[talk] Up board

[George Rosamond]

On 02/18/16 23:22, Sujit K M wrote:
>> This is actually the next gen; probably nearly twice as fast as the
>> Up or the J1900 models, and still has 4xSATA (but I can't confirm
>> how well it runs *BSD):
> 
> I doubt. They are saying DirectX in the product information page. I
> am not quite sure whether they mean the Graphics System. Also It is
> intel 8th Generation.
> 
>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157621
> 
> Just browsed found
> www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157511
> 
> Just my two cents.
> 

Yes... I think small or mini-itx amd64 boards are a lot more appetizing
than a $9 cat toy if you are actually looking to *do* something with it.

As the ARM and little SoC board scene has exploded over the past several
years, it really does get difficult to not only navigate, but the
porting efforts get extremely tough.

Some were meant for a Linux, and sometimes end up being horrible hacks
to get *something* operational on the board and out the door.

And if you look at how each of the BSDs and Linuxes deal with their
porting, the variations in the approaches shows the difficulties in
doing some type of 'armv6' or 'armv7' or just 'arm' port that just
simply works and scales for board upgrades and new boards.

I think if you have specific needs to satisfy, it becomes an easier task
to pick a board.  I know GNN was using a teeny board just for testing
network throughput, and he wasn't fixated on this or that feature.

In the end, if you're not just tinkering and don't have the development
skills/resources/time, it is still likely the best bet to just go with a
small i386 board where most of the tools from the BSDs will just work,
such as drivers and ports, etc.  I would take an i386 board with a BSD
over any of the current BSD arm supported boards, and way before any ARM
board with Linux support.

g