Author Topic: contemplating a arm dev board.  (Read 21784 times)

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Offline poorchava

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #50 on: May 07, 2013, 06:21:31 am »
As far as I know stm32 equipped with stlink adapter work reasonably well under Linux.  They are very popular so proper tools are definitely out there.
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Offline blewisjrTopic starter

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #51 on: May 07, 2013, 10:16:49 am »
Yes this is the deduction I came to last night as well. Openocd has stlink support as well as there being a tool specifically for stlink.  So right now I am contemplating ordering a stm32f4 discovery.  Gunna have to find some other stuff to order first so I don't get nailed as hard on shipping.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #52 on: May 07, 2013, 01:03:41 pm »
And if the programmer doesn't work on Linux you can always use Virtualbox for running Windows and/or Apple's OSX.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline blewisjrTopic starter

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #53 on: May 07, 2013, 01:14:52 pm »
True and there is always the possibility of wine working as my laptop only has a 128gb ssd so vbox would kill space.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #54 on: May 07, 2013, 01:22:20 pm »
Forget about Wine. The beauty of virtualbox is that the harddisk image grows with the actual information stored. So a fresh 100GB partition with WinXP and a few programs will only use a few GB of space.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline blewisjrTopic starter

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #55 on: May 07, 2013, 01:36:00 pm »
I would use my win7 gaming laptop before I did that.  The thing is the only time I use that thing is if I am in the mood for a game or if an application for my online classes requires windows period.  I do not develop code on it.
 

Offline elgonzo

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #56 on: May 07, 2013, 01:49:15 pm »
I would use my win7 gaming laptop before I did that.  The thing is the only time I use that thing is if I am in the mood for a game or if an application for my online classes requires windows period.  I do not develop code on it.

Yep, if you have a second machine available this can be quite comfortable.

However, i often found myself in the need of setting up specific (test) OS configurations, fighting with experimental driver stacks and the need to compare software behaviour on different OS versions, that using virtual machines became the only feasible solution. Since my host OS is (evil  >:D) Windows, the VM i use is VMware Player. I never managed to get USB pass-through working with VirtualBox...
 

Offline jmole

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #57 on: May 07, 2013, 01:56:21 pm »
Since my host OS is (evil  >:D) Windows, the VM i use is VMware Player. I never managed to get USB pass-through working with VirtualBox...

You need a few things:

1) Install VirtualBox Extensions Pack
2) Enable USB 2.0 Host Controller (duh)
3) Only use 1 CPU in the Guest

Not sure why you can't use more than 1 CPU with USB, but it caused me a big headache until I figured it out.
 

Offline blewisjrTopic starter

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #58 on: May 07, 2013, 02:04:28 pm »
I would use my win7 gaming laptop before I did that.  The thing is the only time I use that thing is if I am in the mood for a game or if an application for my online classes requires windows period.  I do not develop code on it.

Yep, if you have a second machine available this can be quite comfortable.

However, i often found myself in the need of setting up specific (test) OS configurations, fighting with experimental driver stacks and the need to compare software behaviour on different OS versions, that using virtual machines became the only feasible solution. Since my host OS is (evil  >:D) Windows, the VM i use is VMware Player. I never managed to get USB pass-through working with VirtualBox...

Never said windows was evil jus manipulative and restrictive lol.  The only other feasible option "quiver" would be to bite the bullet and install win 7 on the damn thing.  Which would involve buying a copy.  Sure my laptop came with win 8 but all those recovery partitions are long gone hehe.

edit:

forgot  about the other option.  I could always turn the Linux laptop into a $1000 touch screen svn server if I turn off sleep when the lid closes then I have a ultra compact vcs server that runs on my intranet if windows is so important for embedded development as it seems to be.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2013, 02:14:54 pm by blewisjr »
 

Offline elgonzo

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #59 on: May 07, 2013, 02:32:13 pm »
Never said windows was evil jus manipulative and restrictive lol. 

