Embedded Systems Development

[seasoned_geek]

All,

Is anyone here using MXLinux for embedded systems development? Let me narrow that question a bit. Are you native cross-compiling to Arm, TI, etc?

I don't want to "host" on an OS then use a Docker container for embedded systems development. Makes it really difficult to interact with targets, in particular load them.

Having to move off Ubuntu 20.04 today due to some issues and really would like a non-Ubuntu dev platform. Sick and tired of the "Upgrade to Ubuntu Pro" nag-o-grams and looking for a good option.

Thanks.

[mxer]

I've run Devuan & MXLinux on my RPi boards, (as well as RaspiOS of course), is that any help?

[b3ta]

@seasoned_geek: I see you registered here a few hours ago, so are probably asking the same question elsewhere and might not have had time to look around here too much. Assuming that, the following:

There are three MX Linux variants which are officially supported, differing in the main in their desktop environment: Xfce, KDE, and Fluxbox. Then there are what they call "Respins", which are based on MX Linux, but which have some niche focus and are not officially supported (but can get quite a bit of love). Go to the main forum page and scroll down to get to these.

I use some of the "AV Linux" (Audio-Visual) respins because I need that focus in my job, but you might find one of the "Minimal" or "CLI" respins a good base from which to work. Both are described in this topic, which has 59 posts as I write.

AntiX is another minimalist distribution which is separate to MX Linux, but which shares quite a bit with it. It is also linked to from the main forum page, a bit further down.

I've been lurking here for going on seven years and have recently-ish been getting a bit more involved. I find this forum to be one of the more balanced ones around, plus there are a few people here who seriously know what they are doing. So, modulo the usual noise (not too much), this is a great place to be.

If this doesn't cut it, you could try the oldest distribution still going (Slackware). While its release cycle is glacial, updates happen all the time, as evinced by the change log. Its mindset is classic Unix, so if that's doesn't float your boat, best not go there.

Since you're asking about a more general purpose OS than one focussed on embedded systems, another alternative is the far more polished SUSE, which is much bigger in Europe than the US. In addition to its end-user OSs (commercial or free) it has both commercial (SUSE Linux Micro) and Open Source (openSUSE MicroOS) offerings for edge devices, though the requirements are hardly in the realms of embedded systems for small appliances. A very attractive feature of the latter two is the immutable OS approach, which allows nigh unbreakable updates. That said, SUSE is undertaking major changes to its Leap version in the free space, so make sure you're OK what what's coming down before committing to that at the moment.

If you're looking for a great general-purpose OS in which to do your development, I'd recommend you take a long, hard look at the Xfce variant of MX Linux.

HTH

[seasoned_geek]

I've run Devuan & MXLinux on my RPi boards, (as well as RaspiOS of course), is that any help?

Thank you for your reply. No. I should have been more clear.

I am talking about doing full Yocto builds for embedded systems development. This means one installs the compiler and libraries for multiple architectures on the machine and cross-compile then load on target.

I was on the team that brought the first one of these to life.


I've worked on other embedded systems projects as well.

At any rate, I'm currently working on Ls-Cs and was using Ubuntu 20.04 as the base dev OS on my z820 with either 20 or 24-core and 120GB of RAM (Yocto needs a lot) but 20.04 started acting up and the version of Cups is too far behind. (Working on print dialog right now as well as spoolers. Cups 3.x completely changed printing.)

So, basically, I was hoping someone here actually does what I do and successfully uses MXLinux for it. Many distros include nothing in their repos for cross target development. Debian certainly doesn't.

Sadly, most SOC (System on a Chip) and SOM (System on a Module) vendors only create scripts for Ubuntu so it is a death spiral.

Thanks for trying to help though.

[seasoned_geek]

@seasoned_geek: I see you registered here a few hours ago, so are probably asking the same question elsewhere and might not have had time to look around here too much. Assuming that, the following:

Thanks for the reply.

Nope. Had no time to do that. I spun my wheels for the rest of the day only to learn that the 1125W power supply in my z820 is not putting out significantly less. That is/was half the problem with Ubuntu 20.04. Took all day to figure that out though. I'm not a hardware guy. Adding insult to injury there are all kinds of posts about Ubuntu 24.04 only finding one monitor. No matter what video card I put in or set of cables I tried I could only get one monitor working. Booted several other live ISOs and generally wasted the day. Been a trusty development box for big yocto builds. Given everyone is trying to sell "refurbished" 1125W (and lower) power supplies for quite a bit and the Chinese knock-off places want a grand for a "new" one . . . it is time to send this machine to that great recycling pile in the sky (actually corner of my office because I haven't went to the drop-off location in about a year so the pile is getting big.)

Tomorrow I will try to set one of my other machines up and pick up where I left off.

Please see my other reply for clarification on what I was asking.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

[b3ta]

Thanks for the clarification. I haven't looked at embedded systems for many years.

I've never looked at Yocto before, but saw the following at https://docs.yoctoproject.org/ref-manua ... tributions:

Currently, the 5.2.999 release (“Walnascar”) of the Yocto Project is supported on the following distributions:
…
Debian GNU/Linux 12 (Bookworm)
…
Yocto Project releases are tested against the stable Linux distributions in the above list. The Yocto Project should work on other distributions but validation is not performed against them.

Caveat: That's about as much as I know about Yocto, but it is from their official docs, so there should be hope.

Based on the above my understanding is that you should be fine with MX Linux, which is just plain Debian with lots of extras. Given what I wrote about MX above, I'd say give it a go — you should find a lot of help with any transition issues.

[seasoned_geek]

Currently, the 5.2.999 release (“Walnascar”) of the Yocto Project is supported on the following distributions:
…
Debian GNU/Linux 12 (Bookworm)
…
Yocto Project releases are tested against the stable Linux distributions in the above list. The Yocto Project should work on other distributions but validation is not performed against them.

Thank you for the reply.

What you build with Yocto is from bookworm. At least it was a few years ago when I worked on this project.

I have a Debian 12 machine. In fact September of last year I posted this in the Debian user forums.

Had this thread around the same time because I was building Debian packages for CopperSpice.

Debian doesn't do multi-arch well. More correctly stated, Ubuntu makes it easy and vendors
usually only provide instructions for Ubuntu.

Sorry for the rambling.

I just remember that in September of last year I was unable to successfully cross-compile anything for an imx8m plus on Verdin development board after quite a few days. A feat I achieved in a little over half a day with Ubuntu 20.04.

I'm big on creating step-by-step-with-pictures documentation for my projects like I did with RedDiamond. Focus is to let a high school kid with near zero formal education to setup a dev environment and jump right in. Debian still clings to the "expert friendly" nature that was historically Linux.

I may give MXLinux a whirl, at least for the stage of development I'm at now. I did/do have a high school kid who was testing builds of Ls-Cs on MxLinux and found at least one, possibly more, of the libraries got split so build instructions had to be tweaked. Don't know if he is still around or not. He couldn't code, just wanted to test. Working in my "spare" time it will be a good 2-3 years before there is lots to test. The Cups 3.x changes are taking longer than they should. The other major changes will take longer.

Anyway.

I do thank all for the friendly replies that tried to be helpful!