python and need a lil guidance here. I understand that Wheezy is more "friendly" and Occidentalis is still being worked out. I don't mind the challenge though. As long as I can find clear instruction.

I have an older 4GB SD card for a camera I no longer use. I want to keep wheezy, so can I use that old SD card? I know about the tutorial and I have no issue with how to do it, I'm just not sure if there is anything different about these SD cards than the old ones? It's a Kingston 4GB from like 5 years ago.

Thanx for any help, much appreciated.

S.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Using a second SD card for Occidentalis is a great idea. I have half a dozen cards with various flavors of OS that I can plug into a RasPi depending on my mood (I'm a NesBSD geek at heart, and have fond memories from when plan9 was released).

I don't know how well an older SD card will work. Kingston is a reliable name in the consumer market so you shouldn't have any quality issues, but newer cards have tricks that allow them to read and write data more quickly. I'd expect an older card to work in general, but you might find the system a bit sluggish compared to a newer card.

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jumpzero
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by jumpzero »

Do you run NetBSD on the Pi?
I know there is a port of FreeBSD ongoing...
Thanks

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

The version that exists now is fairly primitive, but they built RasPi support into NetBSD 6.0. The 6.1 release candidate 2 is apparently built for full support. I'm looking forward to it.

WRT FreeBSD, I'm not sure how easily that will work. Historically, the main distinction between NetBSD and FreeBSD has been that NetBSD is designed to be as aggressively cross-platform as it can be, while FreeBSD is as highly optimized to the x86 CPU architecture as it can be.

There's no small amount of brain-thrust among the FreeBSD dev team though, so if they want to port it to the RasPi I have no doubt that they will.

Syn7
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by Syn7 »

Unfortunately it doesn't work at all. I used the fedora installer. Everything went great. But sometimes my laptop wont even recognize it now and it doesn't boot on the Pi. It's weird, I have to restart my computer to get it to even acknowledge the card now, but it doesn't actually affect my comp. negatively in any other way. If it was a new card I would be making the WTF face. But I know how temperamental some newer items can be when used with older items. So I will just get a new one and try that.

Are there any tips for this problem anywhere? I will get new one, but I would still like to try and get this one to work, maybe learn something while I do it.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

You might try reformatting the card in a digital camera. Some of them are optimized for that purpose, and just need to be run through hardware they expect before they'll play nicely with other devices.

Syn7
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by Syn7 »

No go. I guess I'll have to just get another card.

It was a sandisk, BTW.. not a Kingston. Not that that should make any difference. Just a correction.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Actually, when I went back to re-read my sources (Bunnie Huang: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918), it seems that Kingston was the sketchy vendor and Sandisk performed better.

It does sound like you have a dead-or-dying card though. Fortunately, even the smallest cards available today are huge and roomy for the average Linux installation's needs.

geneulm
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by geneulm »

I am a real new user. Never used Linux before. I purchased a R-PI to do something different for christmas and fell in love with it. I personally found Occidental a lot more user friendly since I have been working the projects in the Raspberry PI tutorials. There are instructions on how to adapt the work for Wheezy (which is my only other OS). I am so scarred of screwing up an O.S. I tread lightly, but for a total new user to this element of computer use (not just clicking on a mouse and getting something to work), I found the Occidental user friendly. Just my opinion. Kudos to Lady Adafruit and her team!!!!!!!!!

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Hey, welcome to the wonderful world of hacking! Stick around, and don't be shy about asking questions. We have a lot of great people around these parts, and don't believe you ever get too good to help someone figure out their first LED-and-resistor combination.

I'm glad to hear something we built made your life a little more awesome. That's what we're here for.

I'm going to forward this to Ladyada and the Occidentallis crew.. you just put something good in their day. ;-)

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hpux735
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by hpux735 »

I know this is an exceedingly old thread, but It's a perfect introduction to my question.

I'm working on a project that demands higher throughput SPI than is available with the SPI kernel module provided in the Occidentalis distribution. I really like Occidentalis, so my question is what the best method is for compiling a new kernel (hopefully with the other Adafruit patches and config) with the DMA SPI patch that is based upon kernel 3.2.27.

If you think it'll be much easier with stock Wheezy, I'll go that route.

I know I'm not supposed to ask for linux support, so it's ok if you tell me to go away :)

My research so far:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 44&t=19489
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 71&t=19797
http://elinux.org/RPi_Kernel_Compilation

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

As a general rule, when you compile a kernel you want to get as close to the original codebase as possible.

Extras are just invitations for trouble.. especially in Linux, where the price of massive experimental development is measured in the depth and breadth of the dependency chain. I've seen single modules turn into Rube Goldberg machines that install multiple programming languages because this person likes using Perl to format the documentation files, that person likes using Tcl2 for config scripts, that one prefers Tcl3 (good luck reconciling those), over there we have a nonconformist writing in Modula2 just because, and this piece was written by someone who wanted to use Ruby in a real-world application.

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hpux735
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by hpux735 »

Thanks! You've certainly got that right... I know the exact kind of project you're talking about. They're a nightmare.

It sounds like, if I want to use the DMA SPI code, I should just use his kernel wholesale to minimize the surface area for weird things to happen.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

At least start with that, yeah. Once you have something that works, you can Frankenstein your way to a configuration that has everything you want, assuming the pieces will play together.

Keep a command/install log as you go. Ideally, your notes should be good enough for you to strip the machine back to bare metal and build a working configuration on demand. In practice, keep enough of a breadcrumb trail to avoid getting stuck in the, "okay, it does what I want, and I have no idea how to do it again" scenario. That sucks.

JensenCF
 
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Re: Occidentalis or Wheezy?

Post by JensenCF »

Hi,

I'm new to Raspberry-Pi and Linux. I learned that you must always run an upgrade and update when you are goint to use a new image.
I got Occidentalis on a SD card, booted my Pi and started sudo apt-get upgrade. It took hours to upgrade.
Now I think of it, I'm affraid I screwed my Occodentalis....am I right?
So should I just create a new SD card with a clean image or continue with the upgraded one..

Sorry for my "not so good" english...

Chris

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