Hehe, no, i said it. I didn't try to imply that you expressed something in this direction. Sorry! lol... :)

Choose your OS simply based on whether it is supported by your favourite development tools, and whether you have to consider certain, usually very project-specific, driver-related dependencies. In most cases both Linux and Windows do fine. Heck, in many cases it's actually like the spare parts bin: Just use what you have lying around :)

EDIT: If you really going to convert your gaming laptop into a server, please let me know  ;D
« Last Edit: May 07, 2013, 02:35:23 pm by elgonzo »
 

Offline blewisjrTopic starter

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #60 on: May 07, 2013, 02:43:58 pm »
No the Linux laptop. Gaming one will never be a server need that fix every so often lol.  By the looks of it everything is windows oriented and the Linux support is usually hacked together and buggy.  Everything in my work area seems to prefer windows lol.  Even my scope but luckily excell files can get opened on Linux lol.
 

Offline westfw

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #61 on: May 07, 2013, 03:35:18 pm »
Quote
So a fresh 100GB partition with WinXP and a few programs will only use a few GB of space.
Where "a few" is "about 10."  At least, my 10GB partitions quickly became so full that I couldn't do updates, even though I was trying to install the apps on a separate virtual disk.  Some of that was my carelessness, some was microsoft's insistence on keeping around temporary files and histories, and some was their insistence on putting things on C:  After some careful cleaning, I got it down to about 7G...
(The "virgin" XPsp3 install "from which virtual machines are cloned" is slightly over 4G.)
 

Offline blewisjrTopic starter

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #62 on: May 07, 2013, 04:12:34 pm »
Either way with this machine a vm is not an option.  So it will be all or nothing.
 

Offline M. András

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #63 on: May 07, 2013, 04:56:35 pm »
external hard drive for that laptop install to that and you wont use up the space on the ssd
 

Offline blewisjrTopic starter

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #64 on: May 07, 2013, 05:05:30 pm »
Vm or no vm it still costs a license to Windows which I would ultimately rather avoid all together.  Which is why I mentioned moving the Linux laptop to a server if I end up having to use windows for development.  It saves me $200 to do it that way compared to the vm.
 

Offline andyturk

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #65 on: May 07, 2013, 10:47:35 pm »
Vm or no vm it still costs a license to Windows [...] It saves me $200 [...].
Paying for WinBlows(tm) is sooo last century.
 

Offline blewisjrTopic starter

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #66 on: May 08, 2013, 12:06:42 pm »
Vm or no vm it still costs a license to Windows [...] It saves me $200 [...].
Paying for WinBlows(tm) is sooo last century.

I agree so much better to not use it at all!!!!!
 

Offline elgonzo

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #67 on: May 08, 2013, 03:06:23 pm »
Vm or no vm it still costs a license to Windows [...] It saves me $200 [...].
Paying for WinBlows(tm) is sooo last century.

Your comment reminds me of the late nineties, wheren Linux was still a contender for the desktop. So, yupp, that's last century :)
« Last Edit: May 08, 2013, 03:11:03 pm by elgonzo »
 

Offline elgonzo

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #68 on: May 08, 2013, 03:13:23 pm »
Vm or no vm it still costs a license to Windows [...] It saves me $200 [...].
Paying for WinBlows(tm) is sooo last century.

I agree so much better to not use it at all!!!!!

I am glad that you are happy with Linux. I suppose, all the concerns you vocalized before are resolved ;)
 

Offline blewisjrTopic starter

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #69 on: May 08, 2013, 03:59:53 pm »
There are always concerns even on Windows at times things do not work like they are suppose to.  I will see what time brings do not know what is going to happen yet as of right now my PIC chips work find with Linux.  AVR is a bit fussy still trying to work the bugs out of building the toolchain but all most there but not sure if I am going to use AVR for any projects in particular yet because my PIC's are more then capable for them.  As for ARM time will tell what I choose.  I suck at making over all decisions especially where I like many different things about everything.  One thing I do know is I am a Linux Junky even if it never gets main stream on the desktop which likely it never will.  As for Linux and embedded development don't know how overall support is it may come down to the fact that I need to use windows for desktop work and Linux for server work only time can tell with that as well.  So far in computing Life Linux has not let me down yet!!!!!   This may be the first time ever :P
 

Offline elgonzo

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #70 on: May 08, 2013, 04:28:24 pm »
No it's fine using Linux (i think i mentioned it somewhere before).
It's just a fact that for the time being, Linux has lost on the desktop front. That sucks, no doubt about it. But it doesn't help overly idolizing things, which looking at your remarks, i don't think you run the danger of succumbing to ;)

