4 ms·

There's always Arch Linux ARM, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and RiscOS. They all run on a Raspberry Pi 4. What are you looking for that those aren't covering?

squarefoot 5y ago
Some among the cheaper boards are much less capable than the RPi4; 256 or 512 MB RAM can indeed run a tiny Linux desktop, but for some uses it would struggle for lack of resources. A single user system with no layers of code devoted to security (which would be pointless in non connected devices) would probably be a lot faster on constricted hardware. The goal of such a system shouldn't be to replace BSD or Linux, which do what they do extremely well, but to offer a smaller tinier system for those contexts when the basic functionalities of an OS are needed without the inevitable bloat that comes with security and support for beefier hardware and/or more complex software. "It couldn't run LibreOffice? Who cares! If I wanted to use it for that I'd use Linux instead." I mean, If I want to build say a fully autonomous portable software defined radio that boots in a handful of seconds straight to its GUI on a very small board, I'd have a hard time doing that with a full Linux distro, no matter how optimized it is, since it still is a full UNIX-like OS with all the bells and whistles that would make it runnable on a supercomputer. I think that those small OSes could potentially fill a gap between smaller things such as no OS at all or smaller ones such as FreeRTOS and complete Linux systems, but to really appreciate them they should also run on hardware such as ARM, RISC-V, etc.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  Speaking of "cheaper boards" : http://collapseos.org/ http://collapseos.org/ I'm somewhat skeptical of the usefulness of 16 and 32 bit software : 8-bit is simple and can do ASCII, sRGB... while 64-bit is enough for the foreseeable future, but in-between ? You're just hampering yourself for dubious gains...
unionpivo 5y ago
Those are my own opinions as to why. Plenty of people are working on those systems, so obviously there are plenty of people that have different opinion. They are too big, and well established projects. I cant just plop down over a weekend and make some kind of meaningful contribution. Most of the low hanging fruit is already dealt with. Those are great systems to work with, or if you want to build on top of. Not that great if you just want to hack on core system. It's not that you can't because people definitively are. But expectations are bigger, scope is bigger, you need to keep multiple architectures in mind, people will use it on all kinds of hardware. You need to coordinate with dozens or more people. Everything takes more time.

squarefoot 5y ago

Some among the cheaper boards are much less capable than the RPi4; 256 or 512 MB RAM can indeed run a tiny Linux desktop, but for some uses it would struggle for lack of resources. A single user system with no layers of code devoted to security (which would be pointless in non connected devices) would probably be a lot faster on constricted hardware. The goal of such a system shouldn't be to replace BSD or Linux, which do what they do extremely well, but to offer a smaller tinier system for those contexts when the basic functionalities of an OS are needed without the inevitable bloat that comes with security and support for beefier hardware and/or more complex software. "It couldn't run LibreOffice? Who cares! If I wanted to use it for that I'd use Linux instead." I mean, If I want to build say a fully autonomous portable software defined radio that boots in a handful of seconds straight to its GUI on a very small board, I'd have a hard time doing that with a full Linux distro, no matter how optimized it is, since it still is a full UNIX-like OS with all the bells and whistles that would make it runnable on a supercomputer. I think that those small OSes could potentially fill a gap between smaller things such as no OS at all or smaller ones such as FreeRTOS and complete Linux systems, but to really appreciate them they should also run on hardware such as ARM, RISC-V, etc.

BlueTemplar 5y ago
Speaking of "cheaper boards" : http://collapseos.org/ http://collapseos.org/ I'm somewhat skeptical of the usefulness of 16 and 32 bit software : 8-bit is simple and can do ASCII, sRGB... while 64-bit is enough for the foreseeable future, but in-between ? You're just hampering yourself for dubious gains...

unionpivo 5y ago

Those are my own opinions as to why. Plenty of people are working on those systems, so obviously there are plenty of people that have different opinion. They are too big, and well established projects. I cant just plop down over a weekend and make some kind of meaningful contribution. Most of the low hanging fruit is already dealt with. Those are great systems to work with, or if you want to build on top of. Not that great if you just want to hack on core system. It's not that you can't because people definitively are. But expectations are bigger, scope is bigger, you need to keep multiple architectures in mind, people will use it on all kinds of hardware. You need to coordinate with dozens or more people. Everything takes more time.