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Ubuntu Core Gets Support For Raspberry Pi 2 GPIO and I2C
An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu Core is a tiny Ubuntu distribution aimed at the Internet of Things, using a new transactional packaging format called Snappy rather than the venerable Debian packaging format. It recently gained support for I2C and GPIO on the Raspberry Pi 2, and a quick demo is given here. Ubuntu's Core support site says that the support for Raspberry Pi 2 isn't yet official, but provides some handy tips for anyone who wants to try it out.
It's webscale.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
The raspberry hardware i2c implementation is broken. Don't try to communicate with microcontrollers, it will fail due to the broken clock stretching....
I had to do SW bitbang i2c, what a mess !!
aaaaaaa
At least that is what I saw the first time I glanced at the post.
Why is Snark Required?
That was fixed long ago on the rev 1 boards.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
It's integrated into systemd.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Snappy core is a root filesystem image built from Ubuntu deb packages and with binary diff updates. Snappy packages are built the same way, and the core runs them in apparmor to provide sandboxing.
Since when did I2C and GPIO become marketing buzz? Judging from the title of the post ("status update") I don't think it was meant to tell you everything about snappy. It linked to an older post with more information, but if you really want to learn about it, you'll need to do some work yourself.
If "normal people" means people who buy a computer at Best Buy and aren't sure what OS it runs, they don't care about the Raspberry Pi.
GPIO means general purpose input/output - pins that you can turn on and off, or read, in order to connect motors, servos, lights, sensors, etc.
I2C is how chips such as microcontrollers communicate. It's kind of like a lower-level USB. You'd use it to connect your Raspberry Pi to an Arduino, Picaxe, LCD display, or some advanced sensors like GPS modules, or perhaps a cell phone module.
Snappy is Cannical's attempt to get rid of apt because it doesn't work for paid apps. They've abandoned the Ubuntu Software Center (and the developers there) and are now pushing this crap. Whatever claim they make about 'sandboxing' and 'security', the end goal is to monetize apps to phone and tablet users. This might not even be so bad if it worked. But Snappy is not ready for primetime. It is cumbersome and buggy.
I also question the usefulness of an 'app-store' style package management system to a platform that is geared to education. The Raspberry Pi Platform's strength is in its openness and community support. It's gonna suck to see step 4 in EVERY pi project article be 'Go install Core on your pi, then buy my app'.
So really who cares if Core/Snappy has GPIO. So does Windows 10 IOT. Having tried both images out, WIndows IOT might actually be more useful than Ubuntu Core on the Pi right now. (At least is runs Node.js)
I'll take apt or pip (or mercurial or Github for that matter) over Snappy any day.