Yeah, and it always sucks if you are presented with no alternatives, no matter where. It simply sucks.
Being mostly a Windows user, but occasionally my work requires me to use MacOS, because of iOS-development-related things. Now, i don't really hate MacOS, but i dislike to need just another, secondary PC (Mac) just for that purpose (which is kind of a similar situation you face, just with different players). So, my company got me a Mac Mini just for that, but which i don't use. Officially i use the Mac for this dev work (because of the license terms of the Mac software), but inofficially and in reality i run MacOS in VM as it is more convenient for me. Now, contrary to your situation, i did not have to worry about the costs of all this, so, yeah, you could accuse me of speaking from the high horse :)

And one minor correction: No, Linux did not let you down. Linux as such is by no stretch a failure, otherwise it would not be one of the dominiating OS'es for servers and super computers. It is just the whole situation that evolved around desktop(!) Linux during the last decade, with all its elitism/fragmentation and in-fighting in its developer community, as sad as it is :(
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #71 on: May 08, 2013, 05:13:27 pm »
I wouldn't say Linux has lost or won something. The thing is that Linux in itself works way better than Windows but for some software there is no proper alternative available for Linux. I'm gradually moving more and more to my Linux machine. This takes times because it is a lot of work. Having Windows in a virtual machine helps a lot so I can continue to use software for which there is no Linux alternative.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline blewisjrTopic starter

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #72 on: May 08, 2013, 05:16:57 pm »
I agree to some extent about the fragmentation the real issue lies in the fact that Linux could have succeeded on the desktop if it was not for that high horse mentality.  Many companies tried very hard to include Linux in the mix and still are trying very hard just look at Nvidia but the fact remains they get shutdown constantly when it comes to providing drivers for the Linux kernel because they do not want to expose the proprietary parts of the driver.  The Linux high horse is so huge that even if a open source middle man layer between the proprietary parts and the open source parts exists they still get hard flack and shut down.  Right now that is the biggest issue Nvidia is having with getting the optimus technology stack in the kernel.  The developers of many Linux packages and the Linux Kernel just do not understand everything can not be open source.  Open source is great but there comes times when open source is not possible due to the actions of comities, stakeholders, and competitive edge.

The in fighting side of things gets worse by the day to the point where it is beginning to hinder progress to new and innovative ways to do things.  They are very hard engrained in the old for the most part so much to the point that anything new like Gnome3 and Ubuntu's Unity is considered treason.  Not sure why...  They are both effective environments and much better then windows Metro crap (which btw is awesome on a phone yes I use a windows 8 phone and it is the best phone I ever owned)

So over all I am far from elitist (which you did not accuse me of)  I use what is best for the particular job at hand.  If embedded development is better one windows I will use that and leave Linux to what it is great at servers.  Which come to think of it is probably what I am going to do anyway because I am tired of fighting to get the toolchains up and running it just gets old after a few days of bashing your brain of the terminal trying to get crap to build like it is suppose to.  I can't count how much source code I had to modify for some of these projects to get them to build.  I mean who in there right mind puts out a release tarball with syntax errors in it.  I know people who refuse to update there damn compilers to versions that are not 5 years old lol.

I do agree that over time things do get better on the Linux front but to this day I have yet been able to do a full switch for everything hence why I always have at least 1 windows related computer.  One thing I can say is I will never use Windows 8 on any desktop or laptop.  It just does not work well at all.  Wish they just separated the two interfaces between mobile and desktop would have been much better.
« Last Edit: May 08, 2013, 05:19:30 pm by blewisjr »
 

Offline elgonzo

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #73 on: May 08, 2013, 05:21:24 pm »
I wouldn't say Linux has lost or won something. The thing is that Linux in itself works way better than Windows but for some software there is no proper alternative available for Linux. I'm gradually moving more and more to my Linux machine. This takes times because it is a lot of work. Having Windows in a virtual machine helps a lot so I can continue to use software for which there is no Linux alternative.

Yes, probably "lost" was the wrong word in the context. Maybe i should have said something along the lines of "hurt". But anyway, i do not want to start a debate, because generally i agree with you.

And i can also understand blewisjr, that, when contemplating about getting a proper Windows license for a VM and seeing the price tag, he goes like: "WAT?"
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: contemplating a arm dev board.
« Reply #74 on: May 08, 2013, 06:26:25 pm »
About the Windows license... just go on Ebay and buy an OEM XP license or so for a few $. OTOH the laptop probably came with WIndows so the license to run Windows on it is already there.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 


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