announcing the availability of packages for the Arm architecture

[Ronald Klop]

On Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:43:29 +0100, Dave Hayes <dave at jetcafe.org> wrote:

> On 11/05/12 07:33, Tim Kientzle wrote:
>>
>> On Nov 4, 2012, at 6:36 PM, Dave Hayes wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/30/12 07:18, Ian Lepore wrote:
>>>> All in all, I have the impression that not many people "use" freebsd  
>>>> on
>>>> arm at all.

Hi,

I happily host my personal e-mail and a mailinglist on a Sheevaplug (about  
$80) running FreeBSD 9/ARM for more than a year. And use it to  
wakeup-on-lan my PC. Saving me electricity and noise.
Just a me-too-example, but there is real world usage of all this work on  
ARM.

Ronald.


>>>
>>> Just getting to the point of "using" it is quite time intensive. I ran  
>>> out of time trying to get my dreamplug to where I want it. These  
>>> issues were in my way (this was some time ago, check the list for  
>>> dates):
>>>
>>> - install requires non-trivial patches and kernel config
>>
>> There are a few people working on build systems to
>> simplify this.  My scripts work pretty much "out-of-the-box"
>> for RaspberryPi and BeagleBone now and should be easily
>> extensible to other platforms.
>
> Where are these scripts? I'd like to try them.
>
> Part of my problem is that I routinely build customized versions of  
> FreeBSD for specific applications, so I don't like just using a canned  
> script...I like to understand the process. Unfortunately there's a lot  
> of patching and config/make kernel/re-config cycles to get something  
> right.
>
>> FreeBSD ports team is now building packages for ARM.
>
> That's great news and I saw some of that. Some users might still like to  
> be able to customize a port build, but for most users that would be fine.
>
>> Even if you prefer a "more beefy" system like the DreamPlug
>> or PandaBoard or Â… , consider getting a RaspberryPi as well
>> and tinkering with that for a little bit.  It's only $35.
>
> I saw that too. Let me say that those are amazing computers at an  
> awesome price. Add a cheap usb disk and you likely have a workable  
> desktop. The problem is, as usual, a lack of quality tinkering time in  
> my world. Once I get my dreamplug working as a firewall...maybe. :D