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Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances

gokrazy.org

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Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances

#3

Post by leaveyou »

dom96 wrote: post #2

I'm having a really hard time figuring out what problem this project solves, can anyone explain?

They say it right in the header:

"For a long time, we were unhappy with having to care about security issues and Linux distribution maintenance on our various Raspberry Pis."

Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances

#6

Post by kiallmacinnes »

leaveyou wrote: post #3
dom96 wrote: post #2

I'm having a really hard time figuring out what problem this project solves, can anyone explain?

They say it right in the header: "For a long time, we were unhappy with having to care about security issues and Linux distribution maintenance on our various Raspberry Pis."

Yep - for home automation style stuff (which the author seems to have built it for - see the showcase section), having a full Linux distro is actually a real pain. I've taken to building my own stuff with the ESP series of microcontrollers, home made PCBs, etc - once it's built - it just keeps chugging along, unlike my original stuff I built atop RaspberryPis with Linux.

Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances

#8

Post by simmons »

This is great! I think it could have uses far beyond the Raspberry Pi. As someone who's worked in the consumer electronics industry for years, I think we desperately need to rethink our approach to Linux-based electronics with respect to both the userland and the primary application. A legacy-free framework written in a safe language could go a long way to improving our currently lousy reputation with respect to security and reliability. (Yes, fresh code will have fresh bugs even in a safe language -- but it's a start!) I'm also keeping my eyes open for similar ideas using Rust.

Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances

#9

Post by elliotec »

leaveyou wrote: post #3
dom96 wrote: post #2

I'm having a really hard time figuring out what problem this project solves, can anyone explain?

They say it right in the header: "For a long time, we were unhappy with having to care about security issues and Linux distribution maintenance on our various Raspberry Pis."

So it’s like it’s own OS almost? What’s a userland?

Re: Gokrazy: A pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances

#10

Post by alexose »

kiallmacinnes wrote: post #6
leaveyou wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say it right in the header: "For a long time, we were unhappy with having to care about security issues and Linux distribution maintenance on our various Raspberry Pis."

Yep - for home automation style stuff (which the author seems to have built it for - see the showcase section), having a full Linux distro is actually a real pain. I've taken to building my own stuff with the ESP series of microcontrollers, home made PCBs, etc - once it's built - it just keeps chugging along, unlike my original stuff I built atop RaspberryPis with Linux.

I've done a lot of this sort of this as well. The ESP8266 is so great for simple on/off switches and sensors.

But-- there are so many applications for having a full IoT Linux distribution that I can't believe this isn't already a solved problem. I'm imagining an ultra-stable distro that is easy to deploy to a headless machine, handles security updates, handles flaky wi-fi issues, tests the SD card (I've had more than a few burn out on me), and automatically logs to the cloud for easy debugging.

In other words: Why am I still maintaining my RasPis as if they are apache servers from the 1990s?

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