Re: Status of Emdebian Grip

On Wed, 05 Feb 2014 08:43:43 +1100
Paul Whittaker <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 3/02/2014 9:31 PM, Neil Williams wrote:
> > If you have interest in retaining Grip *and are prepared to provide
> > some solutions to the issues above* then say so here. Otherwise,
> > neither testing not point releases will get updates and we then
> > ought to consider if unstable is worth retaining.
> 
> Unfortunately I don't see how I can help with your issues zero
> through five (unless you can be financially motivated?),

It is the amount of time I'm spending using current ARMv7 boards for
work which is making Grip maintenance difficult. Grip needs developer
time and I have better uses for that time when faced with a declining
requirement.

> but I
> thought I should let you know that systems with a need for something
> the size of Grip do still exist.
> 
> We (ThinLinX Inc, http://thinlinx.com) are using Grip 3.1 on a
> variant of the Beagleboard xM that has *no* SD card slot and only 256

BeagleXM is getting to be a very old bit of kit. Have you looked into
the beaglebone (black or white)?

> MiB of NAND flash in which to fit U-Boot, kernel, main userspace and
> recovery userspace (yes, I know what you are going to say - this is a
> "design flaw" that we brought on ourselves).

It's a reliance on older hardware which may have a simpler fix.

>  This means that I have
> to cram Debian into 211 MiB for the main userspace.  It's a difficult
> job getting Grip to fit in this space, there is no chance that
> standard Debian would fit.
> 
> This device is an omni-protocol thin client, and it has to be able to 
> support COTS add-ons such as Citrix Receiver, provide an up-to-date X 
> server, web browser, and full-featured subsystems such as CUPS, so
> Crush is not a viable alternative for us.

A change of board is much more manageable.

Emdebian Grip 3.1 isn't going away any time soon - the question here is
about unstable and testing migrations for Jessie. It looks, at the
moment, as if Emdebian Grip 4.0 Jessie is not going to happen.

Given that you have a relatively smooth way out to the upgraded version
of your current board from the same supplier, how important would point
releases of Emdebian Grip 3.x actually be?

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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